The Great .Mac Debate Continues
Comments: 6
If you convert an iTools account to a .Mac account before September 30, it will cost you $49 for a year. After that it’s $99. With time running out before the deadline, there’s still a little part of me that’s debating whether to shell out – despite my horror that this is the thin edge of the wedge for software rental schemes from Apple.
Powerpage.org has a story (great headline!) by Peter Kirn looking at current adoption rates (the comments on the story are worth reading, too):
Is the Glass 4.54% Full or 95% Empty
Remember how Monday Apple announced .mac has 100,000 members? That’s a less impressive number when you consider iTools had 2.2 million members. So if 100,000 have poneyed up the US$49/yr to pay for .mac, that means some 2.1 million former iTools users haven’t, a figure Macworld UK says Apple admitted is correct. (In fact, assuming some .mac members were NOT iTools members, actual adoption may be even lower.)
Some spurious numbers here: keep in mind that 2.1 million iTools accounts ≠ 2.1 million people (because multiple accounts are possible, of course). Even so, it seems clear that Apple could have gone about this whole .Mac thing a little differently.
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Posted to Computers • 2002.09.19 (Thu) • 11:13
Comments
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2002.09.19, 20:13
I’m still one of the non-converts teetering on the brink of a decision. It grates to be pressured to pay for something that was free, especially now that I’m a jobless student and worried about how long the startup my husband works at will survive this economy. Deep down, though, it’s not the money that irks me, but Apple’s approach. They’re like a drug dealer that entices you with a few hits and once you’re hooked, hit you with the cost.
Hmm. Now that I’ve clarified how I feel about this, I think I stick with the 95%. Thanks, Jeremy!
Posted by jh 2002.09.19, 20:55
My big worry with .Mac can be summed up in one word: eWorld.
Apple really ought to have come up with a tiered approach to retain the goodwill it had built with iTools and as another platform benefit in the Switch campaign.
For example, e-mail should remain free (cap it at a single account for each user if necessary) along with a token amount of disk space (a few megs) in order that you can post your photographs from iPhoto and some video snippets from iMovie. A few megs is of course not nearly enough to go to town with, so people are encouraged to upgrade. In the meantime, you’ve demonstrated the benefits and ease of use of the system and hopefully got people hooked on how .Mac can be a part of their ‘digital lifestyle’ (don’t you hate these buzz phrases?).
A free e-mail account with every Mac sold reinforces the brand message of legendary ease of use. Apple could easily capitalise on this (“The gift of the gab in every box”) and it strikes me as a great selling point. How many computers let you send e-mail immediately after unpacking it, plugging it in and turning it on? Additionally, almost every e-mail someone@mac.com acts as an advertisement for Macintosh much as Hotmail’s little spam-tag does at the bottom of each message sent via them (and less obtrusively).
The cost of maintaining a free e-mail account and even minimal disk space would have to be able to go at least a few rounds in the ring with the cost of the loss of goodwill that’s occured since the .Mac announcement.
It wasn’t that long ago that eWorld bit the dust, and people have long memories with things like this because there’s a lot to be invested in using such a service (you send out URLs with photos or whatever and you don’t want them to disappear; you don’t want to have to notify everyone you know that the e-mail address they have for you is about to die; you don’t want to have to find a new home for everything you’ve stored online; you don’t want to have to find a new backup strategy because Backup won’t work for you anymore when .Mac dies; and you don’t want to have to face a slew of hobbled or crippled iApps that are less than fully functional without a .Mac account).
Now Apple may just be happy with 100,000 .Mac accounts so far. They may be prepared to wait this one out, betting that the software future does indeed revolve around some sort of nasty rental model and that eventually we’ll all have to come knocking on that particular bordello door.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a year from now when the $100 .Mac subscriptions are not rolling in, we see some serious backpedalling from Apple on this. Could even happen sooner if those conversion numbers take on a colder cast in the hard light of day.
Posted by Horst 2002.09.19, 21:01
Still, I guess 100,000 paying .Mac customers will help Apple make more money than 2.1 million non-paying iTools members.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2002.09.20, 01:58
In the short term, maybe. But, as Jeremy points out, it could hurt Apple in the long run by souring customer loyalty. The tiered approach would have been a better strategy. I’d have even shelled out $10 or $20 for my email account.
I really want an iPod. But after I pay for the Jaguar upgrade and buy a .mac account, I don’t have any money left for anything new. Had this been the 1990s when I was flush with my dot-com income, no problem. But the reality is that in 2002 we’re in a recession. I’ve been out of work for over a year. Apple’s strategy seems like annoying nickel an diming at a time that I can least afford it. The bottom line is that I’ll probably just use my Mac as it is now, without the upgrade or the .mac account and spend the money on a digital camera instead of an iPod.
Posted by the Admiral 2002.09.21, 12:53
As a long time Mac-user, and the recent recipient of one of their new towers, I always cannot agree with everything Apple does. After all, I don’t run the company. I don’t want to. I like their products, and promote them heavily between friends and work colleagues.
I protested dot Mac, wrote in, and even went at some length against it all on my website. My good friend, another Mac fiend, couldn’t decide. He had his web page on Apple’s servers, and he’s not real technical. He didn’t want anything fancy, he wanted something as simple as iTools and an iDisk. He bought in to dot-Mac.
4 days after getting Jaguar, he sold it for $100 on eBay. With that money, he bought me a dot Mac account for my birthday.
One switcher was a protester that had no choice. What else are you going to do with a dot-Mac CD but sign up?
Posted by jh 2002.09.21, 15:04
Horst — You make a good point, of course. Apple will at least have some money on the table. I wanted to suggest that the cost in goodwill might at least stand comparison with the money that they’re making (but even so, I think your argument would be the more compelling in these money-hungry times).
The trouble is that the real numbers aren’t in yet. When the price rises to the normal $99, I’d expect to see subscriptions taper off sharply. It’s just too much money right now, as M. Sinclair Stevens says. Apple have also trapped themselves into an all-or-nothing situation (my point about the tiered pricing structure being a good idea). Customers have to buy all of .Mac or none. It simply can’t be that difficult to break it out into different service levels and price accordingly
M. Sinclair Stevens — $10 or $20 dollars a year sounds like a good point, although I’ll stand by my argument that a free e-mail account out of the box would be a huge benefit to Apple.
I’m basically out of work myself so I know exactly where you’re coming from regarding the cost of things these days.
And, yes, I know that Mac users are the BMW owners in a computer world where everyone else seems happy with souped-up Toyota Corollas and, as such, we should be prepared to pay the premiums demanded by our expensive tastes, but — damn! — Apple hardware is expensive. Start adding up those extras (as you mention) like $130 for the Jag update and pretty soon you’re talking about some tough choices.
Admiral — That’s a good friend you’ve got there! I realise it’s probably too early to tell, but do you think you’ll be signing up again when the first year is over?
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