Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
.Mac's slow death
Somebody call the ambulance, because .Mac is dying...and Google is the assassin (with a little help from his sidekick Firefox). Now I've been using .Mac since it was free and called "iTools." I was initially lured in by the convenience of iDisk, the mac.com email address and so on. Web bookmark and contact syncing are also super-convenient, and as time passed I made use of some of the other .Mac services, like iCal publishing and so on. Everything was fine. Not free anymore, but fine. Then Google introduced (free) Gmail with oodles more storage than .Mac offers, calendars and so on. To make a long story short, I'm about to give .Mac the boot for good. After the jump, a breakdown of why.Exhibit A: .Mac mail vs. Gmail
Storage
Currently, .Mac offers me 1GB of storage to be allocated between my mac.com email address and my online storage, iDisk. As I have things set up, 120MB has been set aside for mail with the rest made available to iDisk. Google offers me 2GB of storage space to divvy up between mail and storage (more on that later). I'm not one to let idle messages loiter in my inbox once I've read and processed them, so the issue of space isn't that pressing. Still, I occasionally get photos from my far-flung family members and friends. These can chew up space quickly. So, Google offers me twice the storage space, and it's free. Google wins round one.
Spam
I get lots of spam in my inbox. Gmail does an excellent job of sending it directly to its own spam folder, where I never, ever have to look (it's automatically purged after 30 days). Apple's Mail had been doing a spectacular job, but over the last year or so more and more unwanted messages were seeping through. Today, I continue to get barraged with Viagra ads via Mail. I understand that the tactics of spammers can change over time, but Gmail seems to be able to keep up without a problem.
Frustrated by Mail's failings in the spam department, I set up a spare G3 iMac I had sitting around to be a spam filter for the Macs I routinely work with (iMac and Powerbook at home, plus iMac at work) by following this tutorial at MacMerc. Through the magic of IMAP and SpamSieve, I've got a decent system that neutralizes most of the incoming spam. Perhaps you've noticed the catch, however: Not everyone has a spare computer sitting around. Plus, I had to purchase SpamSieve (I'm not really complaining, it's a great piece of software, but $25US doesn't compare to "free."). Of course, if you only have 1 Mac in your lineup, you won't need the spare machine to act as a filter. But I know that many of us have at least a computer at home and one at work.
Like I said, Google's free Gmail offers killer spam filtering "out of the box." Google wins round 2.
Rules and filtering
As a recovering Entourage user (See? Now you have a reason not to hate me), I'm a real rules junkie. With Entourage, I had all of my destination folders and filtering rules set up just so. It was so easy: create a rule, create a folder to capture the filtered result. Folders make sense. The Finder uses folders. I have folders in my desk and on my bookshelf. I like folders.
Apple's Mail uses Mailboxes. I don't like the mailboxes, and I've never been able to get the rules to work just the way I want. Switching to IMAP helped reduce the "clutter" of mailboxes all over the place, but I'm still not in love. Gmail lets me create and assign labels so easily that it's almost silly. In an instant, I have "From Home" or "Work" or a dozen others ready to go, and they pretty much work like my old Entourage rules did. And it gets even more intricate than that.
I'm one of those annoying people who is a real proponent of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD). Now, you can easily set up a nice GTD system with Apple's Mail as described here with the help of MailTags and Mail Act-On from InDev. Or, just install the (free) GTDGmail Firefox extension. Since I'm already using Gmail, this one is a no-brainer. However, the Mail solution is really just as easy (and not very expensive), so we'll call this one a draw. No clear winner.
Exhibit B: Synchronicity
How ultra-convenient is bookmark and contact synchronization? I love it. No more, "Umm, now what was that url again.." moments. Or, you're at the cafe and you need to contact Lynne, but you left your Palm at home. No problem, you can find her info online. It sure sounds great. In theory. The fact is, my .Mac synchronization hasn't worked properly in many months. Particularly my Safari bookmarks are not in sync at all between my laptop, iMac at home and iMac at work. I've tried resetting all of them, each in turn, sent in help requests and so on. I even removed all machines from my sync schedule and reintroduced them one at a time, setting my home iMac as the "master." No go, it simply won't work.
However, and I'll bet you know where this is going, the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox has worked beautifully since day one across my three Macs and my Ubuntu PC laptop that I use as my "screwin' around" machine. Cost: Free. Winner: Google/Firefox (Sorry, Safari).
