.Mac (pronounced “dot Mac”) is Apple’s $100 subscription-based Mac OS X “add on.” It includes a range of services built around storage space on Apple’s .Mac server and is integrated with the OS X operating system and several of Apple’s applications in key ways. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at those services so that you can decide for yourself whether the price tag is worth the benefits.
The easiest way to define .Mac is to enumerate the features it offers:
Network storage (iDisk)—. The .Mac iDisk offers 100MB of network-accessible storage. Using your iDisk, you can access your files from other machines or even share them with friends.
Synchronization services—. .Mac, in conjunction with iSync (discussed in Chapter 8, “Working with Address Book, Keychain Access, iSync, and Ink”), provides a means for all your Macs to share the same bookmarks, Address Book information, and calendars. Instead of maintaining two sets of bookmarks on your desktop and laptop, a single global set of bookmarks can be maintained and synchronized through .Mac.
Network-based Mac OS X information—. A .Mac account can hold information that you normally access through applications on your computer and make it available to you through a network connection wherever you are. Calendars, contacts, and bookmarks are currently available with additional “access it anywhere” services in development. The .Mac screensaver (discussed shortly and in Chapter 23, “Using iPhoto”) even allows you to view slideshows stored on remote users’ iDisks.
.Mac Email—. Apple-hosted email services, including a nice Web interface are included as part of the subscription. An account holder receives 15MB quota of mail storage. Additional accounts with a 5MB mail quota can be added to a .Mac account for a small fee.
Exclusive software—. Although not earth-shattering, Apple is currently offering two pieces of .Mac “member’s only” software: Virex (virus protection) and Apple’s own Backup (personal document backups). These pieces of software are actually a good value if you need the functionality they offer. If you were, for example, planning to buy a Virus protection package for $50 already, that’s half the cost of a .Mac subscription. (See Chapter 36, “Maintaining Your System,” for more about Backup and Chapter 37, “Recovering from Crashes and Other Problems,” for more about Virex.)
Communication-oriented Web services—. The .Mac Web site makes it easy to create custom Web sites—either by using files from your iDisk or simply by exporting them from within iPhoto. Users can also send iCards created with their own or professionally photographed images.
Training—. Basic Macintosh tutorials and training materials are available online for common family/consumer activities such as using iTunes, creating Web pages, and so on. These features serve as nice introductions for beginners.
Software Discounts—. Special software discounts are offered for select packages, such as games.
Did you Know?
Apple lists iChat as one of the .Mac features. iChat, however, is available for anyone’s use. A .Mac account gets you the ability to use your .Mac email address as your buddy name; however, even if you just sign up for a demo account, you get to keep the account name indefinitely and can use it with iChat as you like. (See Chapter 16, “Using iChat AV,” for more information about iChat.)
Because describing how to use a Web site (www.mac.com) is not the purpose of this book (and the information contained on the site is variable in nature), we won’t attempt to document the features that you access through your Web browser. Instead, we’ll look at how .Mac’s features are used in the Mac OS X desktop and then take a brief walkthrough of the Web services so that you can make the decision of whether you want to join the .Mac club.
By the Way
If you intend to rely on .Mac for mission critical (or life critical) email, check around to make sure that it offers the availability and reliability that you need. Although I personally have experienced .Mac outages rarely throughout my use (which is light), they do happen. Some users have experienced email outages that last for days. At present, Apple does not provide the support or status reporting features common to ISPs offering email and Web hosting services.
To set up your .Mac services, open the System Preferences application and open the .Mac pane under the Internet & Network section. Your screen should resemble Figure 14.1.
Your choices are limited: either enter an existing .Mac member name and password, or click the Sign Up button to create a new account. If signing up for the first time, your Web browser will be launched, and you’ll be taken to the www.mac.com signup page. Keep in mind that you don’t need to commit to a full account immediately. You can apply for a 60-day free trial and try the members-only features (except for the exclusive software) before you buy.
If you already have a .Mac account, enter your information in the appropriate fields and then either close the preference window or click the iDisk button to view the status of your iDisk (this is a quick way to verify that the account information is entered correctly and everything is working as it should).
The Apple iDisk is storage space that your system automatically “knows” how to connect to without additional information.
Watch Out!
iDisk requires a network connection and is barely usable on dial-in lines. Cable and DSL should be considered the minimum tolerable network requirement for making a connection.
