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64 Comments
- Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -3/+37I happily pay 29 for .Mac as is, but 99 is a joke! And no Apple, don't keep it at 99 and give me more stuff, just make it cheaper.
- ClassicJBC, on 10/12/2007, -5/+39Yes, it's so needed that whoever does it for $10,000 is getting cheated. Charge $10/year and be a millionaire or take the $10,000 prize and... have $10,000.
- neosublime, on 10/12/2007, -7/+36This is so needed.
- gmprunner, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I think Apple just signed up.
- NiLeS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This isn't $10,000...yet.
The guy's uncle will *match* the first $10,000 (as far as I can tell), but it's only up to $3540 right now. - Konquest, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Link directly to the challenge site:
http://www.notmacchallenge.com/ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I think that if Apple made .Mac a free service for Mac users, it would be a great selling point.
- Petronski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Ten grand? LOL
$1000 to anyone who creates a new work-alike alternative to the airplane. - thatgirlismine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5they already did. it was a great feature, but it ran at such a loss that they decided to charge for it
- BlueLaser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4$10,000 doesn't seem like nearly enough money to create a .mac replacement. A good service (that doesn't die from the digg effect the moment it's announced) will need a solid infrastructure (read: servers, content switches, bandwidth, and last (but not least) a reliable software interface). $10,000 may be enough to pay someone(s) to create the interface, but it won't go very far in paying for much else.
Neat idea, but I don't think this is the kinda of thing that will come out of the community. Let's just hope Platypus/GDrive/.Google becomes more than an urban legend soon. - FyreFiend, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Linh:
Syncing is the main reason a lot of people, myself included, have .Mac. Syncing everything (bookmarks, address, calendars, etc) between a Mac desktop and laptop is a pain in the butt without .Mac and Apple knows it. That's why they continue to charge the insane $99 a year. I hope someone can get a replacement working that is as easy as .Mac Sync is now. - wastern, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3there is SpyMac.com, but after their last 2 updates its really started to suck. It has so much potential and they went and screwed it all up my making it a myspace clone of sorts and removing the whole 'mac community' feeling of the site.
Not to mention the poorly implemented galleries that are impossible to browse and the odd proprietary forum setup - 4NDr01D, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I wish there were more benefit for the $100 fee
tie it in with the iPhone and iTV services
sync me all over and on the move, provide backup,
and that new video voice mail messaging - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Agreed. For $100, I should be getting at least 20 GB of storage.
- mediaphile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@yabos:
wow, so you'll pay $100 extra just to have less functionality because firefox doesn't fit in with your style. that's ***** ridiculous.
ever heard of skinning? my firefox looks pretty damn close to safari, and also works ten times better. - wastern, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3there is no way a 3rd party app can integrate as seamlessly as Apple has done it. There are button right in all the iApps to upload things to .Mac, a 3rd party can't just modify installed apps from Apple
- Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's what all .Mac users a feckin' hoping for!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have no problems with .Mac except for the price. It works on my desktop and laptop and at work. everything syncs without a problem, not that i haven't had syncing problems in the past, but it seems to work as advertised over the last 6 mos. or so.
i'm guessing an open source version would be good if it was super secure and didn't look as bad as gmail (which i love for it's functionality though) - mediaphile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@wastern:
there are programs that have buttons that go straight to their web features, and firefox works just as good as safari for that. this program would just need to intercept the .mac calls.
the real problem is that if you create a service that so closely mirrors .mac, then i'm pretty sure you're going to infringe on their patents. gotta be careful with that one. - hfxadv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+110gigs of network storage with no advertisements...plus full os x syncing.
- mediaphile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1that's a lot of work to get that stuff up and running. i think that's the whole point of this challenge; there are already alternatives to .mac, but they're looking for something just as simple and reliable.
