Filed under: Macworld, Rumors, Video, Internet Tools, .Mac
Rumor: Apple to increase .Mac, iDisk storage to 30GB at Macworld
MacDailyNews uncovered a digg post that contains some interesting video 'proof' that Apple could soon update the storage size of their .Mac and iDisk storage space to a whopping 30GB. Granted, we all know how easily stuff like this can be faked these days, but the video demonstrates mounting a user's iDisk both through Mac OS X and then using the Apple's iDisk Utility on Windows (via Parallels). When the iDisk is mounted on Windows, its total capacity is reported as a surprising 30GB, significantly greater than the standard 1GB (upgradeable to 2 and 4GB for extra yearly fees) it currently includes.
Considering the surmounting criticism .Mac is falling under these days, this massive boost in size - and of course the obvious speculation of the new features that would accompany it - could be a significant boon to .Mac membership and sales.
At the least, you might want to make sure you print out a Keynote Bingo card with a .Mac slot, as I think *some* sort of update, per our predictions, is a shoe-in for Tuesday's Keynote.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
solipsism said 8:01PM on 1-06-2007
I think therr will be a VERY new and improved .Mac next week.
Even the version name will be changing. Instead of going from .Mac 4.0 to 5.0, it will be .Mac 2007 (inline with the iLife and iWork bundles, if Amazon.com is correct.
I don't see it going to 30GB, but if it did, that would surely be worth the $99 price. Not to mention the remote syncing, remote streaming and remote desktop features that would most likely be available between your Mac and your iPhone, should one be released.
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Callum Alden said 8:16PM on 1-06-2007
I've seen .Mac's iDisk report "1TB" in the finder, for a moment my heart lept! 1TB... then a momentary flicker, and back to reality with "200 MB Available". Hmm.
So, iDIsk lies. I can't see 30GB coming, sounds a bit of an odd No. too, maybe 50GB, or 100GB, but 30... seems odd.
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solipsism said 8:20PM on 1-06-2007
This is obviously a glitch with .Mac. Even the orignal poster acknowledged it was a bug 8 hours before it was posted on TUAW.
Why does Engadget have more Apple related posts than TUAW? This confuses me.
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Travis L. said 8:22PM on 1-06-2007
I think it's just a bug as he mentioned in the Youtube Comments. Like others have said 30gb is just too big of a jump. Maybe something gmail-ish with 1 or 2gb (It would really be worth 99 a year then.) but not anything much bigger than that IMO.
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macfjott said 8:44PM on 1-06-2007
http://ungeni.us/section/opinion/idiots_jumping_on_digg_bandwagons
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Joseph Crawford said 8:46PM on 1-06-2007
I agree 30GB is too large of a jump. I am willing to bet that it is a bug with the windows iDisk utility. I loaded it up here and i see my drive as 1GB on the mac with 30.9 MB used, however when i load the same thing up on windows and view the info it shows that i am using 2.62 GB and have a total space of 14.9 GB.
That should prove it is a bug i mean why would mac say i am using 30 MB and windows say 2 GB.
I am a bit surprised that mac would have a bug like this but it also makes me wonder since it reports that space on windows, could you actually use that space?
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Hawkeye said 8:47PM on 1-06-2007
I just setup a trial .Mac account an th iDisk mapping on my XP machine is telling me that I have 7.49GB of free space and 11.7GB total space. All of this on a 25mb trial account. I would have to say there may be a flaw with iDisk and XP.
On a positive note the 30GB would make since if they are tying it to 30 years of Apple. This would make further since with the graphic on their home page.
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steve said 8:53PM on 1-06-2007
Amazon is offering storage for $1.80 a year per GB and twenty cents per GB transferred... that probably sets a benchmark for a low price on managed storage.
Using this number, I can't see Apple going much over 10 GB (but would appreciate it)
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Hawkeye said 8:56PM on 1-06-2007
As a point of clarification I am using Parallels as my XP machine and I have confirmed the article that is linked above. This seems to be a Parallels / iDisk bug.
I still have my fingers crossed for a .Mac update.
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Jonathan said 9:08PM on 1-06-2007
My iDisk is only 512MB. Half of the advertised 1GB for email and the other for idisk.
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jsweet said 9:16PM on 1-06-2007
I tried this on my Parallel's XP image. The XP iDisk mount shows the exact same space as c:\ where iDisk's local cache is stored. In my case, it showed 4GB free and 8GB total. There is nothing magic here. I agree that this does not seem like correct behavior, but there is no hidden feature.
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Buck said 9:44PM on 1-06-2007
It seems to me that the Time Machine feature in Leopard would work great with a 30 GB iDisk. Maybe Apple is looking to leverage more .Mac sales by making it easy to backup your files on the internet via Time Machine.
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Jason Young said 9:48PM on 1-06-2007
It sure better be faster. I gave up on .Mac mail because of the spam a long time ago, and can't use the storage as is because of how badly the Finder interacts with the speed and WebDAV.
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Jim said 10:07PM on 1-06-2007
I doubt Apple will bump iDisk up to 30GB, but if they did, it would make sense. Think about it... not everyone has an external HD, but one of the main selling points of Leopard is Time Machine. Apple wouldn't show off this feature and say in small print "$300 dollar HD sold separately." It would make sense for them to do this to give everyone the benefit of Time Machine... This way, people would buy .Mac too...
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Adam Betts said 10:07PM on 1-06-2007
Just don't bother messing with Finder's iDisk. Use Transmit or any FTP clients that support WebDAV and you'll get a very nice speed up/down. I only use Finder's iDisk for browsing purpose but not anything more than that.
I've marked that digg article as inaccurate. That bug existed for a long time in Windows.
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Tyler G said 10:08PM on 1-06-2007
@ Johnathan, i bet that its 512 for email and 512 for idisk, u can change how much goes to each somewhere, but i think 512/512 is the default
and in XP, my iDisk says 2.54 used 5.23 free (7.78 total) - definitely a flaw
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Christian said 10:30PM on 1-06-2007
Apple better upgrade their data pipes and increase speed before anything.
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Adam Betts said 10:40PM on 1-06-2007
Christian, the problem is NOT on their server's side. It is all because of Finder's built-in WebDAV.
Try any other WebDAV clients and you'll see that iDisk speed is perfectly fine.
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Mark said 11:15PM on 1-06-2007
I can verify as well:
I just checked my XP machine and my iDisk Shows 40GB of disk space, 10 of which are used. Coincidentally my XP Computer also has a 40 GB Hard Drive, of which 10GB are used. Seems to just be a flaw showing that your iDisk has exactly the same amount of disk space as your boot drive.
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Sam said 11:01PM on 1-06-2007
iDisk would be WAY too slow for Time Machine. And for mere storage, you can buy a 30-40GB external USB2 drive for about the same as 1 year of .Mac service, so that's pointless. I finally let my .Mac subscription expire last month because I really couldn't think of anything useful to do with it. Even the movies of my kid can be more easily hosted on other sites now with good site creation software.
My guess is that if there's any "big" announcement about .Mac, it's that it will be either shut down or outsourced to Google.
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