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Michael Arrington: "Why The New .Mac Webmail Is Important"
Techcrunch's Michael Arrington has penned an interesting piece on why the upcoming .Mac webmail revamp is so important. Be sure to check it out, but in summary: Michael believes the combination of a killer AJAX-infused webmail service that both allows users to manage multiple accounts and syncs with a desktop client will give Apple a significant advantage and appeal over competing email services. Now, putting aside the fact that Gmail allows you to transparently send and receive email from non-Gmail addresses, I agree with Michael and I'm pretty darn excited about the first .Mac webmail revamp since the stone ages. However, I think he's missing a major point that many others overlook when discussing, praising or damning .Mac: it isn't webmail. Or to be more specific: it isn't just webmail. Michael compares .Mac webmail to competing offerings from Google and Yahoo! - individual and free webmail services that can integrate with other offerings from their respective providers - or not. Google has their news, RSS reader (which just had a killer overhaul, by the way) and countless other sister products, just like Yahoo! has their own tool belt of web services. But the crucial fact here is that .Mac webmail is an unconditional component of a suite of products for which users have to pay a hefty yearly fee. You can't get .Mac webmail by itself, let alone for free, and while everyone is excited about the UI revamp (well, almost everyone), the mounting orchestra of criticism against .Mac still stands. The service overall, especially webmail, is sorely missing fundamental features that competing services have had for years, and our own Dave Caolo nailed one of the most significant on the head in his eulogy for .Mac: server side spam filtering. .Mac doesn't feature it, but it's become a standard (as in: four-wheels-on-a-car standard) with virtually any other service, webmail, POP or otherwise.[Update: A reader named 'random' pointed out that .Mac apparently does feature server-side spam filtering, courtesy of Brightmail, as outlined in this support doc. While this is nice, it doesn't seem to work well (especially compared to the likes of Gmail and Yahoo!), and it doesn't allow users to adjust its sensitivity or peruse server-specified messages as spam in case some legitimate messages are being inaccurately marked. In other words: it's terrible.] Stepping back from fundamentals and specifics, however, I think Michael is placing a little too much hope in this .Mac webmail upgrade. I highly doubt it will rake in the new users, even with the unique abilities Michael hails. At best, I think it will serve as a very welcomed upgrade that could convince a good portion of existing users to go the 'eh, ok fine I'll renew' route for just one more year. Don't get me wrong: as a member myself, I'm welcoming the upgrade and I was planning on renewing in a month before I knew about the webmail refresh. I just don't believe an update to one (admittedly major) part of .Mac will hold that much weight with those who aren't interested in the entire retail package, especially when competing services can stack up pretty well for the general user, and keep $99 their pocket to boot.
Viral .Mac feedback - copy and paste this, let's make Apple listen
We've all seen the complaints about .Mac from every corner of the internets. Our own Dave Caolo posted a fantastic editorial covering .Mac's slow death, but he isn't the only one tossing a vote into the hat. One only needs to browse the digg archives to find plenty of posts from dissatisfied mom and pop bloggers, but even bigger names in the Mac community like Steven Frank of Panic (Transmit, CandyBar) have voiced their .Mac gripes, with plenty of others developing their own .Mac alternatives.While blogging about these topics can be a good thing, I had the idea this weekend that maybe we can do something a little more in the form of mass feedback and a petition. Our fearless leader Scott noted that online petitions don't often seem to have much impact, but I've always been a fan of at least trying to stand up and be heard.With that said, TUAW would like to introduce what we call a piece of 'viral feedback' for .Mac. The idea here is that you can copy and paste the statement below (after the jump) into the .Mac feedback form. Feel free to edit and tweak it to your desires. Credit TUAW or not. Whatever you do, just be sure to click send and tell a friend. Also, don't forget to play fair - don't click send 300 times, and keep the criticism clean. Online viral feedback petitions may not get very far, but darnit - it's fun to try. Click on to get your copy of the petition and submit it to .Mac.
