Best use of a .Mac account?
October 21, 2005 8:47 AM Subscribe
What is the best use you've seen made of a .Mac account?
Or if you have an account yourself, what to you is most useful?
Or if you have an account yourself, what to you is most useful?
Dirt simple photo posting. That's the bulk of what I use mine for, aside from the email. It also give me an easy way to give my daughters email accounts that I can monitor easily.
posted by cptnrandy at 9:14 AM on October 21, 2005
posted by cptnrandy at 9:14 AM on October 21, 2005
Letting the trial expire.
posted by angry modem at 9:16 AM on October 21, 2005
posted by angry modem at 9:16 AM on October 21, 2005
I've had a .Mac account for a couple of years now, and in general I think it's way too expensive. And yet I intend to renew. Go figure.
.Mac doesn't actually provide all that much utility. The one great thing it does do is provide seamless ftp space that I can access from any computer as if I were accessing a regular drive. I know it's possible to set this up via regular ftp, but I'm too lazy to figure out how, so I pay Apple $100 to do everything for me.
Also, the auto-synchronizing of bookmarks, calendars, etc. is awesome, but I don't know that there's anything cool you can do with that.
The new Groups thing looks pretty cool, actually.
Aside: Apple allows .Mac users to have web interfaces for their address books. Why not for calendars and, especially, bookmarks? Several times a month, I wish to access my home bookmarks when away from one of my computers. I can't, though. It seems it would be incredibly simple for Apple to implement, but they haven't.
posted by jdroth at 9:23 AM on October 21, 2005
.Mac doesn't actually provide all that much utility. The one great thing it does do is provide seamless ftp space that I can access from any computer as if I were accessing a regular drive. I know it's possible to set this up via regular ftp, but I'm too lazy to figure out how, so I pay Apple $100 to do everything for me.
Also, the auto-synchronizing of bookmarks, calendars, etc. is awesome, but I don't know that there's anything cool you can do with that.
The new Groups thing looks pretty cool, actually.
Aside: Apple allows .Mac users to have web interfaces for their address books. Why not for calendars and, especially, bookmarks? Several times a month, I wish to access my home bookmarks when away from one of my computers. I can't, though. It seems it would be incredibly simple for Apple to implement, but they haven't.
posted by jdroth at 9:23 AM on October 21, 2005
Syncing contacts, calendars and bookmarks has been a godsend when on other machines.
Now that Backup 3 is out, I've been backing up like I always should have.
I'm looking for an excuse to try Groups.
Photo posting was possibly the most used feature until I discovered Flickr.
posted by mcwetboy at 9:29 AM on October 21, 2005
Now that Backup 3 is out, I've been backing up like I always should have.
I'm looking for an excuse to try Groups.
Photo posting was possibly the most used feature until I discovered Flickr.
posted by mcwetboy at 9:29 AM on October 21, 2005
Right now? My stepmom needs often to know my schedule weeks in advance, I publish my ical for her, so if I'm in the area and she needs the help, I can help out with my dad (who is ill with Alzheimer's)
posted by filmgeek at 9:46 AM on October 21, 2005
posted by filmgeek at 9:46 AM on October 21, 2005
jdroth, I'm sure you mean add/subtract from your bookmarks, right? Because isync does put your safari bookmarks there if you like.
posted by filmgeek at 9:47 AM on October 21, 2005
posted by filmgeek at 9:47 AM on October 21, 2005
No, actually I mean publish my bookmarks to .Mac so that I can access them from any random PC. Does it really do this? I'm going to go check...
[off checking]
Well, I'll be damned. I always thought that "sync bookmarks" thing just meant "synch between computers like isync does already". I'm glad it's possible, though I wish I could just open a page of bookmarks and not have to have some strange popup window to access them...
posted by jdroth at 9:55 AM on October 21, 2005
[off checking]
Well, I'll be damned. I always thought that "sync bookmarks" thing just meant "synch between computers like isync does already". I'm glad it's possible, though I wish I could just open a page of bookmarks and not have to have some strange popup window to access them...
posted by jdroth at 9:55 AM on October 21, 2005
Syncing contacts and bookmarks between machines.
posted by I Love Tacos at 9:56 AM on October 21, 2005
posted by I Love Tacos at 9:56 AM on October 21, 2005
Syncing is about the only useful thing it does, and even then the implementation is a bit flakey.
