For the third time in as many weeks, someone whose opinion is worth listening to has given .Mac a proper spanking.
At Tao of Mac, Rui Carmo takes the hatchet 
to Apple’s online service, and he doesn’t leave much standing after he is finished going through its features one-by-one.
Like previous recent critics (first wave and second wave), Rui is bewildered both by .Mac’s poor value for money and its lack of innovation:
My main point is that .Mac isn’t the benefit it’s touted to be, and that I can come up with a number of enhancements and added features that would make it worthwhile for me to keep my .Mac subscription and push Apple’s online services ahead of the pack where it regards mobility.
It’s not satisfying the geeky end of the Mac user market. It’s not doing too well at the other end either:
On the other hand, if Apple thinks their target market for .Mac is the I-don’t-want-to-understand-computers folk, they may be falling quite short of the mark – because it doesn’t work consistently right even for those people (if you’ve never had issues with .Mac, you’re very lucky).
Rui’s writing is dense and value-packed. I sometimes come away with my head spinning but I’m always glad I took the trouble. Try it yourself.
yes and a well deserved spanking. perhaps the saddest thing about .mac is that what apple seems to want to offer would be SO good… the IDEA of .mac is a great one! and yet, the delivery is a disaster. such a shame. it surprises me to see apple design the features of a service so well and then to fail so completely on the implementation. not what i expect from them.
i’d definitely pay for .mac and would recommend to family and clients but i just can’t… not in it’s current state.
about rui’s blog… yes very dense, well written. for a while i toyed with unsubscribing from his feed because so much of what he offers is critique. rarely do i see him post about what he LIKES, especially when apple is the subject. but i stick around because ultimately i think his critique comes from a desire to see improvement of a tool/platform he finds useful.
I did a series of articles on features Apple could borrow for .Mac:
What the Heck is .Mac?
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/2F6A8F7A-74DB-4E8B-9D38-F9D6554C376D.html
10 Reasons Why Apple Can Kickstart Web 2.0
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/F716ECC1-AF23-472D-BD10-628657EB88E6.html
Fixing .Mac – Idea 1: Hyperblog the Web
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/6A50F25B-9E50-45B4-AA17-F145B5D091EE.html
Fixing .Mac – Idea 2: A Reputation System
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/4B9CA8BB-C0F6-4E7C-99CB-8D53DBDD1864.html
Fixing .Mac – Idea 3: .Macster!
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/A592FAA3-5AAF-44DF-A3BA-7FE0D9D77A19.html
Fixing .Mac – Idea 4: Secure Identity Services
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/7293E00B-32AB-43F0-A951-6DA440B811D6.html
Fixing .Mac – Idea 5: A .Mac Marketplace
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/3D0F565D-90A3-431D-AF22-90651C4F4A4F.html
Fixing .Mac – Idea 6: Add Privacy Management
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/8D7E56DB-7F5F-42ED-AD7A-BCB105332B7E.html
Fixing .Mac – Idea 7: Enhance & Encourage Sharing
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/B4B11701-923D-4DC1-B577-C667F5B76371.html
Fixing .Mac – Idea 8: Subscription Music
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/2485FBF2-2E2B-4200-8CAA-5279AD561AA5.html
- Daniel Eran
http://www.roughlydrafted.com
[...] Will it be enough to silence .Mac’s many, many, many, many critics or even moderate their complaints? Only time will tell. [...]