There’s nothing like a bold statement to get our attention, and Chris Graves, president of Mac-centric Internet host MacHighway, makes this one: His company is “presenting [its] services as an alternative to MobileMe, as opposed to a replacement.” We take his nuanced wording to mean that MacHighway Easy lacks the full features of Apple’s option, but could still serve the same purpose for some customers by providing email accounts, website hosting, and file-server storage. The service even includes a domain name and other features beyond MobileMe’s scope. But since MacHighway is inviting the comparison, we’ll have to ding it for the areas where it can’t match MobileMe: ease of use, and iCal and Address Book syncing.
MacHighway Easy matches some of MobileMe’s features--at a lower cost. You’ll pick a domain name at signup--or transfer over one you already own--beating Apple’s generic www.me.com/username approach. That means that both your website and email comes from your customized address, which tops myname@me.com for professional correspondence. You’ll also get five email addresses, great for sharing with family and sticking an info@mydomain.com address on the front page of your website.
You’ll get 10GB of storage space and 10GB of transfer bandwidth a month, which is plenty for personal or small-business email, site hosting, and file sharing. You can transfer files through MacHighway’s Web interface, an FTP client, or even the Finder, mounting the online storage on your Desktop. At press time, Finder-mounting only worked over an insecure connection, but MacHighway was working on a solution to the problem.
It's déjà vu all over again; these tools are the same as those you'd find on most Internet hosts.
MacHighway Easy goes beyond MobileMe in a few key areas. You can set up an unlimited number of email aliases to instantly forward incoming messages to one of your real accounts. You can add temporary or permanent email autoresponders, telling customers that you got their note or alerting friends that you’re on vacation. MacHighway also includes 10 subdomains, such as www.subdomain.mydomain.com, to organize your site. And you can view basic details about your traffic and visitors. But instead of providing a way to sync a calendar and address book online--or with an iPhone--MacHighway merely supplies a few tutorials for setting up Google’s calendar and contact alternatives. Err… thanks?
MacHighway Easy tries to live up to its welcoming name with documentation and embedded videos throughout its online setup process. For example, when you create an email account, you can watch a video that walks you through the setup, and Mac-specific tutorials advise you on many procedures like publishing to your site from iWeb.
However, MacHighway often presents strange and confusing situations that will trip up casual users. During the setup process, you need to decide if you want to pay extra for additional spam protection or ID Protection, but the site offers sparse details about what you’re actually buying. If you don’t already know that ID Protection shields your personal address and phone number from public disclosure, you might regret skimping on its $7.95 cost. MacHighway even lacks a simple, obvious control-panel login at www.machighway.com.
If you do have questions, the Mac-savvy documentation and tech support will help. And most importantly, the service works well in practice. We’re not sure the comparisons to MobileMe are appropriate since crucial syncing features are missing, but MacHighway has no problems working with Mac standards like iWeb or Mail.
Tutorial videos and documentation enhance the same tools you can get at any Internet host. Helpful tech support. Price includes domain registration.
Documentation sometimes lacks basic explanations. Some videos show PC interfaces, not Mac OS X. You'll have to juggle several logins and passwords, including an unchaneable preset. Mounting online storage in Finder had technical problems at press time.
thom-ecliptic
May 12, 2010 at 10:05am
I am using machighway for my domain www.ecliptic.ch since 2005, before it became Machighway, when it was still Itsamac.com. So far I only remember one single time when services were offline for a half day. Their support is always quick (email and tickets). I originally came to them because I was looking for a Mac based provider. Now I also enjoy that Machighway uses 100% wind-power. Only two negative things so far: Their Homepage is kind of a mess and not well designed. And I liked it way better as it was called ITSAMAC. Thats so much easier to tipe!
rdluu
January 25, 2010 at 10:45pm
I have just renewed my annual membership with MacHighway. I also have a MobileMe account.
I know I don't need both but each has its purposes for me. MobileMe is real easy and is my main email service, it can assist me in finding my iPhone, makes it easy to share files with others, I can put together photo galleries real fast and I keep info synched between my travel MBP and my MacMini at home. I have never been able to use Back to My Mac because of my firewall configuration (I'm still trying to figure out why it doesn't work), and I have stopped using iDisk because it was a big hassle. I have had to reset it way too often. I am trying Dropbox now and I just wish iDisk was as robust and as idiot proof.
I originally signed up with MacHighway to learn how to create, upload and maintain a Website. It took me awhile but I have three websites at MacHighway now and while I am no expert I was able to get them working. I also have three email accounts at MacHighway - which are all aggregated to my mail.app program. Whenever I have a problem (usually user error) the help desk is great - fast, efficient and not condescending. They actually seem to care. It is very important to me that I can talk to someone who can help and do it without an attitude.
So while I know I am wasting some money, I am not quite ready to free myself from MobileMe. Kind of like training wheels I suppose. But both have complimentary uses for me. Now about that iDisk - Apple just buy Dropbox already!
