Michael Arrington: "Why The New .Mac Webmail Is Important"

I am not sure i will keep my dot mac... but i like the look adn feel .... but come on... it should be free.. like gmail...
http://www.turbino.dk
http://www.gmail.com
http://www.google.dk

Does anyone know why Apple still haven't sorted out the iCal situation with .Mac? I would love my iCal calendars to be synced too so that I can login to .Mac and view and edit my calendars there. I know you can publish your calendars but then you have to remember the URL and you still can't edit them online. It seems like such an obvious thing that other services offer and Apple should be able to offer too. Matbe there are legal reasons for not doing it...?

[P]utting aside the fact that Gmail allows you to transparently...receive email from non-Gmail addresses...

If I use forwarding, sure, but Gmail (still) cannot be configured to check another POP account.

Where did Arrington show that .Mac webmail will support multiple accounts? There is no such feature listed on any of Apple's promotional materials so far (website, email to .Mac members this morning). Several people have posted comments to his blog asking for evidence of this feature, but he hasn't answered them. He's not simply away from email, because he has made several blog posts on different topics over the past couple days.

I think he pulled this "feature" out of his butt, and when asked for evidence, is keeping silent rather than posting a "mea culpa".

I'll bet it was a good way to boost viewership of his blog, though -- and all those dozens of sidebar ads on aforementioned blog.

"Multiple accounts" is a little far-fetched. .Mac's Webmail allows you to - obviously - check your .Mac account *and* one extra POP account. Nothing more.

Must... have... Calendaring. Oh ya, since I just bought an old G4 laptop, all I had to do was enter my .Mac name in and poof, it had everything I needed. I was ok with .Mac before but now I think it's just a tad better.

I like to think that people who write about Apple's products are NOT the target audience for the products. Writer #18 above has a good point--you can get a domain with gigabytes of space and almost-unlimited e-mail for less than a .Mac account. But obviously Apple is not targeting those types of users with this product. Instead, they're hoping to sell to the people who don't want to know more than they have to, and who simply want to enjoy the results of their work, not the work and the tools.

.mac should be an incentive for Mac ownership by being free for Mac users. Since many of these services are free to both Win and Mac users, albeit inconveniently in many different places, offering this service free would add an innate value to the Mac experience that would leave Windows users in the dust.

"If .Mac has server side spam filtering, then I'm Elvis. In a pink bunny suit."

Well then rock on pink bunny! :-) It does really have server side spam filtering, but I think it is set with a low threshold because of the very fact that you as a subscriber have no way of evaluating what Apple is deciding is spam for you. I don't know what their reasoning is, other then maybe they are counting on the double-layer of low-threshold server side filtering coupled with the client-side built in to Mail.app.

I'm not being a .Mac champion here; I just renewed 15 days away from cancellation after thinking about it for quite some time. But I bought a new mac so I decided to take advantage of the $69 offer. But I do really wish that .Mac would let me review spam mail because I know that I have had mail sent to my .Mac address that simply never reached me.

Apple used to gift .mac members with little extras like free games, garageband loops, etc. I'll renew my .mac since so many friends have the e-mail address, but unless Apple goes back to spreading the love, this'll be the last time. I find I use g-mail more and more often.