Apple to Unveil .Mac Today

Steve Mason writes "Apple has put up a .Mac FAQ up here proving that .Mac will indeed be introduced at Mac World New York. .Mac will cost $100 a year as previous rumors had reported." Yes, this means that if you don't pay Apple, your mac.com URL and email address will stop working. Some have suggested that the "switch" in Apple's new ad campaign stands for the unfortunate part of a "bait and switch." Someone should mirror that URL, it might be taken down any second now.

Comments

It's called a free market

[Hater's Leaving, The]

You want it, they offer it, you gotta pay what they ask, or tell 'em to stick it.

I won't jump to any particular conclusions until I see stats about what proportion subscribe at this price.

However, if it's many subscribing, then that would reinforce the stereotype of Mac users having more dollars than sense, and if few subscribe then it would indicate that Apple don't really understand the market. Neither would be particularly big news - no offense to either side - as these are opinions that large numbers of people already have. Note however, that the flip-sides should _cancel_ the prejudice that's unfounded, but as we know it's almost impossible to get people to drop prejudices.

THL.

Re:It's called a free market

[actiondan]

You want it, they offer it, you gotta pay what they ask, or tell 'em to stick it.


I think the problem that a lot of people have with this move is that they signed up for mac.com email addresses on the basis that they would be free for life and then, just as they started to rely on those addresses, Apple announced that they will have to start paying.

I'm not sure of exactly what the original deal was with mac.com email addresses but some people certainly seem to think there is a bait and switch going on here.

Offering a service for a fee is fine. Promising a service for free and then announcing a fee at a later date is somewhat underhand.

No sympathy for the dissenters

[Marasmus]

I really can't find any place in my heart to take sides with the people yelling about having to pay for this service. I run a fairly well-sized free hosting service that offers some similar functionality, and I know personally how much work, time, and money out of my pocket goes into running this sort of system. I know that as my userbase grows above its measely 1500-user count it's at now, there's no way I'll be able to afford to continue the services I'm offering completely for free. Apple is in the same boat - They're obviously paying a number of people to run the iTools service, paying for hardware and bandwidth, and raking up a huge bill. Sure, the iTools system can be a great community-builder, but it can still be a great community-builder when their users are paying only about $8 a month for the services being offered.

To those of you who bitch about services being generously provided for free, get a clue. Better yet, how bout you try to set up a service of similar caliber and see how much it costs you to run 'for free'? You'd probably gain a little bit of respect for the amount of work that Apple has put into their system, for you.

Re:Burger King is finally going to beat a competit

[bmetzler]

I really hope Apple comes to their senses soon -- .Mac is a neat idea, but charging money for it?

Why shouldn't Apple charge money for their services? You say yourself that you've standardised your email around it. It must be worth something to you. Specifically, it must be worth $50 for the first year :)

Anyways, I don't understand what the big deal is. Apple has something you want, you have something Apple wants. That's capitalism. I can't understand how it could be a dumb move.

-Brent

Simple Economics

[mactari]

I'm using iTools for about 2 megs of web pages and data. I also have it forward me any @mac.com email to my personal email address. The email stays on Apple's server about as long as it takes me to get gibbed when I play Team Fortress (Quake 1, of course). It's costing Apple next to nothing to keep a folder named "mactari" on their server. I'm not going to get $100 worth of service, and Apple wouldn't spend half that maintaining me if I stayed.

What's more, Apple doesn't care if I go.

The bottom line of it is that if 90% of the iTools users leave, 10% will start plunking down money. As Maelstrom says when your bonus gets to nothing, "Twice nuttin, still nuttin" -- 100% of iTools users paying nothing is less revenue than *any amount* of the users forking over $50 [then $100].

I'm leaving iTools (and that's a pain in tha arse - - I'd just gotten my site linked too fairly well), and Apple doesn't care. Like Sun's CEO said about .NET [giving away free development tools and sdk's], "The first hit of heroin's always free."