What's next for .Mac, Apple's much-maligned online service offering for OS X users? TUAW has learned that .Mac will no longer be sold by Apple after WWDC, as new users will migrate to the new MobileMe service (not too shocking, given the swirling rumors as of late). Existing users will have their @mac.com e-mail addresses forwarded to their @me.com address in perpetuity, which should provide some relief for nervous .Mac users who depend on that email.

MobileMe is slated to include a host of new features, which we alluded to early in May; in addition, there will be new web interfaces for all aspects of MobileMe -- calendars will look just like iCal, Contacts will look just like they do in Address Book, etc. This is similar to the way .Mac Webmail works today, though we've heard that the new interfaces will be much snazzier (yes, that's a technical term). Apple should also be updating the .Mac dependent applications (iChat, iWeb, iPhoto etc.) to work with the new service. The new service will be backwards compatible with .Mac protocols for the time being -- so developers will not have to rush out updates as soon as they hear the official word.

MobileMe is scheduled to be available sometime in late June/early July. We have also heard reports that the latest build of the iPhone beta firmware (2.0) has already undergone revisions to handle the new MobileMe service. Some of the features of the service on iPhone will include: over-the-air syncing of contacts, calendars, and photos. Interestingly, there is also a Windows version of MobileMe planned.

Though we're confident in the source of this information, this is still a rumor until Apple reveals all. We should hear more information about MobileMe at the World Wide Developer's Conference starting on Monday (June 9th).

If you're a .Mac mail user, then you probably know that .Mac's mail system has been down for almost 6 hours. According to the .Mac system status, 100% of users are experiencing the problems. Here's what Apple says:

100% of members might experience slower than normal response when using IMAP mail. Mail can be sent and received using .Mac webmail. Normal service will be restored ASAP.

This comes after .Mac has been rumored to undergo re-branding around the time of WWDC (which is next Monday).


Update (8:38p EST): Apple just updated the system status to report that some may not be able to access the .Mac welcome page. Stay tuned to TUAW for updates on the .Mac outage.

Update (9:37p EST): Apple is telling users that they can access the .Mac mail by using the webmail system; however, most users cannot access the entire .Mac website. We're currently experiencing a "504 Gateway Timeout" error when trying to load both the homepage and webmail. Looks as though the same services are down.

Update (10:40p EST): Some commenters are noting that they are now able to retrieve their .Mac mail. Apple has yet to update the .Mac system status.


Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

I have no idea just how big this intersection might be (in terms of sheer numbers, it has to be pretty big, I guess), but if you're a Yahoo! Mail user and a Safari 3 user, prepare to smile, because Yahoo! says that you can now get in on the "All-New Yahoo! Mail" fun. "All-New Yahoo! Mail" is apparently an AJAX-based, slick piece of webmail software built on the Oddpost engine -- I wouldn't really know all the features because Gmail has wrapped its simple-to-use tendrils completely around my life, from iPhone to all the different browsers I use.

But if you've been dedicated to Safari 3 since it came out, and chomping at the bit to use this "All-New Yahoo! Mail," now's your chance. Yahoo! does specifically say "Safari 3 on the Mac," but I'd assume it would work for the Windows version of Safari 3 as well -- if you have any problems, they'll probably fix it, and then they'll have to call it "The Newer All-New Yahoo! Mail." God forbid they come up with something newer than that.

[Via Ars]

As with most big Apple announcements, at least a few features slip through the cracks. Thanks to TUAW reader Brandon Werner, we caught one that answers a long-time complaint of .Mac users and critics: server-side spam filtering. Until today (or at least recently; we've never noticed this before), checking your mail at the .Mac site would subject you to any and all spam you receive, since the webmail didn't filter anything out; Apple leaves that up to Mail (or your other client of choice). Now, finally, .Mac webmail offers this option to filter out junk mail right on the server, giving you at least some sort of a break from the stream of junk you might inevitably encounter. Be sure to check out the support document linked at this option, as it outlines a few steps to take to ensure that your email client and .Mac webmail keep in step regarding the messages that actually get filed into the junk mail folder. This will allow you to review those messages either from the webmail client or your desktop client, making it easy to pick out the few genuine messages that get swept away with the actual garbage.

