dotmac, not .Mac
2/6/2008 – 9:27 pm
Apple has a service called .mac that fanboys love and unwitting consumers are convinced to buy when they buy a new mac. To me, I’ve never thought of buying this $100/year service that includes a mac.com email address, 10GB of web storage cutely named iDisk, web hosting, and some synchronization and backup tools. I’ve got an email and web server / webdav server already, and $100/year seems like a lot of bread for some sync capabilities. They also have something called Back to My Mac which is effectively just VNC access to your home machine without having to forward a port through your home firewall.
There is a great young project out there appropriately named Dotmac for folks with their own server that don’t mind fighting through some incomplete documentation. $0/year is a good price for those sync features I’d say. I’ve got it running and I am pretty impressed. It is running happily on my home server and just works. Stacey and I have a nice shared address book now and I’ve got backups for things like my keychain, calendars, and dashboard widgets. Not too shabby.
One Response to “dotmac, not .Mac”
I know people with this dot macness. It’s just too do-as-your-told-and-everythings-fine. It’s like being friends with a serial killer. Sure, theyre cool and you can go hang out and talk about stuff, but wait till you piss em off … dead like palm pilot. Who wants to die for doing wrong? Dot mac kills.
Dot mac is in a sense the third Reich with Himmler Jobs running the place. Broken cross replaced by a bitten fruit… am I the only one that sees the parallel? Like Final Destination, the signs are there you just have to know to look for them.
No BeOS, there’s something with potential.
By Charleston Alexanda, Diamond Importahs on Feb 17, 2008