.Mac Bandwidth Cap

As a .Mac user, my initial thoughts on seeing that Apple had decided to implement a cap on previously uncapped .Mac bandwidth centered around one question: Is this going to make the service better or worse?

Macworld is spinning the story as .Mac offering a "higher-bandwidth option" as a 3GB cap is being placed on regular .Mac users, but people, like myself, who have purchased a full GB of .Mac space will get an expanded, premium cap of 10GBs of bandwidth. Not too shabby.

MacMerc, on the other hand, posts an entry on this switch entitled, Bandwidth of .Mac accounts limited to 3GB per month. This is an entirely different spin than the Macworld story, as it points out that a cap is being put on in the first place where there was none before (although, in the past, Apple has been known to contact .Mac users when their bandwidth has reached ludicrous speed*).

Since I'm reaping the benefit of having the slightly muscled out 1GB .Mac account with 10GBs of bandwidth, I'm not really sure which spin I should be taking on the topic; so, I'm opting to take a wait-and-see based on my original thoughts. What if the reason that the .Mac service has been so spotty has been the lack of any sort of cap? There are some days when my iDisk is the slow beast that grinds my Mac to a halt and others where it performs fair to middling. What if capping people who have been abusing the service suddenly improves the service for everyone involved? If the performance remains shaky, however, then I'll most likely see this as Apple yet again taking away something that had previously been free and repackaging it behind nice buzzwords like "high-bandwidth option". Time will tell, I guess.

*Note: I realize that bandwidth is not equal to speed. It's a joke.