The official .Mac blog wants you
Here's your chance, folks. The official .Mac Blog has put a call out to its readers. Specifically, they want to know what you want covered on the blog. Are you interested in learning about cool and little-known iWeb tricks? iDisk basics? Why .Mac doesn't offer what Google Apps for Your Domain does? Ok, so that last suggestion probably won't fly, but if your suggestion is selected your name will appear with the accompanying post on the blog. Good luck.
.Mac's slow death
Somebody call the ambulance, because .Mac is dying...and Google is the assassin (with a little help from his sidekick Firefox). Now I've been using .Mac since it was free and called "iTools." I was initially lured in by the convenience of iDisk, the mac.com email address and so on. Web bookmark and contact syncing are also super-convenient, and as time passed I made use of some of the other .Mac services, like iCal publishing and so on. Everything was fine. Not free anymore, but fine. Then Google introduced (free) Gmail with oodles more storage than .Mac offers, calendars and so on. To make a long story short, I'm about to give .Mac the boot for good. After the jump, a breakdown of why.
Widget Watch: QuickMail
QuickMail DashMail might not be the prettiest Dashboard widget I've ever seen, but it certainly is one of the most functional: it allows you to send a quick email from Gmail, .Mac, Yahoo, AOL or AIM, and even has the option for entering custom server settings for those who like to blaze their own trail. Simply enter the username and password of your chosen service on the back of the widget and you're off and running. It even remembers previous recipients (sorry, no Address Book integration as of yet) and subject lines; that's what those menu ticks are beside their respective fields.QuickMail DashMail is provided free from Scue Records.[UPDATE: Due to a company already naming an email client 'QuickMail', Scue Records has renamed their widget to DashMail.]
Save money on a .Mac account
We've been running all sorts of posts that offer .Mac workarounds like Jungle Disk (to replace iDisk), and MySync for keeping your Macs up to date with each others' data. But what if you still prefer .Mac - just not its price?There are a few ways to save money off the purchase or renewal of a .Mac account, and the first two on my list are Amazon and Buy.com. That's right boys and girls, the Apple Store isn't the only kid on the block pimping .Mac retail subscriptions. As of this writing, these sites are offering a current .Mac membership (good for either new signups or renewals) for $79.99 and $82.99, respectively, both with free shipping. That's a nice chunk of change off of Apple's rock-steady price of $99 (yes, we know .Mac is sometimes offered at $70 with the purchase of a new Mac). Amazon also offers the .Mac Online Service Family Pack (5 accounts) for $149.99, down from Apple's $179.99. These prices should also hold relatively steady, as I've been purchasing my .Mac renewals for a couple of years now from Amazon, always around the $80 price.While these prices obviously don't match the 'free' price tag of some of the workarounds for one .Mac feature or another, these should help make buying or renewing a .Mac account at least a little more attractive for those who've been on the fence about Apple's much-debated suite of online services.
Give names to your .Mac aliases in Mail.app with a simple AppleScript
I.heart.macosxhints.com. An enterprising reader of their site submitted an AppleScript that offers you a simple dialog for each .Mac alias you have, allowing you to enter custom names to be associated with each alias in Mail.app (something Apple badly, badly needs to add themselves). It works wonderfully, but here's a tip: make sure Mail.app isn't running when you use this script, as it's doing nothing more than editing Mail.app's preference file in order to add these names to each alias.Here is a link to the AppleScript, which I recommend you simply copy into a new window in Script Editor. Enjoy!
