What Can .Mac Do for You?

Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) multi-facted .Mac service is a conundrum, a riddle in and of itself. What is .Mac, exactly? What can it do for me? Is it worth it?

The problem is that .Mac is more than one thing -- it's e-mail, photo and video sharing, Web site hosting, backup, and a synchronization tool all in one. .Mac is a suite of Internet Web services where the sum of its parts creates a value far greater than any individual piece.

Yet, most of the features found in .Mac can also be found for free on other sites, and while not all of the features have direct one-to-one comparisons, they're still free. In that light, how can .Mac's hefty US$99.95 annual sticker price compete? Is .Mac something the average user should consider, or is it really geared toward power users?

The answer is that .Mac is neither perfect for average users nor geared for power users, and yet it's good for both kinds of users -- as long as the user is a Mac owner. The answer also depends on the person, whether they're willing to spend money on ease-of-use and integration or if they'd rather go elsewhere for dirt-cheap alternatives. There's lots of pieces to .Mac, so a closer look is in order.


.Mac Mail
E-mail accounts are freely available online, with offerings from Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) , Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) leading the pack. Why would an average user even bother with paying for the service? Most free e-mail is Web-based, with accessibility driven through a browser, but Google's Gmail service lets you configure your account to work with both IMAP (Internet message access protocol) and POP (post office protocol), which lets you use a standalone e-mail application client like Mac OS X's Mail, Mozilla's Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook (or, for Mac users, MS Entourage).

The advantage of a standalone e-mail client is efficiency -- it helps you process e-mail much faster than Web-based alternatives, and they let you access multiple accounts via a single interface. There's no pesky ads in your e-mail messages, and there are no ads poking up or flashing around your client e-mail app. Still, you can create a Google Gmail account and configure your Mac OS Mail client to access it via POP or IMAP, and you can avoid using a Web browser altogether.

If you have an iPhone, you can use your .Mac e-mail, but you can also do the same with Gmail or Yahoo e-mail. If you're away from your Mac, you can check your .Mac mail through a Web browser interface from most any browser, and the IMAP protocol will keep your Web browsing activities in sync with your mail client. Handy, but it's still not exclusive to .Mac.

Essentially, the only thing that .Mac-based e-mail has going for it is that there's no ads to irritate you or get in your way. However, that's hardly exclusive either. Assuming you can find yourself a domain name that's not already taken, you could buy your own domain and pay a monthly service fee to a Web site and e-mail hosting service at a cost that's competitive with .Mac's sticker price. Buying your own domain name isn't that hard. However, for e-mail newbies, .Mac is about as easy and integrated with Mac OS X as it gets, making it perfect for those who are willing to pay, who want ease of use and flexibility, and who -- perhaps most importantly -- don't want ads.

Web Site Hosting
.Mac comes with 10 GB of e-mail and file storage -- plenty of space for most people, though it's upgradeable to a max of 30 GB with 300 GB of monthly data transfer. The major benefit of .Mac Web hosting is its integration with iWeb, which ships free with any new Mac. iWeb is an application that lets you built Web sites by dragging and dropping photos and text into dozens of sharp-looking Web site templates. iWeb is super easy to use, and once you've created a set of Web pages, you can publish them to your .Mac Web site with a single click.

Apple has also added simple integration that lets you drop in Google Maps, Google AdSense ads, as well as other widgets and HTML (hypertext markup language) snippets that can, for instance, embed a YouTube video into your site. iWeb also includes a rudimentary blogging template, and if you do own your own domain name, you can use it with your .Mac site, though the domain must be registered through a third-party registrar.

.Mac's Web site hosting is easily integrated with Mac OS X and Mac applications like iPhoto, but you can also use iWeb to build a Web site that's hosted elsewhere and still easily import photos from iPhoto and create cool slide shows. .Mac is good for basic Web sites and doesn't include the features or support you might need if your site becomes very popular or you have serious commercial interests in online sales.

As for the low-end free side, MySpace and Facebook are free -- and easy enough to use that millions of people, kids included, have basically built their own Web pages.

Photo Sharing
.Mac's Web Gallery feature makes it easy to show off your photos and video online. It's as simple as selecting an event in iPhoto '08 and clicking Web Gallery. The integration is slick and functional, works with Aperture, and even lets you add password protection to control access. You can let visitors download high-resolution images or entire albums -- or they can add their own photos to your albums from their browser or via e-mail. Whenever new photos are added, .Mac will automatically sync them back to your iPhoto '08 library. A .Mac Web Gallery can also be viewed with iPhones and Apple TVs.

Of course, Flickr can do much of the same as .Mac's Web Gallery, and the basic Flickr is free. High-volume Flickr use, as in unlimited storage, uploads, and bandwidth, as well as ad-free browsing and sharing, can be had for $24.95 for a one-year pro Flickr account.

.Mac Groups
With .Mac, you can also create a group Web site complete with a group e-mail address so that a message sent to the group address is delivered to everyone. The group can share a calendar, have their own Web Gallery album, and the members don't all have to be .Mac members -- they can even be PC users. Ease of use is king with .Mac Groups, but again, there are free alternatives like Ning.com, which lets you create your own social network.

Another alternative is Google Groups, which is free but ad-supported. It can do much of what you can do with .Mac, but you're going to see Google ads.

Easy Sync
With .Mac, you can also keep multiple Macs in sync with one another so that your bookmarks, calendars, contacts, widgets and even your Dock is the same across your Leopard-based Macs. It's quite handy, unless you only have one Mac. Even so, there are other solutions out there that do similar things, like the brand-new upstart site SyncWizard.

SyncWizard not only promises to keep your devices and data in sync, but also gives you an off-site place to store and back up your important files. That brings up .Mac's iDisk.

iDisk in the Cloud
iDisk is like a personal hard disk available online. It's integrated into the Finder in Mac OS X, so like all .Mac features, it's easy to utilize. It's a good way to share files up to 2 GB in size -- simply drag the files from your Mac onto your iDisk's Public folder and the transfer begins. Want password protection so that only a select few can snag the files online? It's easily added.

There are alternatives, of course. For online storage and backup, Mozy offers 2 GB of free and secure online storage, and $4.95 per month will get you unlimited online backups. Is it as easy as iDisk? No way -- but it's free.

Back to My Mac
There is one feature in .Mac that's hard to beat for cost or ease-of-use, and that's Back to My Mac. Just like it sounds, Back to My Mac lets you connect to any remote Leopard-based Mac via .Mac. If you're at work, for example, you can use Back to My Mac to snag a file you want that you left on your home-based Mac.

The only downside is that it only works with Macs running Leopard, and they must be configured for use with the same .Mac account. There are other solutions that accomplish similar sharing tasks and ways to connect two remote Macs, but none are as easy as using .Mac to do it.

The Sum of .Mac's Pieces and Parts
Overall, .Mac is handy but hardly necessary in a world full of alternative Web apps. The easy integration with Mac OS X ensures that it's seamless, easy-to-use, and like the Mac itself, downright elegant. You can get most of the same features from a handful of disparate sites for free -- but is it all worth the hassle? Is it worth creating user accounts on the other sites, remembering all your logins and passwords, and spreading your personal data into yet more databases that are owned by yet more companies?

For many, free is best. For more advanced users and professionals, .Mac is good, but pros are just as likely to pay for best-of-breed solutions than a possibly underpowered all-in-one .Mac service. But for whom is .Mac a worthwhile solution?

The answer, of course, is any Mac-loving Apple enthusiast who values stylish ease of use over ad-supported freebies ... and can spare a hundred bucks a year.