Dave Marsh's Profile

Edit: "There's nothing wrong with others using..." vice "avoiding using..."

If you want to view your iCal calendar from anywhere using your .Mac account, just publish it. Click on the calendar you want to publish in iCal, then go to the menu bar and select Calendar/Publish. This will open a slip that will give the confirmation of its being published, then two viewing options. One is: webcal://ical.mac.com/your.Macname/calendarname for giving to others to view in their iCal as a subscribed-to calendar (great for keeping up on family member calendar events) and the other for general viewing is: http:/ical.mac.com/your.Macname/calendarname which can be viewed by anyone from a browser, so just email it to them if they don't have access to iCal (e.g., Windows users). The great thing about the .Mac package is all the tight integration. I don't use anywhere near the total services available, and find its convenience quite worth the ~$8/month fee. And my .Mac weblog is just as responsive as my old "free" weblog, and much easier to edit, so if you find .Mac services sluggish, I'd dig a bit deeper to find out why.

While you can certainly find comparable services for much of .Mac's stuff, I like having it all from one site. But, the key reason I keep .Mac is for the syncing among my multiple Macs. I routinely add a calendar item at work, and within the hour it's on all my Macs, and vice versa. Today, I added a Contact record on my iPhone, and when I next sync it, it will also populate the Address Book on all my Macs. Syncing has been a MAJOR convenience for me, and is the primary reason I keep my .Mac account operational. It alone is well worth the annual subscription fee to me (~$8/month). Additionally, I keep my .Mac iDisk mounted on each of my Macs, and it syncs in the background hourly, so key files/data saved there are available, again, on all my other Macs when I next use them, and since they're also saved on an Apple server, they're backed up off site automatically. This is also an incredibly useful and valuable service. Time Machine is great for local use, but having the automatic backup of key files/documents to a professional server farm is quite a comfort to me. While I've also played around with the online blog capability, and occasionally with other portions of the .Mac package, the above are the compelling services for me. Of course, the mutltimedia features are what Apple touts to entice new customers, but the above are the reasons I continue to use .Mac, and I would be quite distraught should Apple discontinue it.

Of course I meant the 24 hour clock begins when you start the movie, not that you have to start viewing the movie in the first 24 hours.

I think one reason we legacy Mac users used to push back so hard when attacked by Windows users was that we felt we had to. The survival of the Mac was seriously in jeopardy and that was unacceptable to those of us who simply refused to move to Windows, so we felt compelled to share the Mac's strengths with any Windows user we came upon. Today, the Mac's survival is no longer in question. We're using a world-class operating system with a world-class user interface, and more and more people are beginning to notice and test the waters. So, I agree with your premise. I'm no longer concerned that Macs will continue to be available for the foreseeable future, and so I no longer care if Windows users are willing to deal with their day-to-day issues that I would find unacceptable. It's their choice. I still have my own occasional Mac issues to deal with, and I don't have to call upon IT geeks to resolve them.

Insightful, and explains why iTunes and the iPod took off.

I suspect the rapid rise in the number of Apple customers recently is playing a role here. Apple has had a reputation for high quality and customer service for many years, so any new customer having a problem of any kind will probably be sorely disappointed. Expectations matter in how people rate a product or the company that produces it. An issue that probably wouldn't wouldn't raise an eyebrow with a run-of-the-mill company jumps up and bites the company whose customers expect a much better experience. So, while I agree that the slippage noted in the survey is worth watching, I suspect that Apple's recently increased customer base and their disappointment with unexpected issues is also having an impact.