Apple announces end of .Mac HomePage

It's terrifically annoying for Apple to repeatedly eliminate services that some portion of its paying user base relied on. The most annoying aspect of Apple turning off these services is that it provides no upgrade path for those who paid to make use of them for years. At least they're adding some functionality for iPhones, but it's still annoying to see them taking things away. And yes, I realize that at least part of the reason why Apple is doing this to move away from WebObjects, but that doesn't mean orphaning users is the right thing to do. These types of experiences are cautionary tales for anyone who plans to make heavy reliance on cloud computing services in the future.

It's almost absurd that Apple isn't just killing Home Page, it won't let you do anything to the pages posted there past the cut-off date - not even delete them. That's why I deleted my perfectly good and simple download page for a simple widget I created back in the early days of OS X widgets. I don't want to get stuck indefinitely with something that I can't get rid of even though I have no reason to get rid of the page as of now. Poor move. I expect better from Apple.

Dropping homepage is stupid. I have several sites up on .mac and I will not convert them to iweb. Iweb does not have the looks that I want for my CSS pages. I have had a .mac account now for 7-8 years and now I am seriously thinking about getting rid of it.

Cool, now give me PHP and MySQL hosting for MobileMe so I can actually use it for something.

You know what would make the removal of Homepage more acceptable? If Apple had been good enough to offer a way to transition your old Homepage based sites into a new shinier format and therefore retain their edibility by importing them into iWeb.

I agree Homepage is now outdated and limited and has had it's day, I actually like iWeb a lot, (the point here being that I love the fact I can now be present on the web but wish no knowledge of web languages so this simple user interface stuff may seem amateur, but so am I!). However I invested a lot of time and effort into my Homepage sites and I'm annoyed that I'll now have to start again from scratch.

The upgrade path is via the bin again!

What does this mean for those of us who have created and maintain websites with Adobe Contribute? My site is based upon a connection to .Mac

You know, I've had a mac for a number of years now, and I really like Apple as a company. I'll also say that I understand that things move on and evolve. But Apple is developing a long and distinguished history of a "my way or the highway" attitude that flies in the face of the "customer is always right" mentality. When I got my first iBook way back in my youth, it was marketed as coming with iTools which would be free and would, among other things, usher in world peace and harmony. I never used it. That didn't mean I wasn't annoyed when my friend told me that Apple was unilaterally deciding that the whole free thing was madness if they could actually squeeze more money out of people who bought the computer understanding that iTools was part of the package. I never paid. Never using it and never paying for it doesn't change this core fact: changing the deal midstream is uncool. People invested in .mac. Apple decides that doesn't work for them and forces the change to mobileme (my investment in that choice being limited solely to acknowledging that .mac will always be a cooler email address than .me (which both costs Apple in market awareness for "macs" (a questionable advertising choice at best) and sounds hopelessly narcissitic... an image I wouldn't think Apple would wish to promote further)). Apple comes up with Firewire 400. People invest in it. It's still perfectly viable. Apple pulls it from most consumer products (including my unibody macbook). Did it hurt me personally? No. I don't have anything using FW400 and never did. Did others? Yes. Did it hurt them? Yes. Was SJ explanation that USB 2.0 is more dominant sufficiently outweigh that infliction? Reasonable minds can differ, but my personal opinion is no. Killing the powerPC chip is another one. iTunes comes out. .99 is the price of any tune. Period. Oh, except not any more.

I'm not dumping on Apple. As a general rule, I like Apple, but that doesn't mean you turn a blind eye to a glaring (and repeating) corporate policy. I'll probably always have a mac, but it's because their OS is superior. It certainly is not and will not be some promise Apple makes at the time of purchase. Apple's failed to follow through too many times recently for that to help them in the equation much.

iWeb is the most God-forsaken piece of garbage Apple has ever released, I'm sorry to say. And MobileMe appears to be a giant time-suck - I've yet to come across anyone who hasn't had problems at least once a month with sync issues, etc.

I'm assuming webpages published from iweb and hosted on .mac/ MobileMe will be unaffected...?

All I have to say is good riddance. That offering was useless and outdated. Out with the bad and in with the good!


sean 808080

http://sean808080.com

So sad to see .mac disappearing from e-mail addresses and now webpages.