Starting in OS X 10.3, iDisk does have one feature that sets it apart from a normal network share—the ability to keep a local copy of its contents that are synchronized automatically when you connect to the Internet. This means that you always have an up-to-date offline copy of the files in case your Internet connection goes down.
From the perspective of the end user, iDisk appears like any other disk whether working with the contents online or using the local copy. The synchronization occurs unobtrusively. As you make changes to the files, they are noted and automatically uploaded to the .Mac server in the background. You can also choose to manually synchronize files if you want.
You can customize how your iDisk works and view a quick status of how much space is available by clicking the iDisk button within the .Mac system preferences pane. The pane shown in Figure 14.2 is displayed.
At the top of the pane is the amount of storage currently in use and the total available. You can buy additional iDisk storage space by clicking the Buy More button. Additional iDisk space is sold, like .Mac, on a subscription basis.
Here you can also choose how and whether the iDisk is synchronized—either automatically when you connect to the Internet, manually, or not at all. If you do not check the Create a Local Copy of Your iDisk check box, the iDisk will be accessible only over the Internet (as it was in previous versions of Mac OS X). You will not be able to work with the contents without an active network connection.
If you do choose to synchronize your iDisk, select whether it will happen automatically or manually using the radio buttons.
By the Way
If you ever choose to shut off synchronization after it has been running, Mac OS X will move the disk image file it has been using as the local iDisk copy to your desktop. You can mount it to get at the contents or throw it away if you want.
Did you Know?
The default iDisk sync settings (keep a local copy of the iDisk and synchronize automatically) make the following two assumptions: You have a reasonably fast Internet connection, and you make small changes to the contents of your iDisk. If you find yourself replacing 100MB of files daily, synchronization is just going to eat up time and network bandwidth.
If you always have a fast connection and don’t access your iDisk files that much anyway, not using the local iDisk option might be the most efficient option.
If synchronization takes a long time each time you use it (dial-in users), you might want to set it to Manually and start a synchronize only when you aren’t going to be using your computer heavily.
Also in the iDisk pane are controls for determining how your public folder is accessed. The iDisk public folder is a special directory on the iDisk that can be read by other Mac OS X users without needing your .Mac login information. You can use the Public folder as a place to exchange files with a few people, or perhaps to share a new piece of software you’ve written with the world.
To keep things under your control, Apple provides the option of choosing whether other users (that is, not you) have read-only or read-write access to your folder, and whether the folder should be password protected. If you choose to password protect the folder, you will be prompted to set a new password—do not use your .Mac password. This is a password that you give out to your friends so that they can connect to your Public folder.
After entering the membership information needed to connect to your iDisk, you can immediately start using the service by opening a Finder window and then clicking the iDisk icon in the sidebar or by choosing My iDisk from the iDisk submenu of the Finder’s Go menu (Shift-Command-I). After a few seconds, the iDisk icon (a blue orb) appears on your desktop.
If this is the first time that you’ve used your iDisk (and you haven’t configured it otherwise), Mac OS X prompts you to synchronize the entire contents of your iDisk before going any further. If you intend to keep the disk synchronized, allowing the initial synchronization is a good idea. It may take quite awhile at first, but subsequent synchronizations only need to copy the data that has changed, if any.
You can force a synchronization at any time by clicking the chasing arrow (circular arrows) icon to the right of the iDisk icon in the Finder. If you’ve chosen to have your Mac automatically synchronize the iDisk, you can tell when the synchronization is in progress by watching the icon to the right of the iDisk in your Finder window—it spins while synchronizing.
Open the iDisk like you would any other disk. If you clicked the iDisk icon in the Finder sidebar, the Finder window refreshes to show its contents. If you mounted it from the Go menu, you can double-click the iDisk icon on the desktop to open the window shown in Figure 14.3.
An iDisk contains nine folders, some of which are similar to the folders in a Mac OS X user account (as discussed in Chapter 2, “Using the Finder”):
Documents—. Your personal storage space for “stuff.” No one has access to these files but you.
Library—. Data storage for applications such as iSync. Again, these files are maintained automatically and probably shouldn’t be touched.
Movies—. A place to store your (Webified) Movie files. Movies placed in this location are available for use within the .Mac HomePage Web site builder utility.
Music—. A place for you to store your Music files. With the advent of the Apple Music Store, I’d venture a guess that Apple will be adding the capability to download song purchases to this folder in the future.
