PC Magazineis Troy Dreier has weighed in with his thoughts on Appleis recently upgraded .Mac suite of online tools, giving it a 3 out of 5 rating and saying: ".Mac has always been good, but Apple has never committed the resources to make it great."
".Mac has been a mixed bag since its introduction," he notes. "Itis always been helpful, but never strong enough to make the $99.95 yearly fee a bargain." He appreciates the seamless integration between .Mac and Mac OS X, as well as the iLife applications, but said that the service "still doesnit feel essential or robust enough."
Mr. Dreier dings .Macis 1GB of storage, saying that "Apple isnit even keeping up with the top free service," Googleis Gmail, which comes with 2GB of space. However, while he does like the new Groups feature, he slags Backup, saying that "itis a weak alternative to more fully featured backup tools" and noting that the new version "has been simplified to the point of ridiculousness for non-technical users." In addition, he writes that heis "shocked" that Apple pulled Virex from .Mac without replacing it.