- Linh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3you get a .mac email address.
you get a web drive
you get syncing (fairly seamless).
and probably a lot more reliable. I wouldn't trust anything important on an overseller like dreamhost.
however, with that said, .mac is a ripoff in it's current form. Apple needs to innovate, drop the price, and then maybe I'll get a .mac address. I already have my own domain tho, and gmail rocks - alex711, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Bluelaser:
The challenge isn't asking any particular service to host everyone, it's asking for a solution that lets anyone setup their own server or utilize a WebDAV server they already pay for. Ideally, we would see companies like Box.net or BlueHost offer a "notMac Configured WebDAV Server" for like $30 a year or something.
Given what is already out there (see the post below for Do It Yourself Dot Mac), I think several thousand dollars could very well be enough incentive for someone to simplify whats already out there, then add more features (to satisfy the requirements). - rworne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It was a free service way back when it was called iTools.
- Polymira, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2try the firefox 3.0 alpha for osx, you will be pleased.
- catmistake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.tnpi.net/wiki/Do_It_Yourself_.Mac
a nice hack - mediaphile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it does if you use picasa and the web album feature. then there's google's writely for all your documents. and google browser sync for all your firefox bookmarks.
that's what i love about google. i switched from pc's to macs, and didn't really have hardly anything at all to transfer between the two. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I am a subscriber to .Mac and this IS the final year, guaranteed. Way too damn expensive given the alts.
- akatsuki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hmmm... I don't think that it would be impossible as it stands in its current form. What would be the complicated part is setting up the web access, but you could probably reskin existing projects like RoundCube and PHP Calendar to create the web access.
The harder part would be 2-way syncing which Apple doesn't really have. You can't edit address book entries online and have them "magically" appear on your home computer.
Also, it would be nice if they extended bookmark syncing to other browsers like Firefox. Google's extension is great for syncing between different copies of Firefox, but I think it would be better if you could extend that functionality to other browsers as well.
Another thought would be to "decentralize" some of the online choices. For example, what if bookmarks synced through del.icio.us and contacts through Plaxo(albeit with a better interface than they currently provide)? That would be the best solution as it would leverage existing know-how pretty well. If you cut a deal with them, they might even let you reskin their sites for this purpose to some sort of unified look.
Otherwise, my view is $10,000 buys quite a few years of .mac, so it doesn't seem worth it unless you get something better. - JoeTech, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Here's where Apple needs to get their act together:
CHARGE MONTHLY, not annually.
Or, do like the pr0n and have different models w/ different discounts (weekly, monthly, annually, etc).
We belly-ache about it costing "$99 a year" when we don't stop and remind ourselves that we pay the likes of $500 a year for other services (phone, cable, etc).
I too have been paying since they switched over to charging the $99 per year (and I always re-purchase .Mac thru Amazon.com for $79), and I don't have a problem with it. I rocks, it's a service that I'm happy paying $8.25 a month (actually $5.75 in my case) for the service. - thenome, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is a neat idea, and will be usefully to many people.
- alex711, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Felix:
I am one of the 2 people on notmacchallenge.com to setup the challenge. We are aware of Matt's Do It Yourself Dot Mac, and are in fact really really glad it is out there (I refer to it on the notMac forums frequently as reference material). When we launched the challenge, both Kent (the other person running the challenge) and I knew the DIY .Mac existed, but neither of us had the technical know-how in terms of implementing it.
We spoke with Matt about his take on the challenge before we released it, and he personally thought it was interesting as well. His DIY goes deep into how to do it (proof of concept), but isn't practical for 95% of users. We are hoping to solve that with this challenge. - FishPoisonCon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"I really don't like the way Firefox looks on the Mac, it's just too out of place and I bet a lot of Mac users agree."
not quite. you see, there's these little things called "themes" ...try brushed 0.9.9.7 or any of OS integration themes. ;^) - Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1(to above) Just to let you know right off the bat, I'm an Apple fan. However I'm not a .Mac fan, and it's purely because of the pricing, it's simply too steep! Try Google to see how many agree with me, cause it's a heck of a lot of Mac users. I'd like to add that in Ireland (where I live) .Mac costs €99, that equates to roughly $130, and for that your get 1Gig of storage. Frankly I think Apple should bring out a Mail .Mac for $20, and lower the full .Mac price to $39 at the very least. And from now on all new Mac buyers should get .Mac for free.
