Okay, I read, yesterday, one, two, three articles about the “trouble with .mac” and while there’s much to agree with, I can’t say I’m a dissatisfied customer.
I’ve only had my .mac account for under two years now, so I don’t have the previlege of knowing what it was like to have a free account, but I am thankful for a program that features iWeb and iDisk features. For my small photography and videography business, my .mac account has been very useful. To be honest, I was about to abandoned it before Steve Jobs announced iWeb last January. At the end of his Mac World presentation, I walked straight past the Intel Macs on display and headed over to see again the demonstration of iWeb in action. I knew the program was nothing short of a good temporary solution to my web development problems.
Sure, one day I’ll create my own Dreamweaver website with all the fancy flash capabilities, but the ability to have complete iLife applications integration via iWeb and with my .mac account is worth 99 bucks a year for my small business.
I currently use my .mac account to post my ten page business site, a different .mac site of 8-10 client pages full of wedding albums and Quicktime video excerpts, and I even still have a few personal family pages developed with those horrid, pre-iWeb templates. With all this use, I manage to still have about 160mb of storage left. Not much, and I would certainly like more. But by deleting some old files and pages, I could keep my sites current with no problem.
Ironically, though, in my defense of .mac, I think that while Apple does what seems like a good job of gearing iWeb and .mac for consumer and educator users, it could do a lot more to provide resources for small business users.
iWeb could include some flash templates, a client feedback template, a way to check profiles about traffic on .mac sites (I’m not talking about counters!) and even some templates to help create an entire business identity using iWeb and other iLife publications. I’m talking business cards, postcards, brochures, letter heads and the like–all having a matching style with business oriented iWeb templates.
I think there are plenty of small business consultants, realtors, accountants, designers, photographers, writers, and the like who do or could benefit from a .mac account. Why Apple doesn’t make a more direct appeal to small business owners to use .mac is beyond me. Most people running a small business don’t have the time to layout an original website and keep it maintained. But a website, of course, is essential. And being able to update it on a regular basis without having to pay a web designer is also a must.
We all know that many creative professionals use iLife programs to do their work. There are those who might not admit that they laid out their letter head using Pages or produce wedding videos using iMovie, but they/we do. And typically most clients can’t tell whether you used iPhoto or Photoshop to edit a picture. They’re just concerned with the quality of the final product.
The same goes for iWeb and .mac. If Apple keeps improving the style of iWeb templates and provides better and more services, I can’t foresee a “death of .mac.” .mac may not have all the web based Google accessories like Gmail and Calendar, but it does have the style that wins over Google’s programs any day, especially for those of us using .mac to reach our clients.
Finally, there’s plenty of complaints about .mac email and synchronization features. Many of those complaints are probably well warranted, but for I don’t use .mac mailing system because I think Apple hasn’t made web based email hosting a top priority. And why should it. There’s too many other email clients that do a much better job. They should stick with what they do best, and that is produce good useful software programs.
While I’m not the best Apple fortune teller, I anticipate .mac and its related features to get only better. The upcoming (Leopard) Stationary feature in Mail will be a great compliment to .mac and iWeb. Hopefully there will be a few business templates thrown in the mix. Plus, I think iWeb will of course get some additional features that will make it shine even more and solve, at least temporarily, web solutions for business owners like myself.
So will there be a funeral for .mac? I don’t think so.
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