1Passwd - password/form manager lets Firefox use the Keychain
*Oh snap!* Agile Web Solutions has created a password and form manager extension for both Safari and Firefox that fixes one of my biggest gripes about Mozilla's flagship browser: it can store website passwords in Mac OS X's Keychain Access application. For those who haven't stumbled upon the wonders of the Keychain: it's a system-wide secure password manager that most other Mac OS X apps can use to store logins for things like websites and FTP access. 1Passwd is an extension that, amongst other features, lets Firefox join the Keychain party party so you can have one secure, centralized area for managing (and backing up) your logins. This also means that if you have a .Mac account, any passwords you enter into Firefox will sync between your Macs. But 1Passwd doesn't stop at handle just your login information. Check out the full feature list to see everything else it can do for both Safari and Firefox.If beer could be sent virtually through PayPal, I'd send Agile Web Solutions a twelve pack; this brings Firefox one step closer to being a true Mac OS X browser. 1Passwd is currently in a third beta release, and those who opt to test the beta and offer their email addresses will receive a discount off its (somewhat steep) $29.95 price.
iComment 4.1 adds comments, trackbacks, webstats to iWeb sites
iComment, as we've mentioned before, allows you to add trackbacks and detailed webstats to iWeb sites, and even comment systems to iWeb sites hosted somewhere besides .Mac. Implementing some of these features can be a bit clunky, as you have to sign up for external services to help drive some of them, however, if you just gotta have comments and webstats the latest version of iComment (4.1) is probably the best way to get the job done.A demo is available, and a license will cost a mere $9.95.
Super easy access to your iDisk's public folder
The official .Mac blog has an article describing a super simple method of accessing a subscriber's iDisk public folder. Simply point your browser to "idisk.mac.com/membername-Public" (where "membername" is, well, your .Mac member name). Also, depending on how that folder's owner has permissions set up, a visitor can even upload a file via the generated web page. Very nice indeed.Thanks, Lee!
Is a .Mac update on the way?
Eagle-eyed .Mac users may have noticed the following message on the .Mac main page:"All .Mac web-based services will be down for maintenance from 10:00PM PDT to 1:00AM PDT on 4/27/06, including Mail on the web, Address Book, Bookmarks and HomePage. All other .Mac services are unaffected."Could a nice update be on the way? I know...it must be the exclusive Dashboard widgets! Finally!Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Tips on removing apps from the Sync Services database
If you've ever installed an app that can take advantage of .Mac syncing services and then stopped using it or removed it for one reason or another, you might have noticed that its listing in the .Mac System Preferences pane still lingers. This could be a nuisance to neat-freaks, but it could also cause complications in some cases.Fortunately, a post at macosxhints has done some digging into the matter and revealed a few clues to cleaning up the mess. It turns out that Panic, makers of Transmit, offer a Terminal tip for removing Transmit from the .Mac sync services list. This inspired the macosxhints poster to do some digging to see about other services, so check out their post if you're looking to do some .Mac sync services spring cleaning.
Share your .Mac stories
The official .Mac blog has posted a few stories written by .Mac subscribers, describing just how they use .Mac services in their day-to-day lives. A pro chef, a dance studio owner and a professor each share their tales. The stories are pretty interesting, especially the professor who used his iDisk to save precious data while under the threat of hurricane Katrina. The best part is that Apple is currently looking for users to be the subjects of future articles. If you'd like to share your story, fill out the form found here. Good luck!