As for contacts, once I moved everyone to my Gmail address book from Apple's Address Book (a three step process with the help of the freeware AddressBookToCSV), synchronization of this data was no longer necessary, as it lived online. In all fairness, this may be working perfectly well for you, so we'll call it a tie.
Exhibit C: Online storage
Sorry, .Mac team, you aren't competitive in this department at all. With the help of the (free and open source) gDisk, I have a drag-and-drop desktop solution that allows me to use my Gmail account as online storage. That gives me 2GB to divvy up between mail and storage (for free) vs. .Mac's 1GB that's shared between iDisk and Mail (for $99US). CLEAR winner: Google. Speaking of online storage...
Exhibit D: Webspace
Finally, .Mac scores a knockdown. Google's Pages pales in comparison to Apple's Homepage and iWeb. Apple's solution is shiny and polished, and the tight iLife integration makes iWeb a real winner. Of course, Pages is free and iLife isn't, but that's like saying the non-working heap of junk you got from the salvage yard was free and the Mercedes Benz wasn't. There is no comparison here. .Mac wins.
Exhibit E: The Calendar
Google responded to Apple's iCal publishing with Gcal, an online calendar system of its own. Both can be viewed online and both offer subscription options to users. Gcal has one distinct advantage over iCal, however, and that's the ability to edit the published calendar. If you want to edit an iCal calendar, you must be sitting at the computer that was used to publish it. That means, if I have my laptop at Borders, I can't edit the iCal calendar I'm looking at with a browser. My Gcal can be edited at anytime by any machine.
What's more, you can use your local copy of iCal to subscribe to your Gcal calendar. Changes made online will show up in iCal, and you can create and subscribe to as many calendars as you like (either your own or any of a number of public calendars). Winner: Gcal.
Conclusion
In my brief roundup, Google won 5:1. I do love Apple, and I say this as someone who wants to see his loved one do well: Please, oh please revamp .Mac. I don't care about new iPods, a new enclosure for the iMac or even iLife '07. Let's make January's Macworld keynote all about .Mac, and really blow the doors off of the thing. I'm talking about the kind of ground-up feature explosion that will make even non-geeks say, "Wow." While I'm very happy with my Google solution, I'd be even happier if I were able to have the same goodness while staying "in the fold." Come on, Cupertino, I know you can do it. Make this blogger happy.
Storage
Currently, .Mac offers me 1GB of storage to be allocated between my mac.com email address and my online storage, iDisk. As I have things set up, 120MB has been set aside for mail with the rest made available to iDisk. Google offers me 2GB of storage space to divvy up between mail and storage (more on that later). I'm not one to let idle messages loiter in my inbox once I've read and processed them, so the issue of space isn't that pressing. Still, I occasionally get photos from my far-flung family members and friends. These can chew up space quickly. So, Google offers me twice the storage space, and it's free. Google wins round one.
Spam
I get lots of spam in my inbox. Gmail does an excellent job of sending it directly to its own spam folder, where I never, ever have to look (it's automatically purged after 30 days). Apple's Mail had been doing a spectacular job, but over the last year or so more and more unwanted messages were seeping through. Today, I continue to get barraged with Viagra ads via Mail. I understand that the tactics of spammers can change over time, but Gmail seems to be able to keep up without a problem.
Frustrated by Mail's failings in the spam department, I set up a spare G3 iMac I had sitting around to be a spam filter for the Macs I routinely work with (iMac and Powerbook at home, plus iMac at work) by following this tutorial at MacMerc. Through the magic of IMAP and SpamSieve, I've got a decent system that neutralizes most of the incoming spam. Perhaps you've noticed the catch, however: Not everyone has a spare computer sitting around. Plus, I had to purchase SpamSieve (I'm not really complaining, it's a great piece of software, but $25US doesn't compare to "free."). Of course, if you only have 1 Mac in your lineup, you won't need the spare machine to act as a filter. But I know that many of us have at least a computer at home and one at work.
Like I said, Google's free Gmail offers killer spam filtering "out of the box." Google wins round 2.
Rules and filtering
As a recovering Entourage user (See? Now you have a reason not to hate me), I'm a real rules junkie. With Entourage, I had all of my destination folders and filtering rules set up just so. It was so easy: create a rule, create a folder to capture the filtered result. Folders make sense. The Finder uses folders. I have folders in my desk and on my bookshelf. I like folders.
