- 2004.06.21
An
article on Apple-X.net recently made a point I've been
thinking about for some time. Recent announcements by Google and Yahoo
that email account storage space is growing throughout the "free email"
world is going to put additional pressure on Apple to increase the
amount of storage offered for .mac users.
As the writer at Apple-X.net writes, "The current limit is a mere 15
MB. Come on, Apple! I can get 25 MB on Hotmail, 100 MB on Yahoo, and a
gig on Google. Fifteen megs? It all looked so great until
recently."
Yeah, .mac is more than just online storage and email. I love the
integration with iBlog; the ability to publish directly from iPhoto,
and all the free software, some of which I actually use. [Editor's
note: It's also great for publishing your iCal schedule and using iSync
to keep things synchronized between two or more Macs.]
In my opinion, it's worth the money for the entire package, although
not everyone uses everything that Apple includes.
Many people use .mac as email and storage only, and they may ask
themselves why Apple can't up the storage limits a little bit when
other services are offering (just that feature only) for free.
Now we all know that Apple habitually installs less RAM in their
computers than we think they should (for a base configuration anyway),
so it's unlikely they'll try to match Gmail's 1 GB storage space.
But they could bump the base configuration up to 100 MB for email and
200 MB for storage by allocating a little more hard drive space to each
user.
Of course, all those folks who already pay extra for additional
space will have to have upgrades, too.
Thanks for a great service, Apple - but if you can find it in your
hearts and wallets to bump the storage up a bit, we'd all appreciate
it.
is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
