On Friday, July 19, 2002, at 02:13 AM, SlashDevNull wrote:
> .Mac is still a part of OS 9 and X. .Mac is better integrated than _any
> other_ Internet suite and OS out there. That integration and service
> _does_
> cost money.
Yes, it does. And we paid that money when we bought OS 9 and/or OS X.
Apple is not in the right to suddenly deactivate a feature of an OS it
is still selling!
> Ok Mr. Finance. How would you do it?
I dunno... in a way that is ethical? Apple has managed to make money
before without stooping to MS-esque tactics.
> Exactly. You paid for the development of iTools and the initial run.
> Which
> has been several years. Itools is not .Mac. It is hugely successful.
> It
> is used by 2.2 million people. Apple simply can not afford to keep
> paying
> for over 2 million people internet services.
Apple has no right to deactivate services that I ALREADY PAID THEM FOR,
that are part of two operating systems I still use. Make a new service
called .Mac? Fine. But leave iTools alone.
> So I spent $49. And in a year, another $100. Think about what Apple
> needs
> to do. Server farms. People to support those farms. Cooling, wiring,
> buildings. People to support all of 3 of those. Software developers
> and
> people to support them. And a _ton_ of bandwidth. UPS'es, rows of
> batteries and backup systems. Hundreds of terabytes of data storage.
>
> Who do you think paid for the bandwidth for the latest MacWorld
> broadcast?
>
> Don't forget the people who will still use .Mac for free. You know, the
> people who will create email address for a short amount of time.
> People who
> create .Mac idisks to transfer software to others. Apple is still
> supporting these people also. And their bandwidth. And Apple is not
> making
> a dime off of the trial users.
>
> The bottom line is that it is very expensive. I think it is naive for
> you
> to think that Apple is making more than a tiny amount of profit from
> each
> account of .Mac.
Yes, iTools was an expense. Just like it is expensive to hire
programmers to write the OS, etc. But people who buy a copy of the OS
are PAYING for your expenses. And it is extremely shady to take a
feature of the OS they bought, turn it off, and say they can have it
back for $50.
> If you don't want to pay the cash, then don't use it.
>
> You can find cheaper email and web services. Just remember that you get
> what you pay for.
It isn't the fact that it costs money that annoys me. What gets me is
the sheer sleaziness of this maneuver. If .Mac was a new service
announced today, it would be totally okay to charge for it. But it
really isn't a new service... it it iTools plus a couple things
sj
http://homepage.mac.com/stevehj
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