Apple's Mail uses Mailboxes. I don't like the mailboxes, and I've never been able to get the rules to work just the way I want. Switching to IMAP helped reduce the "clutter" of mailboxes all over the place, but I'm still not in love. Gmail lets me create and assign labels so easily that it's almost silly. In an instant, I have "From Home" or "Work" or a dozen others ready to go, and they pretty much work like my old Entourage rules did. And it gets even more intricate than that.
I'm one of those annoying people who is a real proponent of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD). Now, you can easily set up a nice GTD system with Apple's Mail as described here with the help of MailTags and Mail Act-On from InDev. Or, just install the (free) GTDGmail Firefox extension. Since I'm already using Gmail, this one is a no-brainer. However, the Mail solution is really just as easy (and not very expensive), so we'll call this one a draw. No clear winner.
Exhibit B: Synchronicity
How ultra-convenient is bookmark and contact synchronization? I love it. No more, "Umm, now what was that url again.." moments. Or, you're at the cafe and you need to contact Lynne, but you left your Palm at home. No problem, you can find her info online. It sure sounds great. In theory. The fact is, my .Mac synchronization hasn't worked properly in many months. Particularly my Safari bookmarks are not in sync at all between my laptop, iMac at home and iMac at work. I've tried resetting all of them, each in turn, sent in help requests and so on. I even removed all machines from my sync schedule and reintroduced them one at a time, setting my home iMac as the "master." No go, it simply won't work.
However, and I'll bet you know where this is going, the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox has worked beautifully since day one across my three Macs and my Ubuntu PC laptop that I use as my "screwin' around" machine. Cost: Free. Winner: Google/Firefox (Sorry, Safari).
As for contacts, once I moved everyone to my Gmail address book from Apple's Address Book (a three step process with the help of the freeware AddressBookToCSV), synchronization of this data was no longer necessary, as it lived online. In all fairness, this may be working perfectly well for you, so we'll call it a tie.
Exhibit C: Online storage
Sorry, .Mac team, you aren't competitive in this department at all. With the help of the (free and open source) gDisk, I have a drag-and-drop desktop solution that allows me to use my Gmail account as online storage. That gives me 2GB to divvy up between mail and storage (for free) vs. .Mac's 1GB that's shared between iDisk and Mail (for $99US). CLEAR winner: Google. Speaking of online storage...
Exhibit D: Webspace
Finally, .Mac scores a knockdown. Google's Pages pales in comparison to Apple's Homepage and iWeb. Apple's solution is shiny and polished, and the tight iLife integration makes iWeb a real winner. Of course, Pages is free and iLife isn't, but that's like saying the non-working heap of junk you got from the salvage yard was free and the Mercedes Benz wasn't. There is no comparison here. .Mac wins.
Exhibit E: The Calendar
Google responded to Apple's iCal publishing with Gcal, an online calendar system of its own. Both can be viewed online and both offer subscription options to users. Gcal has one distinct advantage over iCal, however, and that's the ability to edit the published calendar. If you want to edit an iCal calendar, you must be sitting at the computer that was used to publish it. That means, if I have my laptop at Borders, I can't edit the iCal calendar I'm looking at with a browser. My Gcal can be edited at anytime by any machine.
What's more, you can use your local copy of iCal to subscribe to your Gcal calendar. Changes made online will show up in iCal, and you can create and subscribe to as many calendars as you like (either your own or any of a number of public calendars). Winner: Gcal.
Conclusion
In my brief roundup, Google won 5:1. I do love Apple, and I say this as someone who wants to see his loved one do well: Please, oh please revamp .Mac. I don't care about new iPods, a new enclosure for the iMac or even iLife '07. Let's make January's Macworld keynote all about .Mac, and really blow the doors off of the thing. I'm talking about the kind of ground-up feature explosion that will make even non-geeks say, "Wow." While I'm very happy with my Google solution, I'd be even happier if I were able to have the same goodness while staying "in the fold." Come on, Cupertino, I know you can do it. Make this blogger happy.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Smaran Dayal said 3:20PM on 8-23-2006
Amen to that, man. I really really want Apple to rehash and improve its .Mac offering, simply because I know they have the potential to make .Mac provide the best online experience any Mac user could want. It's a shame to see Google stealing away the market while .Mac rots in the early 00s. We want a better .Mac, I too don't care for another iPod or even Merom chips in MBPs.