One of my most significant gripes with .Mac has been in relation to a seemingly minor feature, but one that is (in my experience) fairly unique to Apple's struggling web service: email aliases. When I discovered .Mac a few years ago, I immediately fell in love with the ability to create alternative email addresses that still funnel into one inbox; one address for email lists I'm subscribed to, another for shopping online, etc. These .Mac aliases make it incredibly easy to filter email (for example: a rule that says "move all messages sent to [this address] to [that folder]"), and they also act as a safety net because if one gets caught by a spam bot, it can easily be deleted and replaced with a new one with barely a few clicks in the .Mac mail preferences pane. I also prefer the way .Mac aliases work to Gmail's, because they can be truly unique names: shopping@mac.com can be an alias for steve@mac.com, while Gmail is limited by a username+alias@gmail.com format, allowing any person or bot familiar with Gmail to easily scrape out one's true address.

However, my gripe with this wonderful alias feature is that, at least early on, you couldn't apply actual names to any of these aliases; they would simply appear in people's inboxes as being from AliasName@mac.com. Once .Mac introduced the ability to name these aliases some time ago, they were still handicapped by the fact that the names you apply to aliases wouldn't sync down to Apple Mail, and sending email from those aliases would not take on the names you applied. Again, an admittedly minor gripe over an obscure feature, but there are a number of reasons this name + alias thing can be incredibly useful, not the least of which is a professional appearance when corresponding with clients and businesses, as well as simply allowing people to know who you are when you reply to email lists and the like.

But the time for griping about minor details that make a big difference in .Mac aliases has been officially retired, for sometime since that big .Mac webmail upgrade last October that we reviewed, Apple Mail has been endowed with the magical goodness necessary to synchronize the names you apply to your aliases. Like I said, I haven't touched my .Mac email in a while for various reasons (this alias issue being one) so I didn't catch it earlier, but after tinkering with it this morning I noticed that Mail was suddenly displaying a few of the names I had given to my aliases (pulldown menu pictured above on right). This should be fantastic news to any .Mac members (or potential members) interested in leveraging the incredibly handy powers of this alias feature. It might take a synchronization or two for Apple Mail to pull down any of the names you apply in the .Mac mail preference pane, but you too can enjoy the wonders of flexible, secure and (if need be) anonymous emailing both online and - finally - with the integrated goodness of Apple's desktop email client.

Apple teased us with an announcement of a .Mac webmail upgrade at the end of September, and yesterday they delivered. The new webmail feels zippy (though it was understandably a little sluggish a couple times while I was testing it last night), and the innovative, refreshing new features raise the bar for competing services. Still, with all the slick new polish, a few long-standing gripes have yet to be addressed, and some of the web client's new abilities bring along irregularities and new complaints. But don't think I'm a hater - I just renewed my membership last week, and this is a most welcomed update to one of the most important components of Apple's hotly debated .Mac suite of web services. With this yin and yang balance in mind, let's dive into the review.

.Mac webmail goes web 2.0
Of course, the most significant and obvious upgrade is the completely revamped UI, which now resembles and behaves (in some ways) like Apple's desktop Mail.app client. As you can see from the screenshot, a new 3 pane view offers a folder list on the left, a customizable (10-50) message list on top, and a message preview pane on the bottom, just like mom used to make. As an added UI bonus, the separation bar between the message list and preview panes is draggable. Nice.

But the webmail update isn't just skin deep - plenty of keyboard shortcuts accompany the new polish for a great combination of beauty and brains (though I'm laying down a penalty of 10 points by not enabling the shortcuts by default, regardless of who .Mac's demographic is). A complete list of shortcuts is linked from the preferences, and there are keys for nearly every action including: sending messages, deleting, navigating up/down messages, back/forth between batches of messages (take that Gmail), searching and printing.

Besides keyboard shortcuts, some clever features and UI tricks are peppered throughout. On the left is a shot of an Address Book search, which lives below the folder list. Results are displayed below the search box, and clicking on a name offers a popup with their information, and things like email addresses and public iDisks are linked for easy access. On the right is the Quick Reply window, accessible by clicking a button which appears next to selected messages (a quirky 'only when you clicked on it' UI element that first reared its head in iTunes 7). Opera's built-in email client has done this for a while, and Apple's implementation is nice and simple.

