Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Internet Tools, Apple, .Mac
Move from .Mac to Google
The MacDevCenter's Matthew Russell has penned a great post about moving your email, address book, and calendar from .Mac to Google's offerings. Why would you want to do this? Well, we have talked about .Mac on TUAW before and most of what we have said isn't too rosey. Google has many offerings that best .Mac and they are free compared to $99 a year.As Matthew points out, you are putting a lot of trust into Google to keep these services free (you might recall that .Mac was free with the OS for awhile as well) but if you're looking for a .Mac alternative this article makes moving to Google easy.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
KeynoteKen said 11:15AM on 11-06-2006
What does Google offer comparable to
http://www.mac.com/web/en/Tips/6864D5A5-DE49-49BD-A29E-97BF9922B996.html
I don't think I'd ever recommend anyone go from .mac to Gmail ONLY because I don't want to be the one fielding the support calls afterwards :) If you're technically savvy enough to handle the transition, chances are, you've already done it.
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Christian said 11:28AM on 11-06-2006
I made the move from .Mac to a bunch of Google services a few weeks ago. Mainly because it is free but I also use Picassa for my photographs, which is easier then .Mac. I use Google pages, Google Video, Blogger.com, and Google Groups as well and they all merge together quite well.
Oh, I also switched to Firefox 2.0 and have not looked back.
I still love Mac OSX and Apples computers and will never give them up!
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pat gillen said 11:50AM on 11-06-2006
regarding disc space... have you seen amazon's S3? It is super cheap and only charges for what you use.
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Jonah said 11:56AM on 11-06-2006
Just FYI, I think you meant "alternative," not "alliterative".
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pre said 12:01PM on 11-06-2006
I gotta say, I'm already considering it. It's this time each year that my .Mac renewal fees come around, which repressences the sharp twinge of hurt left by Apple abandoning their original .Mac "Free Email For Life" tag line to start charging a crisp bill a year.
Who you calling bitter?
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profscott said 12:20PM on 11-06-2006
For Mail, iCal, and contacts, it's a done deal. GMail's spam filter alone is worth the shift. For iDisk storage--and its various convenient features, one of which KeynoteKen points out above--.Mac is still essential for me. I've tried others, but it's still the best, warts and all.
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Yourpape said 12:21PM on 11-06-2006
I still dont understand why I cant view my calender on another computer over my .mac account. Not just sync with my other mac.
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DrWho said 12:26PM on 11-06-2006
I don;t think $79 is a huge amount to pay for a well integrated ad free - even google free - service. I'm not interested in an ad-hoc forever beta collection of services from a company I don't trust.
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The Jeremy said 12:29PM on 11-06-2006
Stripping Virex out of the product made it less attractive for switchers. Even if OS X is not exactly virus prone, newbies and casual users should have something so at least they don't forward Windows viruses in chain email to their friends and family.
I suppose they could always use Yahoo Mail (since it has Norton at server level) but then again, that would be one less reason (email) to sign up for .Mac.
Purchasing TiVo and rolling the TiVo software and programming guide data updates into .Mac would be a major reason that would attract people to sign up... C'mon Cupertino, use some of that $10 billion in the bank to acquire the previously mentioned innovative company (and for less than half a billion)...
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Randy M. said 12:37PM on 11-06-2006
With Google:
No IMAP (WHY NOT??) No addressbook syncing. Subscribing to public calendars is very flakey at best, and the calendars in gCal don't update properly when the subscribed-to calendar has changes made to it.
No way I can use Google until I can have my email and addressbook all in sync via the web, on my Mac, and on my Treo. With dotMac these are all identical and in sync. Now if dotMac would just add web-based calendar editing and drop their price...for crying out loud Apple, make that calendar do something!!
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Herv S. said 12:49PM on 11-06-2006
Fully agree with DrWho (#9).
FYI, a cooperative web hosting is in the range of $10 to 20 per *year*
(see e. g. http://www.ouvaton.coop/index.htm?id=6 among many others)
And on this you can install, in your own, non-ad-supported server, whatever webcal/storage/image galery/blog you wish, with php and SQL (which allows for blog local comments, etc.)
