Finally Getting My Money's Worth

When I look in System Preferences it now tells me I’ve been a .Mac member since 2004. Since I purchased my first Mac I have signed up to Apple’s own web service but until the last few weeks I have only ever used a .mac email address. Now armed with Leopard and an iPhone I can finally see the point in the service and have changed my work to use it more.

First off I’m now using .Mac mail as it should be, using the magic that is IMAP I’ve moved all my mail over to Apple. Since my first attempt at using .Mac webmail they have made some improvements and it is now usable and my perfect ‘out of office’ doorway. Plus with an iPhone I am now totally connected at any time, yep Edge is not great but just being able to sit in the garden and check your mail is worth it.

No more box.net for me, I’m a fully fledged iDisc user now. This is only because of having a Mac at work now and the better support for iDisc in Leopard. Before then I found it flakey; dropping connections, refusing to sync and just being a pain! Now I have a local copy on both work and home machines and auto sync to keep everything where it should be. There are still a few things I would prefer but the positive point out weigh the negative. Ease people, it’s just about making things easier.

Now you might think I will take this further with all the iLife/.Mac goodies. Sorry but no joy, I have no reason for sharing my iPhoto library; I’m Flickr’ed and that does everything I need for online photos. I do not use my camcorder nearly enough to want to share movies, I’ve not even fired up iMovie since installing iLife. iWeb is just nasty, besides why would I want to mess with that when I have my own domain and one of the most powerful web editors out there. So I will not be investing in Apple’s wholesome family fun filled sharing adventure idea. That said though for what it is worth I will gladly continue to pay for the service; now I can see the full picture. It has taken a few years but I’m glad I kept forgetting to cancel the 'auto renew’ option.