There's a new .Mac webmail in town and it's looking pretty. It looks like Mail. It feels like Mail. It must be a web-based version of Mail! Lots of trendy Web 2.0 goodness like drag & drop, integrated Address Book, familiar 3-pane viewing, message previews, Quick Reply, keyboard shortcuts ala Gmail, smart refreshes of your message list and probably a few other enhancements I haven't stumbled across yet. Oh! I just noticed you can command-select and shift-select messages to delete them or move them to a different folder. No more check boxes!

All in all it looks like a pretty sweet update and those of you who use webmail regularly should be delighted. Of course we'll probably wake up tomorrow to a bunch of folks screaming about bugs they've discovered that will inevitably rear their ugly heads, but without those we'd run out of things to write about, so don't be shy - tell us all about it in the comments!

Thanks, Axe, Kevin, Clay and the rest who sent this in!

Apple's .Mac service has been quite the coffee talk discussion topic throughout the Mac web since as long as I can remember. We've even covered the service's slow death, some ways it could really hit a home run and even some things .Mac gets right, just to be fair. However, as I was paying for a renewal at the Apple Store yesterday, I realized .Mac could benefit significantly if Apple were to offer the option of purchasing its three major components a la carte. Let's face it, there are a lot of users out there who would love certain components of .Mac, but don't want to pay the premium Apple is charging for the full package. Following is a summarized breakdown of where I believe Apple could separate or bundle their .Mac services to to make them much more appealing to a far wider audience.

Sure, we knew about the upcoming .Mac webmail refresh, but that's because we're nerds for Apple news (yes, you too - don't deny it. You're reading TUAW, after all). To my surprise this morning, I had an email from .Mac, advertising the new webmail and promoting all the new features. While there isn't anything new in the email, I think the significance here is that they're telling their .Mac customers - who aren't typically the cutting edge, AJAX-slinging type - about this fancy upcoming webmail UI change. This could likely mean that it truly is 'coming soon' (as in, not the Microsoft Vista 'coming soon' kind of way), as they would probably need to give their customers at least some kind of a heads up that their webmail is about to facelift its way into looking almost exactly like their desktop email.

I don't know if this will address any of Dave's .Mac woes, but Apple is showcasing the next version of the .Mac webmail service. .Mac's webmail has been stuck in 2002 for about 4 years now, so an update will be very nice.

The overall UI has been refined, and it looks like Apple is going for a more 'application' like feel using 'the latest web technology.' Drag and drop, message preview, and keyboard shortcuts will be supported. Apple hasn't said when this will see the light of day but it is 'Coming Soon.'

Thanks, Rob.

In a dual gesture of both kicking Mail.app to the curb and flexing the power of Xcode, Michael McCracken has built his own streamlined browser just for using Gmail. Quirky browser behaviors and avoiding the distractions that come from multiple browser windows and bookmark bars prompted this 10-line coding experiment.

The resulting WebMail.app is exactly what Michael set out to create: a very slim Gmail viewer (you don't even get an address bar) based on WebKit. It works well, though there are quirks when having to do anything browser-related with it. Clicking a link in a message, for example, creates a new window in WebMail.app, not your default browser. Minor quirks aside, if you're in the same boat as Michael and you want a browser window just for using Gmail so you can retain things like your labels and alternate-email address abilities, this might be right up your alley.

Personally, I'm very tempted to use this since I too have joined the ranks of kicking Mail.app to the curb (running it only on occasion to download and archive my email). However, some of the Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail that I've been using in Firefox have become indispensable to how I work with Gmail; being able to move between labels, trash messages and even label messages all with a couple strokes of the keyboard rivals even desktop email app functionality. It would be great to see someone run with WebMail.app (Michael bundles the source in his download) and add some javascript ninja coding to combine the beauty of WebKit with the functionality of those Gmail script abilities to create one rockin' Gmail app.

*sigh* A Gmail-using blogger can dream, can't he?

[via Hawk Wings]

Check it out, .Mac subscribers: In the "Members Only" folder of your iDisk (that still makes me think of the jackets), you'll find two chapters of Joe Kissell's book, Take Control of .Mac.The first chapter focuses on using Mail, and is extremely thorough. Discussions include making use of aliases, .Mac webmail vs. an email client, working with attachments and configuring the online preferences.

Chapter 2 looks at Groups, a relatively new .Mac feature. Topics include creating a group, managing your members, adding content to your homepage and working with the integrated calendar. Again, I found them very informative, and the best part is that you can use a hyperlink within the PDF itself to get the full book at a 30% discount. This one is recommended.