.Mac: Extend Or End Your Subscription?

by , 11:00 AM EDT, September 12th, 2003

Many of you who signed up for .Mac last year are probably weighing the merits of renewing your subscription to Apple's 'Net services. You are likely recalling how much you've been using the once free service, and perhaps weighing the pros of the perks and benefits Apple offers against the con of another US$100.

David Zeiler of SunSpot.Net pondered the same questions and voiced his musings in an article titled, Dot Mac Revisited. From the article:

Most former iTools members that signed up for .Mac last year have until the end of the month or early October to renew. Should a member choose not to renew, all of the user's files stored on Apple's .Mac servers -- documents, photos, Web pages and movies -- will be deleted. The member also will lose his or her mac.com e-mail address.

When I wrote about .Mac last year, I noted that while it had some compelling features, the service was not worth US$100 every year -- and that it would attract few renewals unless Apple enhanced it significantly.

On the surface, it would seem that the .Mac of September 2003 doesn't offer much more than the .Mac of September 2002. For your $100, you still get just one e-mail address with 15 megabytes of mail storage and 100 megabytes of iDisk storage for other files.

Check out the full article at SunSpot.Net.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Has it been a year already? Time flies when you have .Mac; the year is up, and so the bill for subscription renewal is due. It's a big test for Apple: Will enough current .Mac users renew so that the service can at least break even, or will users abandon ship after finding that they either seldom used .Mac or that the services provided can be had elsewhere cheaper.

While the gang at 1 Infinite Loop have shown that they can develop hardware and software like they were born to it, providing services may not be their cup of soup.

Sweetening the pot with free games and apps are nice, but it's not what people want; people need solid reasons to hold onto .Mac. For instance, many like the secure data access point .Mac provides; load up data to your iDisk in .Mac and you can allow anyone to grab it. You keep your exposure to a minimum. As mentioned in the article, iSync goes a long way towards providing a unique salable service to .Mac customers, as does the synchronized e-mail.

Only by offering services that users find useful will Apple keep .Mac customers coming back. So, the question is: Are the current list of services that .Mac offers enough to keep people in the fold? We think so, but just barely so. Apple still has some work to do with .Mac, but what it has done so far isn't bad.

Dot Mac revisited