by , 5:15 PM EDT, September 30th, 2002
Apple has announced an extension for iTools members wanting to convert their existing accounts to .Mac accounts. The company had set September 30th, today, as that deadline, after which iTools accounts would be cleared out, and closed down. The company has extended the deadline to October 14th, instead. Earlier this month, Apple announced that 100,000 iTools members had made the conversion. The letter sent to iTools members cites last minute requests from users for the extension. That letter:
Dear iTools member,
In response to many last minute requests, we've extended the opportunity to join .Mac at the special US$49.95 iTools member price to October 14, 2002. Your Mac.com E-mail account, HomePage address, and iDisk will remain active and accessible until then, so you still have time to retrieve any files and data you have there, and to notify correspondents to stop using your Mac.com E-mail address before mail sent to it starts bouncing. For more information on preserving your data, read the .Mac FAQ.
Of course, what we hope you'll do with the extra time is sign up for .Mac instead. At only US$49.95 for a membership that won't expire until September 30, 2003, it's a true bargain when measured against all it delivers -- outstanding ISP-independent e-mail with 15MB of storage on Apple servers, web page hosting and 100MB of iDisk storage also on Apple servers, McAfee Virex virus protection software, Backup software from Apple, and tight integration with Apple's iApps like iPhoto, iCal and now the beta release of iSync. Together they make it incredibly easy to use the Internet to share your photos and calendars and keep your contact and calendar information synchronized when you use more than one Mac.
And we're just getting started. Take advantage of the savings and join us today.
Sincerely,
The Mac Team
Apple Computer
You can find more about .Mac at Apple's Web site.
The second, and more obvious reason, is that the company has been less than satisfied with the conversion rate of iTools accounts. Without official word from the company in some form or another, that idea is going to depend utterly on what *you* think. In our opinion, 100,000 conversions under the circumstances is definitely a success. It's less than 5% of the total iTools account holders, but it's hard to know how many of those accounts were ever active, and how many were the result of multiple accounts per user. An extension could help raise those numbers as more people consider making the conversion.
The third, and much more speculative, theory being tossed around The TMO Towers is that Apple has made its break even numbers for the current quarter, and is extending the deadline accordingly. Why not bring in a bit more money for the December quarter? It has been our idea all along that the September 30th deadline was designed to time with the end of the quarter from the beginning. Apple has been working very hard to meet its break even projections for the quarter in what has been the toughest PC market in a very, very long time. .Mac revenue will most likely be headed directly for the bottom line; not only does it represent a brand new revenue stream for the company, the vast majority of development, and setup costs were written off long ago as iTools development. As such, it appears to us that the timing of the .Mac deadline was designed to help with this quarter from the very beginning. If the company feels confident about meeting its break even projections, an extension is a no-brainer. There is little doubt that there are a lot of last minute converters hanging out in the wings. This extension means that the last minute revenues associated with those users will come in later, as opposed to now.
Take your pick of the many reasons that will no doubt be bandied about on the Mac Web, but we are delighted to see the extension offered.