Just like the PS3 is going to offer all its owners a free online solution (in comparison to Xbox Live) I think Apple should take it upon itself to make sure its rapidly growing Mac fan-base gets a free online experience as long as they own the hardware-- which they happen to enthusiastically upgrade every chance they get and rave about it non-stop on every blog, forum and site (me included).
Redmond does it, so don't compare yourself to Vista, if you don't have a free MSN to give your people too.
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Stephen C. said 3:20PM on 8-23-2006
Eh, I think I'll have to disagree with you on the webspace one. iWeb works just fine with exporting to another server, like the ad+cost-free awardspace.com. And streamload.com and box.net could also work as substitutes for the disk space...
Of course, that's only if you are considering free offerings vs. .mac, not google vs. .mac.... I'm sorry to say this, but I'm not gonna buy .Mac again this year. I just can't afford it. Too bad it expires in December.. only one month later and I would have time to wait for MacWorld to decide...
Oh, well.
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Victor Agreda Jr said 3:26PM on 8-23-2006
Slam dunk. Absolutely correct in every regard.
$99 a year at this point is a "n00b tax." And I'm guilty of it...
The bookmark syncing is really, really bad though, and many have had trouble with online sync lately. This, to me, is an enormous reliability issue (which has plagued .Mac since more than 12 people signed up).
Bad Apple! Fix this!
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jayjay said 3:30PM on 8-23-2006
my first post ever... could'nt agree more! loved .mac, but nothing is happening, the freebies are a joke, spam starts taking over, and using idisk in europe is awfully slow. however, i do get a lot junk mail even with gmail (though I try to be careful handing out the email address), too. Actually, lately I have been so fed up with email, wish I would not have to use it anymore (hey, one CAN dream... ;-)) just d/l spamsieve, will give it a try.
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fitzage said 3:31PM on 8-23-2006
I can't believe you called Synchronicity a tie. Yes, if you want to live in Gmail's ugly interface you don't need to worry about it. But, if you want to use your Mac like a Mac and not be stuck in a web interface all the time, .mac wins by a huge margin.
The integration .mac has with the Mac cannot be matched, and that is what makes me willing to pay for it (despite the fact that I also have 2 web hosting accounts, a Strongspace account, and a Joyent Connector account.
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tofu said 3:39PM on 8-23-2006
Thank you Dave for writing this.
My thoughts exactly. I'm a .Mac user too... hopefully someone in Cupertino is listening.
I'd also point out that .mac services have actually had some unplanned downtime in the past... I can't think of a time that Gmail/Google was ever non-functional.
And, a little off topic, but Firefox seems a little more stable with some websites and it has cool extentions. However, this also might be due to WebKit in Safari. (I'm going to try some of the nightly builds and see if that improves.)
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fitzage said 3:40PM on 8-23-2006
Oh, and about the calendar:
I see this as a tossup. Which do you prefer? Only being able to edit online, with the ability to view it offline? Or only being able to edit it locally, with the ability to view it online? I prefer the latter, but it all depends. Of course, Leopard will change that and give you the ability to do both with the .mac solution.
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random said 3:40PM on 8-23-2006
Well, Apple always seems to update .Mac in the Fall. So, I'd hold my breath and see what they might roll out next. At the very least, I bet they'll upgrade storage again.
I hate hate hate Gmail's interface. I despise labels. .Mac's webmail may be overly simplistic and in dire need of an overhaul, but it is still the more user-friendly of the two.
As for spam, count me in the minority then because I use my .Mac account constantly and I am still spam-free.
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Fabio said 3:40PM on 8-23-2006
I will not renew my .Mac account, too. But I got some slightly different alternatives.
A) Mail: Gmail is great but it is not IMAP. I want my mail on my disk, so I am going with an account on fastmail.fm. It is not expensive and fully configurable.
B) Synchronicity: here is where .Mac is still the best. I am using My Sync to put everything in sync between my Macs. (iBook, PowerMac and Mini home-server), but it does not allow to access your data on the net. I am using Delicious for the bookmarks.
C) Storage. I will use Amazon S3 with JungleDisk. It is ultracheap and pay for use.