Backup files to Backpack with Automator
Non Stop Mac has put together an ingenious how-to on creating an Automator action to backup files to Backpack. It's a simple process that uses the genius of Backpack's page-specific email addresses to email files that are sitting in a specific folder. Head over and check out their post for the full details, as it really isn't difficult to create a system for keeping your stuff backed up, online and accessible. However, don't forget: free Backpack accounts (to my knowledge) don't allow for hosting files or images.I actually have an amendment to offer up for Non Stop Mac's Backpack backup process. While I haven't tested this out yet, it should work in theory: instead of saving this system out as an Automator action, I bet you could save it as a folder action, then simply attach it to a folder of stuff you want to back up. In a sense, this might be a basic, one-way iDisk: you could (theoretically) save items to this folder, which would then automatically be emailed to Backpack. If you try any of this out, feel free to share your thoughts on the experience.[via Backpack blog]
.Mac syncing UI silliness
Today's "what were you thinking, Apple?" is brought to you by the .Mac System Preference pane, iSync and that "Sync Services wants to sync more than X% of your items" popup window.In case you can't figure out the silliness that is the image I've included with this post (and I don't blame you), it's a combination of the .Mac System Preference Pane (on left), the .Mac tab of iSync (bottom right), and iSync's preferences that allow me to chose the Data Change Alert percentage threshold (top left).I recently added about 200 notes to Yojimbo on my iMac that I exported out of an old copy of StickyBrain a while ago. On my PowerBook, this obviously triggered the .Mac Sync warning of "you're about to change more than 5% of your data, are you sure you want to do this?" dialog. I then thought to myself: "hmm, since I change a lot of my .Mac stuff on a regular basis, maybe I should increase that percentage so this dialog doesn't bother me again." I haven't done this in a while, but since I came up through Jaguar and Panther I was used to tweaking .Mac stuff in iSync. So I strolled on over to the .Mac tab in iSync to - oh but wait! As you can see in the bottom right of my screenshot, it sounds like iSync is no longer used to manage .Mac information. Woops, my mistake. Maybe I should open up the .Mac System Preference pane to - wait a minute... I don't see any place in that preference pane to tweak the Data Change Alert setting!By now you probably get where I'm going with this, so I'll just leave you with a question: how on earth did this happen, Apple? With Tiger, you said that you unified and improved the .Mac user experience... by sending me to three different locations and preference systems to get this figured out?Here's hoping Leopard brings with it the Mac-daddy (haha) of updates to one of your most-pimped features of OS X.
Handy iWeb tip on the .Mac blog
I believe I've found the perfect use for iWeb. I've used it to create a family site for all of my far-flung relatives. They couldn't care less about trackback pings, comments, validation or any of that stuff. They just want to see cute pictures and videos of the kids, and I want to spend as little time as possible maintaining the "kids' site." iWeb is the perfect answer.Up until now, I've been manually deleting the caption under each new photo that I add (usually something like "IMG003.JPG"). Thanks to this tip from the official .Mac blog, I don't have to do that anymore. Select a photo in an image gallery and open the inspector. A slider appears under the heading "Caption Height." Slide it all the way to the left and the captions are gone. I like it.
The Office upgrade ate two Address Books, or: why I don't touch Microsoft products
So y'know that Office update that came out a few days ago? The one that Spotlight-ified Entourage and added syncing abilities with iCal and Address Book? Yea um, it ate not only my Address Book but my fiancé's which I was subscribed to through .Mac.Syncing setup is brainless and painless - there's a new preference section in Entourage in which you can individually enable syncing with iCal, Address Book and/or Notes through .Mac. Simple enough. A little while after I checked those options, the .Mac syncing engine offered a dialog asking if I would like to merge items between Entourage and Apple's apps, or if I would like to overwrite Entourage. I chose to overwrite, since I didn't have info in Entourage's database and I was simply curious about the app.Somehow, some way, even though I told the engine to overwrite Entourage, my Address Book magically increased to 499 contacts after the first sync operation. Maybe it picked up all those extra friends from MySpace or something during the sync, because last I checked I only had 326 contacts in Address Book. Upon investigation, some of my contacts had split into separate cards, with information either duplicated or obliterated. Even better: I am subscribed to my fiancé's Address Book (with editing rights) through .Mac, as we're helping to keep each other's contacts up to date in preparation for sending out invitations. The Entourage sync not only mangled a seemingly random collection of her contacts, but it blew away all of her groups.Now before you fire off a snarling comment: yes, we have backups. I've turned into quite the backup nazi - but this post is more of a complaint and a warning about this new Entourage feature. Who knows if the mishap was the result of a .Mac syncing error or bug, but - call me biased if you gotta - I have a sneaking suspicion this had to do with an Office update that wasn't quite finished. I've never had an issue syncing anything else through .Mac, and that includes a lot of 3rd party stuff like Yojimbo, SOHO Notes and Transmit favorites.So, boys and girls, the moral of the story is a classic: back your stuff up - and often (sub-moral: don't trust Microsoft, even if it is software from their Mac Business Unit).
