[rmeister0]

This is answered in the FAQs.
Short answer: yes, everyone who belongs to the group must have a .Mac login.
Now, you can sign up for a trial account and let it expire. Your login will still work on apple's site, apple's tech support, apple's store, and your .mac groups.
So, you don't have to pay for your loginl you can let your account expire and still interact with the group.
The marketing logic, of course, is that your .mac account will be useful enough that you will pay for it.

[goswim]

Very interesting... and actually, that's great. Thanks for the feedback.

[davedawgnyc]

In reply to:

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Amazon has it for $77.99:

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Can you use this Amazon .Mac to renew an existing .Mac account? I've always used auto renew, but this would save some $$ if possible.

[lucentio]

I want to know why Apple hasn't added blogging or forum pages to .Mac. It seems like a no-brainer, and even $5/month hosts offer that these days. I don't think .Mac even supports PHP so you could add it yourself. Anyone try this?

[ralph_malph]

I called it. Every year its the same story. Apple rushes to please its customers around this time. Why? Because the original .Mac was launched at the end of this month, and now they have to convince a lot of .Mac members to re-up. Expect 12 more months of no incentives, and then a great new feature (like this one).
Last year it was 250 MB and a free game. This year its 1 GB, Groups and a new version of Backup. What will next year's incentive be?

[ShanMac]

I love this extra storage. Well worth the $139 CDN.

[Huh]

From .Mac Help:
"After you set up a group, you can invite anyone with an email address to join, including Windows users and non-.Mac members."

[Jon Seff]

In reply to:

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Can you use this Amazon .Mac to renew an existing .Mac account? I've always used auto renew, but this would save some $$ if possible.

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Yes. The .Mac FAQ page says:
Q: Can I use a .Mac retail box to renew my .Mac membership?
Yes. Simply go to http://www.mac.com/activate, enter the member name and password for the account you'd like to renew and your activation key code from the .Mac box, and follow the instructions. You will only need a credit card if you have purchased .Mac add-ons such as additional email accounts or storage space, or wish to add them for your next year.

[jdb8167]

Right, the drag and drop takes a second or two but if you wait you will see a visible outline where you can drop and the cursor turns into a green plus.
Also, the image shows using flexible spacers in the toolbar. Those are added from the Customize Toolbar... menu under the View menu in the finder. You can space the icons out any way you like. with fixed spacers or flexible spacers.
I have Stickies (original not Widget), Calculator and Disk Utility in my toolbar.

[vaporman]

It just isn't worth it to me anymore. I've complained since the switch from iTools to .Mac and this year I finally will not fork out the money to renew. Other than the email address I don't think I've used one .Mac benefit since last October. It was a pain in the rear to notify every person/site, etc. about my Gmail address, but I've done it. I'm saddened that I can no longer claim to have a mac.com address, but it just isn't worth $100 to me.

[jdb8167]

In reply to:

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it just isn't worth $100 to me.

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What would you pay? If the answer is 0 then there isn't much to be done. Bandwidth and disk space costs money. To me it is creepy that Google is going to aggregate all my email on GMail and keep information about me. I do not consider that free but even Google has to figure out a way to make money. In their case by targeted advertising.
It has been pointed out elsewhere that the real cost of .Mac is really around $78/yr right now because that is the amazon price. That is $6.50/month. Which is also $0.006 per MB/month storage and $0.0006 MB/month bandwidth. Cheap enough that I won't gamble away my privacy with Google Mail. Not to mention that it is difficult to use the GMail storage for much beyond email where with .Mac you can use it for almost anything.
The previous .Mac wasn't really worth the cost in my opinion. The only reason I signed up recently was because I wanted to play around with some new .Mac APIs that Apple released. But now the price is competitive in my opinion.

[kelake]

Wow, Apple is touting new features that have been available for years for free elsewhere. I'm not sure I get the point of .mac. These features are available elsewhere for less and especially in the case of email (ex. Gmail) are superior.

[Ronald_Schoedel]

<<Can you use this Amazon .Mac to renew an existing .Mac account?>>
Yes, I do so every year (use a boxed version that I pick up on sale, that is).
Ronald Schoedel

[macnews]

If you use .mac for just email it certainly is not worth it. For that matter, yahoo or hotmail would be better. I like .mac for the simple homepage creation and sharing. It works great to put family pictures to share with family around the country and takes me or my wife seconds to do from iPhoto.
Then there is the ical integration. Sure, I wish iCal could do a lot more. Then again, for the small business I am in it works rather well. I can have office staff, myself and my wife all access and update my calander.
Last, there are the downloads. I started playing around with garageband and wished I had more jam packs. Lo and behold, there they are jam pack 1,2 & 3. Downloaded all three, total savings well over $100. Plus, the year before I downloaded some imovie extra's.
While you may not enjoy or want .mac, this latest upgrade is VERY welcome. It is the one thing I want, more space. .Mac has more room to grow and I really wish they had the promised widgets or some other benefits. Right now, the space is welcomed along with more integration. I would love to see the "remote home folder" added as well but maybe next year.