What .Mac gets right

Now that we've lamented what's mi ing and wished for a brighter future, let's send some love A le's way. .Mac i 't all bad, after all. Today, we're going to highlight some of what's good about .Mac. No bashing today, so save your griping for this post. Yes, I know that iDisk is slow and blah, blah. Today's post is about the positive, for the most part.

Read on for all that's (mostly) good about .Mac.
Exhibit A: It's all built in

One of the things I a olutely love about .Mac is how easy it is to acce services. Take the Finder for i tance. I keep a local copy of my iDisk on my desktop, so all my files are immediately at hand (hush about upload times). Or, just click on the "Go" menu and there's your iDisk, as well as your buddy's iDisk and/or public folder (depending on how s/he has things set up). eaking of which, I can give just about anyone read/write acce to my public folder which is great for receiving those files that are too large for email (those full-rez, layered Photoshop images, for example). It's terribly convenient and so tra arent that it's easy to forget that you're dealing with a remote volume (what did I tell you about your complaints over eed?!?).

Exhibit B: Plays nice with the iA

This one kind of goes hand-in-hand with Exhibit A, but it deserves its own mention. Just like it does with the Finder, .Mac plays beautifully with the iA . iWeb is, of course, the shining example. Once you've built your site, getting the thing uploaded and live is as simple as it can be. There's no FTP to worry about, no typing in cryptic paths or scary permi io to co ider. Just click "Publish" and it's all taken care of. Which brings me to Exhibit C...

Exhibit C: It's great for n00

Before you get all excited, please understand my definition of the term "n00b" in this context. I don't use it in a derogatory ma er at all, I'm simply refering to someone who has had limited experience within a given area of expertise. For example: My parents recently moved to Florida and my sister all the way to Houston (Don't me with Texas). This mea we rarely get to see each other (maybe once a year). Rather than mi out on one another's lives, we've all set up iWeb sites that we use to share images and stories from our re ective parts of the world. Now, my parents and sister are intelligent people but have no experience whatsoever with web publishing. Yet, over the course of a weekend (via A le Remote Desktop) I had all three of them up, ru ing and totally comfortable behind the keyboard. Part of that is iWeb's doing, of course. But, the ease of iWeb wouldn't matter a tinker's cu if they couldn't upload their finished products. "All you do is click 'publish' and watch it go," I said. The point is that it's great for people who have other, more important things to worry about than file tra fer protocol. If you want to get the information out to your group of readers, whomever they may be, .Mac lets you do so without getting in your way.

The Learning Center is also quite well done. Again, seasoned Mac geeks like you and I may find it a little pedestrian, but for the average (read: typical) user, it's tremendously useful.

Exhibit D: The do-it-all email addre

A le made a very nice move when they allowed users to use their .Mac email addre as their A le ID (nice or i idious, I'm not sure. Want to keep that addre , laddie? You'd better renew.). Want to set up an iTunes account? Use your .Mac email addre . Want to place or check up on a purchase made via the online A le Store? Use your .Mac email addre . iPhoto purchases, A le's discu ion boards...on and on. I certainly don't want to try and remember a slew of different pa words. The one-addre -does-it-all feature frees me from that burden.

Exhibit E: Back it up

A le's backup is (I'm going to say that word again) so easy. The Backup a lication is automated and can be scheduled to back up what you want, when you want and to where you want. Sooo many people don't back up a thing and eventually will (not "may," but "will") find themselves crying. Simply taking one afternoon to schedule regular, overnight back u can save some very real regret in the future.

Conclusion

Well, it's not so bad afterall, is it? They say you should end on a good note. Unfortunately, this i 't the end. Next we'll publish a "State of .Mac" post that will review what we've written so far and look at the current state of .Mac as we try to figure out just where we stand. Stay tuned.