Forums | MacLife

At the very least, a full Mac.com account should be free for 1-year to all new Mac buyers or other frequent buyers of Apple products.

Thx for the Box.net tip.

Nefarious Bidding wrote:

At the very least, a full Mac.com account should be free for 1-year to all new Mac buyers or other frequent buyers of Apple products.

Thx for the Box.net tip.

Imagine how that would help push Macs.

And box.net is great!

Giving it away for free could be justified if it brought in more revenue to Apple in other ways.  Like if it were a major switcher vehicle or was generating some huge buzz about Macs.  My guess is that is not happening, and it is working better as a service paid for by those who think it brings good value.

Enigmatik wrote:

Hmmm.  I signed up for Box.net.  It looks very promising.  However, the website provides no instructions on how to connect from Mac OS X (afaik).  I had to find out how to connect from Mac OS X from a completely different website.  Also, a whole bunch of the features (direct linking) are premium only.  Looks good so far though.  Thanks again.

O, wow, I should have mentioned that. You can just use Finder>Go>Connect to Server. Type in www.box.net/webdav. It will ask for your usename and password. Then it will mount on your desktop.

Czachorski, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. Think about this. "And with every Mac, you get a free gigabyte of online space, that can be used to sync perfectly with your Mac or to host your iWeb site." That would be a huge benefit for me.

Jack Sparrow wrote:

Czachorski, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. Think about this. "And with every Mac, you get a free gigabyte of online space, that can be used to sync perfectly with your Mac or to host your iWeb site." That would be a huge benefit for me.

I am speculating that Apple has determined that the cost of such a program would not be recovered by the increase in sales generated.  It's a number game.  You would have to provide the service to 100% of all Mac purchasers, even though perhaps only a very small percentage are buying the product because of that promotion/free service.  If the added revenue doesn't produce more profit than the cost of the promotion/free service, it would be a bad program for Apple.  I am suggesting that such a scenario may be the actual case.

Last edited by Czachorski (2006-07-04 8:15 pm)

Enigmatik wrote:

Yeah, but, how much does it really cost them per year to host .Mac for each user?  I'm guessing a lot less than $99.

My fault - we crossed posted while I was editing.  Yeah, it is probably way less than $99.  But you have to provide it to every single Mac purchaser, when only a small few may be buying because of that promotion.

Yeah.   90 days is not very encouraging.

EDIT:   It's 60 days, not 90.

Last edited by Nefarious Bidding (2006-07-04 9:25 pm)

If .mac had 5GB of storage and was $50 a year I would do it.

I'll make teh thread for free computerz
thread
tito

Czachorski wrote:

Enigmatik wrote:

Well, just because you offer every user free .Mac doesn't mean that they all of them will use it ever if at all.  I mean, you figure if someone is going to pay for a service they are going to make the most of it.  However, if you offer it to all users not everyone is going to use the service.  I don't think the issue for the is costliness.

If they have data that shows that free .mac would only result in marginal new Mac sales, but it would cause lost revenue and added expenses, then that would explain their present course.

The way you put it, profit is the only thing that matters to Apple.  Maybe they would loose a few bucks and maybe the sales gain wouldn't be that drastic.  But still, free .Mac for all would increase good faith of customers in the company, which would in theory have them stay around longer.  Besides, Apple has been known to do things not because it's better for their profit but also good for their users.

Jack Sparrow wrote:

Czachorski, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. Think about this. "And with every Mac, you get a free gigabyte of online space, that can be used to sync perfectly with your Mac or to host your iWeb site." That would be a huge benefit for me.

iTools, anyone?

You can get $30 off when you sign-up for .Mac when you buy a new Mac.  I don't think that it should be free, but the price should come down a bit.  $99/year seems a bit steep.  Make it $79/year like iLife or something.