If it was reasonably priced I would've jumped on the .Mac wagon already. $100 a year really isn't all that much, but I still don't think it's worth it.

ehhh I use my .mac acct for hosting all my photos. I like the easy of use with iphoto.

I had friends that used to rave about .Mac and a couple of years ago it seemed like a nice online tool. Nowadays, you can get most of the services .Mac offers for free so the price just doesn't seem worth it.

.mac is way overpriced. There are free online utilities available similar/better than .mac.

I host my website's files using .Mac. No, not using iWeb. I just upload the files to the sites part of the iDisk using webdav.

Think of it like a hosting package. ~$8 a month for 10GB storage, webdav access, 100GB transfer per month, push email, etc etc. Not bad.

apple retail will always sell you .Mac for $69 even w/o the purchase of a computer. Just ask any specialist at the register

I also realize most of the .mac features are available free elsewhere, but for now it's worth it for me to have it all in one place. (plus don't wanna lose my long-standing .mac addy)
Also, I think apple realizes .mac isn't where their customers want it so they'll prolly keep adding more features, i hope.

What good is push email if the iPhone doesn't have a light that blinks to tell you there is email? Come on Steve, give us a blinking indicator light, it won't ruin the aesthetics. Make it a white light like on the airport extreme. Don't make it green.

I use .mac its not great but I like synching my calendars at work and home. very handy.

I loooove .MAC.

Mail being a program on my comp and not just a website is soooo badass. And the way it goes into a slideshow with my attachments is one of those little touches that makes Macs, well Macs.

Seriously, email is one of the most important things I have in my life, it's worth an investment of $8 a month to me. A good analogy of this is buying a nice bed when I realized that it's 1/3 of my life.

Is there anything other than the price that makes "the hardcore Apple fanbase tend to steer clear of .Mac," I'm a soft-serve Apple fan and I like it.

My guess is that at some point .mac is going to get tied into the whole iPhone/online apps/content thing. One service that handles all the data storage and shuffling between your various devices, including your e-mail and photo accounts and all that good stuff.

Those two redacted services, anyone know what they might be? The top one has some letters almost showing. Care to take a guess based on name length?

Not to sound dumb or anything... but what is .Mac I've never heard of it before....

Maybe when Apple realizes that anyone except the most lustful fanboy isn't gonna pay for things that are completely free elsewhere people will actually give a crap about .Mac push email. Apple has led the way in so many areas that it's kinda hard to believe they're still tryin' to squeeze more money out of people for email. Time for the boys at Cupertino to join the rest of the world that's living in the new millenium.

@Ryan H: They better. Microsoft is already doing it. See Live Mesh.

@Chester_Copperpot: Mail some with Macs. It has nothing to do with .mac. And same with the Quick Look feature where you can view your attachments. All that's free and preloaded on your mac. If that's what you think you're using .mac for, you might want to reconsider renewing when your subscription is up.

@gamble: That should read "Mail comes with Macs."

And usually I'm so good about proofreading my comments.

@gamble: I have a hotmail account as well and I can't seem to make it do all the stuff mail can do.

Where is quick look in hotmail?

@Chester_Copperpot: No, I mean the Mail application is free. You didn't get it from .mac. It was already on your computer.

dude, that's so fetch

@Thrillcekr: did you read the other comments? If nobody used .mac it wouldn't exist anymore. Obviously some people would rather get the email/online storage/sync/etc... for free through separate apps/webapps. Doesn't mean there aren't those willing to pay for an all-in-one service from one company.

@gamble: I don't seem to able to figure out how I can get my Hotmail into Mac Mail. Mac Mail is only giving me the options for POP, IMAP and Exchange.

@blackwand:

It is an array of online services offered by Apple. It includes email, web hosting, web galleries for movies and photos from iMovie and iPhoto, online backup of address book, calendars, personal info and preferences. Maybe does more, but that is what I use it for. I also believe that the back-to-my-mac feature in Leopard requires .mac, not sure though because I only have one Mac. If you use even a few of these features it is well worth it. If you just use the email, you would probably be better off getting a g-mail account.

[www.apple.com]

@Thrillcekr:

It's a lot more than just email. They have added several new features over the past year or two without raising the price. My favorite part is being able to upload videos and photos to an online gallery where you can share full res photos with family and friends. Also, the web gallery works very well on the iPhone, so I don't have to load it up with personal videos and photos. Push email on the iPhone would be yet another feature that would make .mac even better.

Here's one of my galleries:
[gallery.mac.com]

@Chester_Copperpot:

I would suggest dropping hotmail and going with g-mail or yahoo. If you are stuck on your current email address, and don't have a choice, there is a way, although less elegant (unless you pay for Windows Live Plus).

[email.about.com]

@Chester_Copperpot: Wait, unless you don't realize that you can retrieve e-mails from your Hotmail account using Mail. One of the best things about Mail is that you can use it to retrieve e-mails from all of your different accounts. It just occurred to me that you were talking about your .mac e-mail account, which is probably set up with the Mail application by default. But you can do the same thing with any e-mail account.

Does that help, or am I telling you things that you already know?

