I’m massively disappointed in .Mac Mail’s lack of anti-spam tools. I primarily utilize the website and over the last few months I have seen a huge increase in the amount of spam in the account I use. I’ve noticed on your .Mac discussion boards there are numerous and voiciferous complaints regarding the increased rate of spam in .Mac accounts.
As a systems administrator, I am very mindful of avoiding spam and know how best to avoid spam. I have been a .Mac member since it was free. Now, I understand that it is foolish to pay $99 for the right to have a year’s worth of email, a website, and an iDisk account, when I could get more robust versions of most of this stuff for free somewhere else. It is particularly for me to pay for this since I don’t use a Mac much anymore. I support Macs some, but they’re no longer my bread and butter. Still, I have been a long-time user of your products and I enjoy having the same address and being associated with Apple in some way.
If there is not some work done to address this, I will think twice before renewing my subscription. I think there are others out there who would agree, after some of these complaints on your discussion boards are the kinds of things one has been able to find on Dell customer service discussion boards for some time now. And that part of their business isn’t going so well, now, is it?
I recognize that .Mac represents these days just a tiny portion of your overall revenue stream. It’s not sexy like iTunes or the iPod. Or at least it isn’t anymore. .Mac is becoming more and more like my old ‘93 Honda Accord. Useful, but definitely showing its age.
Of course, .Mac isn’t a ‘93 Honda Accord, it was, at least, an initial cornerstone to the whole Mac lifestyle idea you had envisioned. Now, Mr. Jobs, might I respectfully suggest, some upkeep be performed on .Mac.
Thank you for your time.
Yours, for now,
Jon Strand
August 2, 2006 at 1:28 am
Perfect. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
August 2, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Your entry has been dugg.
August 2, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Thanks!
August 2, 2006 at 3:42 pm
I have been wondering if I were the only .Mac member with increasing spam and decreasing desire to pay $99 a year for little more than the privilege of having a mac email address.
Well put, now if only we could get Steve to notice…
August 3, 2006 at 1:24 am
Don’t be surprised if .mac gets a good dose of reality and mea culpa at the 2006 WWDC.
August 3, 2006 at 2:17 am
I agree with gwiz
I don’t think steve would let a $100 service become so useless, at least hope not.
everything on .mac has to be upgraded, they need to add a lot more features, and .mac itself needs to be cheaper, at leat $70 like iLife
August 3, 2006 at 1:05 pm
i hope apple does come through with some .Mac update Aug 7-11.
almost any kind of change, would receive a warm welcome.
I suspect that they’re going to do something with the iPod, but hopefully not more accessories. The iPod phone?
Some more announcements for iTunes, I would imagine. And they’ll ought have be switching over the desktop line (and Xserve?) to Intel. Maybe they’ll show off the new OS?
I haven’t been reading the rumor pages. . .. But, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a more robust .Mac, just the same.
August 5, 2006 at 10:23 am
Agreed… I use .mac regularly and even successfully dumped (it took some doing) a 13-year old Compusere account to switch to .Mac exclusively.
It’s useful. But true, just about everything it offers is available somewhere else. I was grateful for the storage space bump and like the fact that everything is organized under one roof… and instantly compatable with other Mac apps (though I’ve yet to break the ties with Entourage.
However, one can’t help feeling that the $99 model was created at a time when other options were harder to find. What’s more, yes, I’ve started to get the .mac spam too. Not all Apple’s fault, but still. One would think that innovative Apple would have found another shade of uniqueness to tack onto this service by now. Here’s hoping for something next week.