.Mac Alternatives?

peel asks: "In the endless effort to get organized I'm looking for an alternative to signing up for a .Mac account that allows me to sync iCal and the Address Book between multiple computers (mainly work and home). I found iSyncCal to let me sync calendars, I can also publish them using my personal server setup with WebDav. I haven't found any such utilities for addresses. What I really want is something that works more like .Mac but that I can run at home on my server without paying the monthly .Mac fees. What are some solutions people are using for syncing contact info for people stored in multiple places (Palm, cell, work computer, home computer, laptop)?" There was a similar discussion over on MacInTouch, although the alternatives offered cover more basic needs, the information may still prove useful for those looking for "a cheaper .Mac".

Comments

Or

[BigBir3d]

I don't want to trust all my personal data to a unknown third party. .Mac is not a known party... a service that Apple pays someone to do for them.

Hmm, opportunity!

[2nd Post!]

It seems there is an opportunity for a third party to establish a competitor to .Mac

Maybe 80% of the features at 70% of the price? $69 a year, or $5.99 a month, for an email, synching, calendaring, etc?

Re:Hmm, opportunity!

[2nd Post!]

Right about what?

You mean no one else can offer webDAV?

No one can reverse engineer protocols?

I think Apple would be right to respond by increasing their value, whether it be via quality, reliability, service, price, or features.

Suing a competitor is hardly 'right'

That's hardly better than muscling out the competition through legal contracts and price structure schemes.

Why alternatives?

[ross_winn]

I get what I consider to be an incredible amount of value from .mac subscription. I get antivirus, some free games, a great webmail and email service, and things keep getting added. What exactly do you expect for USD$100 per year, and what makes alternative more efficient for you?

Re:Why alternatives?

[Alan Partridge]

I must say that I agree, and I don't even use all the .Mac features - I DO use, Virex, Backup, email, homepage (for photos) and iDisk, but I've neglected iCal and iSync thus far...

cost me £33 for a year - I make that in about an hour and a half, it's about the same price as a tank of fuel for me!

Re:Why alternatives?

[Rommel]

I'm willing to pay more for some features *not* available.

The biggest thing I'd like to add is the ability to use a different domain name. I've been using a personal domain for a long time now, and don't want to train my visitors to go to a different address.

Not just for Macintosh...

[stefanlasiewski]

As a non-mac owner, I'd love to have access to a .MAC-like service which works for non-Mac users.

Seems that many of the .MAC services will work with any computer, as long as you have an iCal, LDAP & IMAP client. But that is probalby only 50% of the services.

On a local box at my house, I've considered setting up Apache+WebDAV, IMAP, LDAP & iCal servers; all available via a password-protected/SSL website, or via their normal protocol (with encryption, if possible).

But the devil is the integration of these services. I'm not sure where to start.

Maybe it's not about money, but about convenience

[fluf]

I think it's kinda funny how all these comments center around the fact that .mac 'is only 8 dollars a month'.

I'm not interested in saving money (I'd just get an el cheapo x86 machine instead of a Mac to really save money... :p as if), I'm interested in really sharing my information between my different machines.

Just look at my setup: at home I've got a G3 powerMac and an Ibook, at work it's a powermac G4 and the aforementioned iBook. I'm just looking at an easy (or maybe better 'straightforward') way to share Jaguar's address book and calendar between the three.

I could do this via .Mac, but only if I have an internet connection. Now, having an internet connection isn't a problem in itself (i've got cable at home and dsl at work), the stupid thing about this imho is that, since the machines are networked anyway (through ethernet, in a powermac to ibook type of deal both at work and at home), why do I even need to go via .Mac? I just want to be able to sync locally.

The current workaround I've got is using my T68i bluetooth phone. It works pretty well, but I think it's a shame I have to use this workaround...

IMHO, apple should support local sync without .Mac.

So for some, it might not be about money.

Cheers.

1 word: iPod.

[naily]

Think of it as a read-only PDA, with massive storage, that happens to play excellent sound quality music. It's also easy to sync across multiple machines.

CVS

[jbrayton]

CVS is a system specifically designed to (among many other things) keep text files in sync across multiple machines. It can handle binary files also, but not particularly well. If you have a system in which you can set up a CVS server (all the tools are built into Mac OS X + Development Tools) I recommend experimenting with that.

The iCal calendar files are text files that could be synchronized. Note that I have *not* tested how well this would actually work with iCal.

The Apple Address Book application does not seem to store its address books as text files, so CVS is less likely to work well with it. But Eudora seems to store its address books as text files.

cvshome.org

I have considered doing this myself, as my first annual .Mac membership nears renewal time.