@Chester_Copperpot: Apparently you snuck in a comment before I was finished writing mine. I imagine Hotmail uses POP like both of my e-mail accounts. You can do a quick search online. Just type "hotmail" and "e-mail client" into google and you should get instructions on how to set it up for Mail.

@Chester_Copperpot: two ways to do this: 1) download a mail plug-in. here you go: [www.macupdate.com]

2) Setup your hotmail to sync with gmail and then setup mac mail to retrieve that.
First options best IMO.

For some reason ;) MS doesn't want people to access their hotmail through macs. must be those commercials.

With the iPhone, .Mac should turn into a hosted solution for Exchange-like functionality for individuals. Push e-mail, OTA sync of contacts and calendars, and even (gasp!) a hosted calDAV server would totally be worth $100/year. Given sync is already part of the service, I'd bet that the only one of those features that's isn't coming is the calDAV server. Let's hope that .Mac doesn't suddenly become more expensive for iPhone users as a result.

hmmmm..... how did that picture get there?

@kahri:

@gamble:

Thanks, I appreciate the help. I think I'm going to have to forward my hotmail to a new gmail then push that to my mac account.

I personally pay for .Mac and for me it's worth it. I know there are a lot of other services similar to each one of .Mac's but here's the thing, it's all in one place. My iPhoto seamlessly integrates with it, so does iWeb, and iMovie. Serious if not for iWeb I wouldn't bother with a webpage but it works so easily I have no complaints. It really works well for me since I have moved from home but want my family and my wife's family to be able to see what we're up to and with this they can. They can see our videos, pictures, read our blogs or whatever. Plus iDisk is great for just throwing a large file on and sharing, I'm actually using it today for work since I couldn't remember the address for my company's FTP site.

By the way Apple's mail program can work with almost anyone's email even Hotmail I believe (I think they are POP accounts). I use mine for .Mac (of course) but plus my company's Exchange email. I really love it's simple look plus its easy to separate one email account from the other but still have them in the same window.

and yahoo! makes you pay to use their account with Apple's Mail...Ya-who?

Comment on .Mac Push Email Coming To iPhones .Mac may not be a great value for anyone willing to do some extra leg- work. But it's a good system for your average user, particularly as it's so nicely tied in with the iApps - on a brand new computer, just type in your .mac name/pass and you've got fully sync'd email, addresses, calendars across all your computers. So basically it's like having an exchange setup without the enterprise. And if you do a cost comparison vs exchange (which of course doesn't even work on a mac) or vs hosted zimbra, um, guess what, the price actually starts looking pretty good.

What good is push mail if the iPhone doesn't have an indicator light to tell you there is mail? Unless you hear the one time beep or happen to have the iPhone on, you won't know you have a message. Apple put an LED light on the iPhone!

I actually love .Mac and find it worth the $99.00 a year. If you've ever had a drive die or had a notebook stolen, or just bought a new system it's worth it. Pretty much push one button and have all your bookmarks, email accounts, contacts, sticky notes, keychains, itunes playlist, all restored or moved to your new system, it's wonderful. I know there are ways to do a lot of this for free from other places and my windows friends always show me..."hey see, I can do that in windows too", but you have to jump through 10 hoops of fire and dance on broken glass to do it. So as I said, to many of us the $99.00 is nothing compared to the convenience of .Mac. If you don't want it, don't use it, but please don't criticize people who find their time worth the money. The reason my family moved to the Mac was I was tired of getting off work on Friday, wanting to do something on the computer with my weekend off, then spending the entire weekend reinstalling windows and getting it sorted out.

@Late_Night: I have yet to get hotmail to work with my Mail application. My AOL and gmail account work just fine, but hotmail always refuses. I have thus quit using it.

@Kaiser-Machead: there are plenty of http mail plugins for mac mail app. just google it, or click here you lazy bum [www.google.com]

@Kaiser-Machead: To be honest I don't have a hotmail account or ever did so I never personally tried it. But I thought it was possible. Excuse me if I'm wrong.

@kahri: If Kahri is correct and his simple Google link fixes your problem you must return to this comment board and throw yourself at my mercy. You half-wit (insult conditional on if you're correct)

wtf is wrong with .Mac. Ive been using it for like 3 years. Stuff is fantastic. Gizmodo takes low blows at nothing?

Ahhhh crap. I'm one of the 5 or 6. I have .Mac email and I like it.

@Shenzhov: im really not much of a Windows fan, but I've never had to re-install Windows to get something to work. All the BS about how Mac 'just works' really gets on my nerves. Windows was designed for idiots just as much as OS was and its pretty easy to do just about anything on either one, theres just different ways of doing it you have to get used to.

I.E. I have a system pretty similar to .Mac (based on what I'm hearing about it here..) that I set up myself on a server in my house.. basically an email/FTP/media server for free. So i don't give my money to anyone and it wasn't even hard.

I recently renewed my subscription and I admit having the ability for real-time push email with my .Mac subscription will make paying the annual membership more reasonable. The iPhone will then be able to compete seriously with RIM's Blackberry push email service and Microsoft's Exchange push email service.