Apple releases .Mac-exclusive iChat icon sets
Sure, they aren't the exclusive Dashboard widgets we've heard so much about, but Apple has released 11 sets of iChat icons for .Mac members. Included are the familiar chat bubbles (pictured at right), Japanese stamps, sticky notes, status indicators and illustrations. According to Apple, they're only going to be made available until June 1st. The complete collection of 218 icons can be downloaded as a single 640kb image. So grab them if you can, and spiff up your copy of iChat.
Delicious vs. .Mac bookmark syncing
Dave Chartier and I were talking about Del.icio.us earlier today, in the secret TUAW offices in Reese Witherspoon's guest house. He loves Delicious, and I had never used it. For years now, I've been happily chugging along with .Mac's bookmark syncing feature, and my own organization of the bookmark bar. Yet, at Dave's suggestion, I gave Delicious a try. After installing Delibar and exporting my bookmarks with Safarilicious, I was ready to go.The Delicious Pros First of all, it's very easy to add a bookmark. Just add the droplet to your menubar and give it a click. Next, the tagging is just great. By adding tags to my bookmarks (like "apple," "blog," "daily" or "family") I can easily find the site (or group of sites) I'm looking for. The social aspect is also very appealing. If I want to find sites that other users have tagged as "apple" or "tech," that's a snap. Finally, I have access to my bookmarks from any internet enabled computer, on any operating system. You can't beat that. I can even add bookmarks to my collection from any of those random machines. Sounds great, and it is. But I'm not going to use it. Here's why.The Delicious Cons This may sound petty, but it's huge to me. No "open in tabs." I keep my bookmarks highly organized, and I have several folders that categorize links into "Daily," "Apple," "WIN," etc. The first thing I do each morning is right-click on the "Daily" folder and select "Open in tabs." I then move from tab to tab, closing ones I'm not interested in and keeping the good ones open for more thorough inspection later. While Delibar allows for greater organization than a plain old browser does, it won't allow for my "open in tabs" routine. Plus, it only lets me open one link at a time, and each in a new window! That is totally unacceptable.Also, I'm not going to keep a web page open just because it contains my bookmarks. The bookmark bar was invented to extinguish this annoyance. Now, I understand that I can subscribe to Delicious RSS feeds, and that's great, but I really like to have my sites open in a series of tabs. It's just my preferred way to work.What I Like About .MacWell, several of the Delicious pros are a part of .Mac's bookmark sync. I can access my bookmarks from any internet enabled computer by going to bookmarks.mac.com, and I can add a new link to any of the folders I created on my Mac at home from the computer I happen to be using (be it a Mac, a Windows machine or what have you). Aside from the social aspect of Delicious, this is what's most appealing to me. Speaking of social bookmarking...What .Mac Could Learn from DeliciousNo tagging. Once you've created a bunch of tags, you miss them when they're gone. For highly organized neatnicks like me, creating and utilizing tags upon tags is very satisfying. I just don't get that with Safari. Also, the social aspect of Delicious-that is, the ability to browse other people's bookmarks-is way cool and something that would be a great feature of .Mac. I'd love to see this implemented some day.Conclusion Delicious is fantastic, but it simply doesn't fit my personal style of working. I'm not knocking it in any way, but I just like to be able to "categorize" sites as either "interesting," "follow-up" or "ditch it" on the fly. Plus, aside from the tagging and sharing, .Mac lets me do what I want to do with my bookmarks: Access and add to them from any computer. For now at least, I'm sticking with .Mac.
.Mac family pack upgrade available
Here's an offer from the .Mac team for Mac-wielding famililes. According to the official .Mac Blog, a family upgrade is available. For an additional $80US, you get four additional accounts, each with its own email address and a combined 250MB of storage/email space. Plus, an iDisk folder will be created that is automatically shared among family members. Check it out.
