I would like to keep my @mac.com addresses instead of @gmail.com. It just seems a little more legitimate than the free email accounts that get bounced back to you after a few months. Also we need to keep the one-click ease of publishing photo albums and movies to .mac

If this deal, if there is a deal, comes to fruition then it is another salvo into the decks of MicroSoft who can't seem to get the range lately.

Same here. I like having @mac.com as my email address. Would be a shame to see that go away for something Googly. I just hope this means improvements to .Mac, but not it's demise.

Google already offers a service in which a company can use gmail, but with its own domain. As such, it seems Apple could easily use gmail using .Mac.

However, Mac users can already use Google apps (just not with Safari in some cases), so for me to pay for that, something real special would have to be added because there are plenty of hosting services out there that offer much more for less then what Apple charges. I can rent a hundred GBs of space, the ability to host five domains, and can have 50 email address for less.

For what is worth, I think Google's applications are a nice idea, but not very impressive, especially Doc (with the exception of Sketchup, which is a great application). However, I think many companies would use these application and ditch Office if Google could develop them more. So, it would be nice if Apple perhaps teamed up with Google to improve Google's applications.

Also, Google's CEO mentioned that Apple is weak in the super computing department, however, if I remember correctly Apple just bought a data center.

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Terrin wrote:
However, I think many companies would use these application and ditch Office if Google could develop them more. So, it would be nice if Apple perhaps teamed up with Google to improve Google's applications.

Also, Google's CEO mentioned that Apple is weak in the super computing department, however, if I remember correctly Apple just bought a data center.

One thing I'm expecting is .Mac will be able to push EMail to the iPhone. They already announced Yahoo will do this, but .Mac already has IMAP EMail and wouldn't it be stupid if it didn't work exceptionally well with the iPhone? I have other predictions for the keynpte too, lots of them, <a href="http://www.myallo.com/article?artid=2513027">here</a>.

NeoOffice is looking good these days

.mac may not be *great*, but its not *bad*, either. i am actually rather happy with my dot mac account, to the end that i've been willing to throw down $99.99 on it for the past three consecutive years. the email service is decent, interoperability with ilife is nice, and i absolutely adore having easy access to my idisk through the finder. i use that constantly for sharing files. certainly beats photobucket.. and yes, as several of you have already said, it's pretty damn cool to have @mac.com as your email domain.

My college has been negotiating with Google to have our webmail facilities subsumed under gmail. What Google promises is that we can keep our .edu addresses. I don't see why the same wouldn't be possible with mac.com addresses.

Sorry--didn't see Terrin's post before I chimed in.

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Guest wrote:
One thing I'm expecting is .Mac will be able to push EMail to the iPhone. They already announced Yahoo will do this, but .Mac already has IMAP EMail and wouldn't it be stupid if it didn't work exceptionally well with the iPhone? I have other predictions for the keynpte too, lots of them, <a href=&quot;http://www.myallo.com/article?artid=2513027&quot;>here</a>.

It is too slow for me, and the Word support isn't great.

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Guest wrote:
NeoOffice is looking good these days

I think most Mac users can get buy without Word compatibility just because we can easily print to PDF. I actual prefer this to sending out Word files to people. For instance, I am job hunting and I sent a resume to myself because I wanted to borrow my friend's Windows laptop (my iBook just lost its third logic board). When I opened the resume on his computer using Word the formatting was all off even though the fonts and margins were the same. With PDF I do not have to worry about that.

The problem is more when Windows users want to give us files.

Yes, Apple bought a data center. Apparently, it is a nice one too.

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2006/02/27/story5.html

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Sir Harry Flashman wrote:

Office, especially Word, is as entrenched as the iPod. Any Office killer, or even competitor, would have to be 100% compatible with Office docs, not mention cheaper. However, MicroSoft does not make it easy to be compatible with Office.

Apple recently bought a data center? The plot thickens.

I guess I feel about .Mac like I do about AOL, I just outgrew it. Sure, there is some useful functionality, but it is over priced and there are options out there with overall better usefulness and value for the money (e.g. I use Bluehost). Giving up the .Mac address was the hardest part of the decision for me to drop .Mac.

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burrito wrote:
.mac may not be *great*, but its not *bad*, either. i am actually rather happy with my dot mac account, to the end that i've been willing to throw down $99.99 on it for the past three consecutive years. the email service is decent, interoperability with ilife is nice, and i absolutely adore having easy access to my idisk through the finder. i use that constantly for sharing files. certainly beats photobucket.. and yes, as several of you have already said, it's pretty damn cool to have @mac.com as your email domain.

The worst thing about having a .mac address? You're announcing to the world that you're a chump willing to fork over $100 a year for a $20 service.

The logical combination would be the ability for iWork applications to share files with Google Docs. It would start with Pages to auto sync Google Docs and Pages files that could be edited on or off line within Pages, or online anywhere within Google Docs.

This would expand to Keynote once Google has a presentation application, and spreadsheets when Apple has this app.

Apple users would get free online access to docs, and Google would get an embedded Google search box in iWork apps.

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Anonymous wrote:
The worst thing about having a .mac address? You're announcing to the world that you're a chump willing to fork over $100 a year for a $20 service.

I have had .mac since day one... friends (and enemies), relatives and business associates know this as my email address. And I like the seamless integration with the finder and other Apple applications.

While I have a GMail account - I do not like so many things about it - that the only thing I use it for now is to assign it to websites where I know I will be spammed. Also, I prefer my email files on my local drive - so I can back it up and no one else has copies floating in the clouds.

Cloudware as lovely as it is, takes me one more step to an Orwellian "Big Brother" observing my every move. I am not at all comfortable with it - even if it is called Web 2.0.