.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

Third Device

[raverbuzzy]

I would sync to a third portable device like a palm or a cell phone and use that to transfer the data.

Re:Third Device

[dthable]

According to Palm, this is not recommended. I used to transfer data via my m500 and found a lot of duplicate entries. I don't know if a computer ID is a part of the record, but it didn't work for me.

Another "how-to" article

[awtbfb]

"Six Great Tips for Homemade Dot Mac Servers"

Re:Another "how-to" article

[hobbit]

Seems a bit out of date now, though... Apache now includes mod_rendezvous_apple, and iTunes 4 takes care of streaming music between networked machines.

Monthly Fees?

[gamgee5273]

What monthly fees? I've been a .Mac member from the outset (and, I will admit, a happy one) and there has yet to be any "monthly" fees.

I agree with the translation above...there's no reason to go and gerryrig a pseudo-.Mac when this one works and is integrated already. You will end up spending more than $99/year between labor, etc.

Re:I must be new here.

[Trurl's Machine]

How do you "sync iCal and the Address Book between multiple computers" by installing Linux?

Probably by means of typing some cryptic commands. This seems to be an universal answer for all questions beginning with "how to" and ending with "Linux".

price Vs convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

You really need to look at what this is worth, if you have to maintain a server and spend time setting it up, and if it doesn't work 100% is that worth it?

How much money do you make per hour at your current job, i always put it that way to see if something is worth the time. Of course if its a fun hack to do, then its priceless right?

In the end you may see that $99 (sometimes cheaper) is worth what .Mac offers. Its not that much to pay to get rid of headaches. I only use mine for addresses, iSync, and iPhoto uploads. But for me, its worth it. But what do i know, i paid the $50 deal when it came out, heheh.

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?

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?

syncML

[xj9000]

Most of the fancy devices use syncML which is the XML schema for transfering all your contacts and addressbook information. on sourceforge there is a program called Sync4J which is a java program you can connect to from your devices over the web and transfer/sync all your data http://sourceforge.net/projects/sync4j/

How much is your time worth?`

[amichalo]

I know this is /. and all but presumiung you already have any hardware needed and the software is all free (beer), I still question the value of a homebrewed .Mac solution:

Setup & maintain IMAP mail

Setup & maintain sync to iCal

Setup & maintain sync to address book

Setup & maintain 100mb DAV

Setup & maintain CD/DVD/on-line integrated backup

Setup & maintain template driven web hosting

Setup & maintain iPhoto image publishing

Setup & maintain iCards

Substitute anti-virus software

Substitute access to "members only" support

Since a .Mac account is $99.year, if you spend ONE HOUR doing each of the above each year, and your time were worth $10/hr you would LOOSE $1 a year!!! (Presuming no hardware or software costs, just time.)

I COULD change my own oil, but to me, it isn't worth $20 every 3,000 miles to do it.

It's not cost-effective to roll your own.

[Duck_Taffy]

How much time per month are you going to spend maintaining your own server? What's it going to cost in terms of bandwidth? What will the electricity cost you? If you value your time at all, get .mac, because it works out to only $8.33 per month, and you're quite likely to spend more than an hour per month working on your sever, and quite likely won't have the reliability of the real .mac, which also backs up your data to backup servers nightly.

For example, look at the scenario of what if a hard drive dies. If it dies in your server, you go out and spend $100 on a new hard drive, and possibly lose months of information, and may have days of downtime while you reconfigure everything. If it dies in a .mac server, you don't pay a dime, and at most, you lose one day's data, and experience no or very little downtime.

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.

It's about the bandwidth

[benwaggoner]

I've got .mac. It works fine for lots of stuff, but trying to do a backup over DSL is effectively impossible. And for a lot of corporate stuff, it makes more sense to do things inside the subnet rather than have them on a server out in the world.

Personlly, I think they should add local .mac services into Mac OS X Server. It'd be a nice value add for workgroups, while still giving stand-alone consumers a reason to pay the big bugs.

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.