Pictures—. Like Music and Movies, Pictures provides a content-specific place for you to drop your image files. Images placed in the Pictures folder are available within HomePage and the Apple’s iCard builder.
Public—. Your online folder that can be opened to the public. Files stored here can be accessed (if you choose) by friends, or anyone in the world.
Sites—. The files for your Apple-hosted mac.com Web site are stored in the Sites folder. Files placed here are accessible via the URL http://homepage.mac.com/
<mac.com username>/<filename>.Software—. Apple’s collection of freeware and demo Mac OS X software and music. If you need a quick software fix, you can find it here.
Work with iDisk as you would your hard drive or a network share, but be aware that copying files to or from the iDisk takes time. If you are configured to maintain a local copy of the iDisk, transfers will be nearly instantaneous, but the actual transfer occurring in the background may take minutes or hours, depending on the quality of your connection.
To access the iDisks of other users, simply choose iDisk, Other User’s iDisk from the Finder’s Go menu. You are prompted for the user’s membership name and password, as shown in Figure 14.4.
To mount a user’s Public folder, choose iDisk, Other User’s Public Folder from the Go menu. In this case, you are prompted for the member name, but you do not need to supply a password unless one has been set by the owner of the remote iDisk account.
Did you Know?
As in previous versions of Mac OS X, you can mount the iDisk volume with Connect To Server by supplying the URL http://idisk.apple.com/<mac.com username>.
iDisks are the cornerstone of the .Mac service and are what makes most of the other services possible. Without, for example, a central storage place to keep iSync information, there would be no means of synchronizing multiple computers on different networks.
The .Mac screensaver enables users to view slideshows that they (or someone else) have created and saved to their .Mac accounts using iPhoto (discussed in Chapter 23).
To use the screensaver, open the Desktop & Screen Saver option from the System Preferences pane. Choose .Mac from the list of available Screen Savers, and then click the Options button. A sheet window appears, as shown in Figure 14.5, that contains all slideshows that you’ve subscribed to.
To connect to a new slideshow, enter the name of the .Mac account (such as robynness) in the .Mac Membership Name field and then click OK. Then reopen the sheet window to choose the newly added slideshow and the display options you want used during the presentation; then click OK. The next time your screensaver is activated, you’ll see the selected slideshow.
By the Way
If you enter “robynness” for the name of the .Mac account in the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences, you’ll see a slideshow of a tulip flower and leaves that one of the authors of this book took with her digital camera.
To remove or disable subscriptions, you must click Options again, select the slideshow, and then press the Delete key, or use the Selected check box to simply disable it.
The final .Mac features we’ll look at in this chapter are the Web services. Accessed with a Web browser through www.mac.com, these features are aimed at families and those on-the-go types that frequently have to access the Internet or send email through computers that aren’t their own.
The HomePage Web site builder, shown in Figure 14.6, allows anyone to create Web pages without any knowledge of HTML. Simply copy images and movies to your iDisk (in the appropriate folders, of course), choose a HomePage template, and then add your own content.
Apple provides templates for photo albums, resumes, iMovies, and more. If you’re an advanced user, you can always add your own content directly to the iDisk Sites folder and create any site you want.
By the Way
You can create simple photo album pages from within iPhoto. Find out more in Chapter 23.
The Apple iCards are a collection of elegant photographs that you can add a message to and forward to your friends, demonstrated in Figure 14.7. Images that you’ve placed in your iDisk Pictures folder are also available for use.
Probably the most compelling Web service for advanced users is the access to traditionally “desktop” information while on the go. iSync (discussed in Chapter 8) keeps everything “connected” so that what you see on your desktop is available on other computers over the network, and vice versa. Figure 14.8, for example, shows the Bookmark browser.
Likewise, .Mac email and address book entries are also accessed through a Web interface—and carry the feel of a native Mac OS X application along with them. Figure 14.9 shows the .Mac Web-based email.
Another useful feature for users on the go is iCal, which we’ll examine in Chapter 17, “Using iCal.”
As of the time of this writing, this is .Mac. The direction Apple seems to be heading in is providing ways of taking your data with you. The synchronization of desktop applications with Web services is likely to be the focus of future developments. As you’ve seen, and will continue to see throughout the book, certain applications provide support for saving information to .Mac. As an easy-to-use method for storing and synchronizing data, you may find .Mac worth the price.