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Sregor said 1:05PM on 11-06-2006
I'd love to move from .mac to GMail, but for us Brits it's still an invitation only service.
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Dave said 1:10PM on 11-06-2006
.Mac is overpriced and outdated.
Apple's cash cow will go away when more and more of us realize their services are eclipsed by other companies. I didn't renew my .Mac subscription and will not unless Apple makes some major improvements.
I've largely switched everything to Google's Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Notebook, etc. and will stay with them until another company bests them.
It's called competition and Apple needs to remember other companies compete with them for users of online services.
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kontorhotel said 1:17PM on 11-06-2006
I sure will.. I am more and more moving everything to gmail..and gcal.. sorry .mac..
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Chip said 1:52PM on 11-06-2006
It is interesting to read the varying opinions regarding .Mac vs. Google. We all seem to have different needs and varying opinions of the two.
For me, the greatest value of .Mac is syncing my email, address book, iDisk, and calendars across both my home machine, my powerbook, and .Mac on the internet.
To me, that in itself is worth $79 a year. If I could do that using Google's products, even if they were free, I'd be skeptical to make that jump.
I really don't want Google having access to all my contacts, files, email, etc, to search, send ads to, etc.
I agree that .Mac could be a lot better..like bringing Virex back, and Apple should really work on it.
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Scott Stevenson said 3:17PM on 11-06-2006
I just don't want to look at ads while I'm reading my email.
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Chris said 5:45PM on 11-06-2006
I just did exactly the opposite. I had iTools which converted to .Mac and pretty much kept it around for the address book syncing and iDisk. I had moved everything else over to Gmail and Google Calendar. But now I'm moving back to .Mac. They're updated Webmail interface is much improved. But the biggest reason is that it feels more like *mine*. Where Google's services were increasingly making me concerned about privacy.
I realize that privacy is an outdated concept in this new world but I don't want to just give my information away. If you want it, you have to break rules to get it. With Google I was just letting them index everything and that's creepy.
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Brandon said 8:34PM on 11-06-2006
As for their gDisk deal: sure you can store 3g worth of drafts w/ attachments, but the max file size is (last I checked) 10mb. If gDisk supports some sort of intelligent spanning technique, it might be worth looking into. Even still, Box.net provides 1gb free with webdav support. It still has the per-file size limit, but it works without any additional software and has a pretty slick web interface that's also ad free.
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Adam said 11:10AM on 11-07-2006
I have made the switch recently. .Mac is so painfully slow at times, I had to give it up. I get excited when I pump up the Mac to all of my friends, but then they look at a .Mac hosted website, it is almost embarassing at how slow it really is.
As far as email, gMail is amazing and much faster than .mac. Google calendar is accessible from anywhere to view or edit, the latter of which is not available in iCal.
And, it is free!
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Joel Kruissink said 10:41AM on 12-19-2006
Folks
Your comments regarding .MAC and GOOGLE are certainly appropriate. The overlap in close support services is closing quickly which may or may not lost on Steve Jobs development teams. Regardless of the service charge, the overall value of the services provided by each is what will determine where loyal Apple customers will source their closely coupled support applications.
The impending release of Leopard and it's closely coupled application suite is keeping me with .MAC for now.
TWAC has an opportunity to provide a its readers with a current point by comparison of the values at the current date and state (pre-Leopard) with more detail than in the this article. As it is a certainty that GOOGLE will continue to enhance it's current OSX value package, probably more aggressively than the .Mac group.
Change to GOOGLE now or later, is probably on the agenda of many of your readers, including me. The value proposition and innovative strength makes GOOGLE a low risk activity on piece by piece replacement basis even now.
The Leopard factor may make the difference, but as Google strategy appears to be moving toward offering the close integration of an equal to, or better application suite, .MAC, even for free, will become an obsolescent artifact cluttering my system library, like Sherlock and others are now.
TWAC, clarify what we .MAC users have now as a current state benchmark, and we will decide the future of .MAC post Leopard based upon the value packages available
JK
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