- alex711, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nobody is asking anyone to run free servers or provide unlimited bandwith. What the challenge is looking for is someone to rework the .Mac services to be routed to a host of the user's choosing.
Example: I have my own WebDAV server that I already pay for. I want to use this server as my .Mac alternative. The challenge is setup so that I can easily install the notMac alternative on my Mac without having to severely hack through the terminal (which I can't do at all), and host it on my server. - JSchwage, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Heck yes. I just hope they also make it available for Windows and Linux too. Then you'd be able to sync all your stuff between Macs and PCs.
- spiffyjeff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's the nature of Open Source, if not immediately, then eventually.
- t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh, yeah, and not to forget that it's slowly being infiltrated by MS fanboys for some reason now...
- an0nym0us, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1while they are at it, make it multi-platform. ;)
- rackbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@yabos: I know exactly what you mean. I wanted to move to Firefox because I kept running into javascripts here and there that didn't work with Safari, but the look kinda bugged me. Then I found this page: http://www.takebacktheweb.org and finally made the switch. With the Grapple UNO theme installed, FF looks almost identical to Safari.
- abreviks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0MySync (http://www.mildmanneredindustries.com/mysync/) can sync any info that makes itself available to Tiger's Sync Services, which is pretty much everything that uses .Mac. Mail, Bookmarks, Keychains, etc. For the iDisk, I just use WebDAV storage (which is all iDisk is anyway) from another provider.
- rhainman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Google Browser sync on firefox synchronizes my bookmarks across any computer running Firefox (Mac or PC). So does the latest beta of the Google Toolbar. You can use Google Calendar to sync your schedule. You can even use a GMail hack program like GDisk to host your files. So there isn't much point in paying Apple $99 a year for an outdated service at an outdated price point.
- jtjdt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@Ireland - "I happily pay 29 for .Mac as is, but 99 is a joke! And no Apple, don't keep it at 99 and give me more stuff, just make it cheaper."
Technically .Mac is $8.25 a month and $5.75 a month with the current discount. How is .Mac pricing "a joke"? - FelixDing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0check it out please: http://www.tnpi.biz/computing/mac/tips/idisk/
- forrestgrant, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4ummmmmmm try google services. gmail, google calandar, contact lists, lots of storage space.
Google calandar even interfaces with your ical calandars.
It doesnt look exactly the same and of course all of the features arent there (like syncing photo albums, web pages and podcasts) But its free - diggapleeeze, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1From the site:
"Q: How do I know you're not going to keep just the money?
A: You've got my word. Every contribution is listed on the Supporters Page in order to provide as much transparency as possible. Also, if I don't pay the winner, I'm sure someone will track me down and confirm that I'm a real person with a front door I have to walk out of each day who's adverse to getting hit upside the head with a baseball bat."
Ha, ha. yeah, I trust you. Sounds like a great scam. - spiffyjeff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@yabos
~/library/safary/bookmarks (going from memory, expect minor errors)
copy/paste that directory or file to whichever computer you want. Sure, it's manual, or you could pay me $79/yr to ssh and do it for ya. - catmistake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The main problem with this hack is the necessity to use a DNS to trick your computer into pointing at your webdav server instead of the .mac servers. Because of this, its likely that you can't use this hack in any other environment than at home (no corporation or university would allow their DNS servers to lie like that).
If the location of the config file for .mac could be found (assuming there is one, and its not just all hard coded and compiled into the OS), and reconfigured locally to point somewhere other than the .mac servers, it would make this hack much more elegant, removing the need for a DNS to provide the necessary subterfuge. - spiffyjeff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0also, the article has been interpreted wrong, by the blogger, and the digger. This is a pot of money that looks like it will just grow and grow, past $10K. Basically, if donations reach $10K, the pot will be $20K
"Q: Why are you *matching* the *first $10,000*?"
A: ".......and to make it more interesting and give the prize a running start, *he’d throw $10,000 into the prize pool.*" - akira117, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I'm not a mac user, but what is so special about a .mac vs say.....Dreamhost.com?
(Or any host really) -
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