Customer Reviews

Apple .Mac 4.0 Online Service Family Pack

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have used this product for over a year now. The reason I bought it was for the back up software. Email was a secondary consideration. Let me talk about the back up for a moment. It is quick to download and about that easy to start using. The set up can be done in two ways. Either by default, or manual. I chose the default version which covers my home folders and it automatically backs up everything to my external hard drive at a time of my choosing. It will also set up a seperate version of a back up of vital stuff to an online storage for you that you get when you buy .mac as well. Restoring a lost file couldn't be easier. just click on restore and the locate the file (or files) you want to restore. The program is set up so that everything is named exactly as you originally named it on your hard drive. You don't have to look for your file name in a long string of code. Just select it and click restore. It will either put it in the exact place of your old file or in new location of your choosing. I haven't really messed with the other features yet, but the email is spam free and has been my default email for over a year now with out any problems. Hope you buy the service and will enjoy it as much as I have.

A couple of years ago, we completed the transition over to the Mac platform in our household. Both my wife and myself have a desktop and a laptop, so leveraging the .Mac service to keep our personal configuration settings synchronized across computers has been fantastic. Further, with the sharing features that are available, we each have access to view the other person's address book or calendar.

One of the great features of the .Mac service is how it is tightly integrated into the operating system. In addition, since the Synch Services capabilities in the operating system are documented and open, third party programs can write plug-ins that can leverage .Mac to propagate settings to different machines.

My favorite feature (and the catalyst for my initial subscription) is the Backup application. As someone who has suffered the inconvenience of crashed hard disk drives far too many times, I wanted a simple, comprehensive, easy-to-use solution that I could use to backup my data to an external hard disk drive on a daily basis. I've used other Mac-specific programs before and none are as easy to use as the Backup you get with .Mac.

The only real critique I have for the .Mac service is the amount of space available on the iDisk. When services like Google Mail can offer 2.7GB of space for free (granted it is supported by advertising), it makes the .Mac the space available with .Mac seem meager. Of course, considering a full backup of my data/settings takes up about 8GB of space, I may be outside of the demographic that the .Mac service is targeting. However, in this age of digital media (pictures and movies), the amount of disk space people need for their "memories" is only going to go up.

But I guess that is why they have external drives and DVD burners!

I bought the family pack so that I could use .Mac on all of my home computers (different family members) as well as online backup. It's sad that Apple is offering so little in the way of storage and I believe that this will be the last year that we pay for .Mac because the price hasn't changed and neither have the benefits. I signed up with an online hosting site that gives me 160GB of storage, 2000GB of transfers, and 3300 email accounts! each month for less than the annual cost of .Mac. The trade off is the additional technical knowledge required to use a real domain, but the value of .Mac diminishes each year and hopefully Apple will "get it" and start giving away .Mac with the annual purchase of the iLife suite which actually *does* have increasing value.

Every year I struggle with the decision but every year I end up renewing. I wish they didn't make it so hard to make up my mind. Online Address Book is by far my favorite feature. I keep it synced with my family, my cell phone, iPod etc and I can access it through the web from work.
The iDisk is practical for sharing large files too.

Good- easy to set up web pages, web and pop access for email, good for simple backups
Bad - no spam filtering of email, limited space on secondary family storage, Backup program pretty worthless for full backups

I like the integration of various services and the interface, but in today's world, where gmail anf yahoo offer almost 3 GB of storage for free -- $179 for the family pack that has 2 GB of memory is too steep. If you have ,mac email that you are commited to (like I am) buy it, otherwise there are other alternatives that are less elegant but much less expensive.

I have had .Mac for years and enjoyed using its functions. I have a number of photo pages hosted as well as some iWeb sites. Plus I use it for syncing and backup, etc. I am not a power user, however. But it's a great utility and particularly when you have other family members who you want to have access it some of its features easily.