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Should Apple make .Mac free?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the web-full-please-leave dept.

Moby Cock writes "The recent display of iLife '06 at Macworld showed that the suite has a very fine integration with .Mac, Apple's subscription-based web portal. In a recent post to his blog on ZDNet, Dan Farber argues that a .Mac subscription ought to be included with the purchase of an Apple computer. There is no doubt that web portals are huge revenue engines, could Apple be missing an opportunity here?"

9 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. Umm.. No? by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    .Mac comes with webhosting and a variety of other costs.

    If they gave that to everyone who owns a Mac, they'd have significantly higher costs.

    Just the webhosting alone would put a dent in their profits.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:Umm.. No? by hotspotbloc · · Score: 5, Interesting
      .Mac comes with webhosting

      .Mac comes with webhosting that can handle a slashdotting.

      --
      "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
    2. Re:Umm.. No? by E1ven · · Score: 5, Informative

      They did.

      The Nag screen has been gone since Quicktime 7, which came out a few months ago.

      --
      Colin Davis
    3. Re:Umm.. No? by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Here's the member benefits that come with paying for .Mac
      http://www.apple.com/dotmac/features.html
      http://images.apple.com/dotmac/pdfs/DotMac_Product _Overview_20060109.pdf (4.7MB PDF)

      It's one thing to be able to handle a slashdotting , but I think it's another thing entirely to have to pay for ~2% of the PC market's hosting on a regular basis.

      A few of the things that .Mac offers is ad-free web pages + picture & video hosting, 1GB online backup w/a 10GB transfer limit.

      If you take away the $99 a month, how do you recoup those costs without adding advertising? GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo... all have advertising when you access their services.

      My understanding is that .Mac added a lot of additional benefits when they switched away from providing a free service.

      But I don't use a Mac, so I could be wrong.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    4. Re:Umm.. No? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I still think they should have a free version. Just give people who pay a lot more.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. still waiting for ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    .lnx

  3. Why not? How about why? by th1ckasabr1ck · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The article states that there are a million subscribers at $99 each. That's $100 million that Apple makes from .mac - I really have no idea how much money similar ad-based services make, but I would be surprised if more than a few pulled in that much cash.

    Apple is a corporation and they want to make money. I think the real question is: "Why WOULD they set .mac free?"

  4. The mac should be free... by blanktek · · Score: 5, Funny

    with your .Mac subscription

  5. Re:Why not? How about why? by mysqlrocks · · Score: 5, Funny

    The article states that there are a million subscribers at $99 each. That's $100 million that Apple makes from .mac

    Sorry to nitpick, but that's actually $99 million.

    --
    Bradley Holt