.mac: Your services will no longer be needed
Apple’s .mac service has served me well over the past two and a half years and I have used nearly every feature of .mac at one point or another, except for Groups. The features that I used the most were Mail, Bookmarks, Address Book sync, and iDisk. However, my yearly service expires next May and this time there may not be a renewal. I can no longer justify the price when I do not use many of the features.
There are features that do not neccessarily need a .mac account which I will still use. One is the sync feature and the other is iCards. I sync my addresses and calendars to my iPod and not the internet. iCards are free electonic postcards that can be sent to anyone. Of course there is extra functionality with .mac, but I do not need them.
I have found alternatives for the other items I used. Instead of using iDisk I now keep data stored on my domain server. I even used Homepage for a short while until I wanted to start implementing PHP and MySQL, which is used for this website and not a feature of .mac. Syncing bookmarks was a great feature until I found del.icio.us which seems to be a better option without a .mac account. I like the setup and all my bookmarks are web based.
Backup is a program I used once or twice and then stopped. I now use a different program for backing up my data which I feel better suits my needs. This is another feature that I believe can be used without a .mac account as long as you backup to something other than iDisk.
The only feature I still use is Mail and I am in the process of phasing that out. Again since I have my own domain I can create as many address and aliases as I want. Once this is done then my account will not be used. Now the only way I would consider keeping the service is if I had multiple computers. In this case I could keep all my data synchronized on every computer and not have to worry about having incorrect information.
Apple’s service works well and is very useful for many situations. But the time has come for me to move on and use other services that offer more functionality for my needs. Apple is constantly improving the service and adding more functionality. If I find myself wanting to use functionality that is offered by .mac, then I may consider renewing. I have until May 25, 2006.
No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize:
How To Become A Vegetarian Without Killing Yourself.