I let my account expire 12 days ago.
posted by cillit bang at 10:19 AM on October 21, 2005
I let my account expire 12 days ago.
posted by cillit bang at 10:19 AM on October 21, 2005
Once I added FileChute, my .Mac account became priceless to me as a way to send large work files to ftp-challenged clients, or anything to folks I’m having trouble sending files to via email. Sure, it can be configured to work with other WebDAV or FTP-accessible web servers, but I’m kinda ftp-challenged myself. .Mac+FC makes the whole thing quick and painless for me and my recipients.
posted by dpcoffin at 10:31 AM on October 21, 2005
posted by dpcoffin at 10:31 AM on October 21, 2005
iSync capabilities (awesome since I have 3 computers and they tend to multiply). a lot of people (neophytes especially but most people can benefit from it) like the HomePage feature - from iPhoto or iMovie you can directly publish your work to your website and it creates the actual page, does the resizing/thumbnailing/re-encoding into something sane, and provides announcement services (basically "hey I have a webpage make with the clicky" in email) for you. it's more useful now that there's a gig of storage by default.
posted by mrg at 10:53 AM on October 21, 2005
posted by mrg at 10:53 AM on October 21, 2005
I use it to back up my writing, including a novel in progress.
I got the .mac account a few months ago, and a couple of weeks after I got it, poof! No more hard drive in my Powerbook! But, my writing, my portfolio, resumes, and other errata were safe as they were on my .mac account storage space.
posted by spinifex23 at 10:53 AM on October 21, 2005
I got the .mac account a few months ago, and a couple of weeks after I got it, poof! No more hard drive in my Powerbook! But, my writing, my portfolio, resumes, and other errata were safe as they were on my .mac account storage space.
posted by spinifex23 at 10:53 AM on October 21, 2005
Adam Curry was hosting his Daily Source Code podcast on a .mac account for many months--delivering 100s of GB for every show.
They may have made an exception to their bandwidth limits because he is famous, but he sure did get his money's worth.
posted by phildog at 11:23 AM on October 21, 2005
They may have made an exception to their bandwidth limits because he is famous, but he sure did get his money's worth.
posted by phildog at 11:23 AM on October 21, 2005
I use mine for storing projects on the occasions I work from home (I'm a multimedia guy, the projects can be several hundred megabytes). I could do this with FTP, but I like that it's integrated in to the finder, one less app to launch.
posted by Scoo at 1:08 PM on October 21, 2005
posted by Scoo at 1:08 PM on October 21, 2005
Integrated storage and backups and address book syncing between my computer, my PDA, and webmail. Also an email address that is still relatively spam-free. The bookmark syncing is nice, but ties me to Safari and I like Firefox better these days so I don't use it.
I just now figured out that you can group all your calendars together and then publish that group to access your entire calendar online, so that's one of my biggest wishlist items granted.
My other big one is some sort of subdomain ability so I could host a website from that account without my real name appearing in the URL.
posted by jennyb at 1:48 PM on October 21, 2005
I just now figured out that you can group all your calendars together and then publish that group to access your entire calendar online, so that's one of my biggest wishlist items granted.
My other big one is some sort of subdomain ability so I could host a website from that account without my real name appearing in the URL.
posted by jennyb at 1:48 PM on October 21, 2005
Does anyone else find the web-accessed mail feature through .mac incredibly annoying? For example, someone using Outlook sends you an email, and when you hit "reply" the To: line shows "Smith, John " and then when you hit "send", Mail gives you an error message that says
"The address provided in the To field is not valid : Smith"
WTF? It makes the "reply" and "reply all" buttons essentially useless, as I have to manually fix all the email addresses. Grrrr.
Yet, like jdroth, I intend to renew. Go figure.
posted by ambrosia at 5:31 PM on October 21, 2005
"The address provided in the To field is not valid : Smith"
WTF? It makes the "reply" and "reply all" buttons essentially useless, as I have to manually fix all the email addresses. Grrrr.
Yet, like jdroth, I intend to renew. Go figure.
posted by ambrosia at 5:31 PM on October 21, 2005
By the way for the "ftp challenged"....
Anyone with a mac can use "connect to other's idisk" right under the GO menu.
On a PC it's a bit easier to download the idisk utilitiy
posted by filmgeek at 8:32 PM on October 21, 2005
Anyone with a mac can use "connect to other's idisk" right under the GO menu.
On a PC it's a bit easier to download the idisk utilitiy
posted by filmgeek at 8:32 PM on October 21, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Marquis at 9:00 AM on October 21, 2005