E) Calendar. I don't care about changing my data online. I care a lot about mobile phone syncing and Gcal does not offer this now (there is a small java mobile app, gcalsync, but in my experience It did not work). I hope in a CalDAV server like the one found in Leopard server.
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Andy said 3:41PM on 8-23-2006
Hmm, very good points. The only reason I'm still currently using my .Mac account is because I don't want to change my .mac e-mail addresses for a ton of accounts I have on-line, and Rapidweaver works wonders with uploading to .Mac. If I can somehow upload my rapidweaver site to g-mail I think I would suffer through changing all my e-mail address to my gmail one.
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Paul Dunlop said 3:43PM on 8-23-2006
I've actually been looking at dropping .Mac as well. I, like you, have used it since it was first introduced as iTools all those years back. The problem I have is I use Camino, not Firefox, for lots of reasons, and so a lot of the Firefox plugin's that duplicate the functionality I'd lose don't work. On top of that, I need calendar and address book syncing for my phone and other devices.
Calendar syncing I think I've found a solution for, but at present, I have no way to sync my phone with the Google address book. Unfortunately for me, that phone computer sync feature is a simple must-have, and so I remain with .Mac...... for now. Unless anyone has any suggestions? :-)
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ray said 3:44PM on 8-23-2006
gDisk doesn't allow you to drag and drop 300Mb files or folders all at once... does it?
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Daniel D said 3:53PM on 8-23-2006
I recently bought a .Mac account but only because it goes hand in hand with my iWeb account for storage space et al. So when i see posts like this it nearly brings a tear to my eye but im sure if anything apple will improve its .mac service rather then scrap it.
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smaugslayer said 4:08PM on 8-23-2006
Good post - couldn't agree more. I'll be dropping my .mac account as well.
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akatsuki said 4:13PM on 8-23-2006
I have written several times about this. I don't plan on renewing either. Nothing works well nor does it work quickly. The services are beyond archaic as far as web apps go, and it looks like Apple doesn't care one bit.
This article is just comparing to Google, but if you don't limit yourself, .mac becomes truly worthless. Why use iPhoto when you can use Flickr or Smugmug? 30boxes blows away every other online calendar out there. Google Pages may suck, but frankly Vox is amazing (http://vox.com/).
Apple could leverage the hell out of .mac, but instead they are letting it whither on the vine, just like so many other promising technologies...
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Rob Perkins said 4:15PM on 8-23-2006
I'm with you 100% If Apple don't make some serious improvements before it's renewal time for me, I will drop it like a Hot Potato. I love my Mac and Support Apple but I wouldn't recommend .Mac to anyone right now. It's Embarrassing!
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Chris said 4:16PM on 8-23-2006
I agree with fitzage, #5 -- above.
dot Mac, like most things from Apple, is beautifully and thoughtfully designed.
And though it's far from perfect, it's a ONE-STOP. If you want to be jumping around all over the web's tubes and using a dozen different website interfaces, go right ahead. Maybe I'm the last holdout, but I still like my dot Mac account.
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leeech said 4:18PM on 8-23-2006
For what it's worth, I do have three machines here at work that back up to my idisk every night. It was easy to set up, I don't really have to think about it, and it has saved my ass a couple time already. I don't know of any free solution that does the same thing as well.
That being said though, aside from the pain of having to switch my main email address, I can't say I disagree with anything you guys have said. I do kind of feel like a sucker sometimes for paying for this stuff.
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Ian Charles said 4:18PM on 8-23-2006
I WONT be dropping my .mac account.
Seriously, a "WHA WHA!!! .MAC SUXXORS AND HERES WHY" is not the sort of thing id expect from a mac news blog.
Well expect this one, which seemingly HATES macs and Apple.
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James Huston said 4:22PM on 8-23-2006
You must have one Mac to not care about syncing. Besides the benefit of device syncing in their desktop apps you don't get with Web apps the ability to sync that data between multiple computers is wonderful.
Keychain syncing so having access to all my web site passwords in Camino or Safari or Transmit or anything else that uses the Keychain is a really killer feature. It pains me when I use FF on my work PC to make a new account and have to re-enter my login info when I get home, luckily I have a JavaScript that creates a hashed password based on domain name and a seed.
So basically I don't even have to create and remember passwords anymore.
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