.Mac 2.0 - Turning dot mac to a successful online community
Filed under Apple, Intertubes on October 20th, 2007
Apple’s online service, .Mac, has to be one of the most disappointing Apple products. It’s like Apple never shows some serious love to it. Sure, the webmail application got updated a few months ago and they offer some more storage space than they used to, but the offerings are simply not enough for a paid service. Not when the competitors are offering so much more for free.
A weak offering
As it is, .Mac offers web hosting, IMAP mail, online storage, syncing between Macs and some minor features like web galleries and “Back to My Mac”. Compared feature for feature with competing services .Mac just doesn’t cut it. Think about it: we all know we mac users are among the most loyal. Still, do you know anyone except Aunt Tillie using Apple’s own service for his/hers webpage or his blog? Do you know anyone that actually prefers its’ online gallery implementation to Flickr? I’ve seen more abandoned .Mac webpages (due to cancelled subscriptions) than useless comments on Slashdot!
I think that Apple does not get this whole “Web 2.0” thing, in the same way that Microsoft underestimated the importance of the web in the early nineties. It has to wizen up to the opportunities of community driven services. Seeing what Google, My Space or Facebook offer the mind boggles on what could be achieved by a coordinated Apple effort, especially since the company controls the whole ecosystem, from .Mac to the underlying operating system and applications (as well as the extremely popular hardware).
It’s not like Apple lacks relevant experience. They have all the essentials to build a successful web 2.0 service: great interface designers (check), talented engineers (check), experience running a huge online service (check), devoted user community (doh!). On top of these they possess another unique asset. Two words: desktop integration. It’s one thing all other web 2.0 services lack. It’s also something all other web 2.0 services desperately try to achieve with schemes like the Google Toolbar, client-side database storage via Javascript (HTML5), Yahoo! Widgets, Silverlight and so on. With the OS X installed base and Safari and iTunes also available on the Windows side, Apple has most of the infrastructure they need in place. By offering a competent web service and integrating it with the desktop (and the iPhone), the company could tap into the Mac faithful and build a hugely successful web 2.0 service.
Towards .Mac 2.0
What would a “competent web service” be? For starters, .Mac should not be a service people feel they could leave at any time. It has to be This means that the offerings should be top-notch. If Apple is not up to the task they could at least co-operate with Google or Yahoo! and adapt their frameworks for use in an Apple branded service, adding a layer of Apple UI and desktop integration magic on top. Imagine, for example, a flickr like service with full-blown interoperability with iPhoto (not a simple exporter). Or a twitter like system integrated with the iPhone with it’s one Dashboard widgets and all. Something like Google Documents that you can transparently edit on Pages from any Mac or through the web when abroad. A community portal a la Facebook integrated with iChat, AddressBook and iCal. A proper blogging system integrated with the iPhoto, the photo galleries and a Cocoa or Webkit based WYSIWYG editor. A Get Things Done application that plugs into iCal and Mail.app. I’m only scratching the surface here. The sky’s the limit.
I imagine a core of basic services:
Webmail. it will have to be top-notch, with excellent searching and spam prevention to compete with GMail. It would have to integrate with AddressBook and it we would have to be able to check our mails on Mail.app via POP or IMAP (the current webmail solution does most of these things).
A Facebook like community platform (lot’s of room for innovation in there area).
A competent blogging system, on par with Blogger (if not Wordpress.com).
A service for sharing photo galleries and movie clips.
An online office suite like Google Documents with transparent integration with iWork.
All of these services will have to be integrated with each other (for example one should be able to use photos uploaded to the web gallery system to add a slideshow to his blogging account. You can do this already with a lot of pain. It should be done with one or two mouse clicks).
Free as in beer. Or as in rebate
Oh, and the price will have to go. Seriously, $99 a year for web galleries and IMAP mail? It’s like those annoying nags in Quicktime, saying you should buy Quicktime Pro in order to enjoy something as basic as full-screen video. It’s embarrassing coming from a company like Apple, when competing companies offer similar or better services for free. The money made currently from the subscriptions are pennies compared to the potential earnings of a hugely successful .Mac brand from advertising alone. Apple could still have some Pro features available only to paid subscribers (for example, you could pay to have your .Mac site shown in your own domain name, or if you are a professional Aperture user you could use an Apple provided payment system on top of the web gallery service to sell your images), but otherwise the basic service should be free if not to the general public then to OS X users. Here’s an idea: if you bought a Mac or OS X you are entitled to use .Mac for free until the next OS version comes out. This could work as a motive for people to update their OS faster.
With the billions invested in Web 2.0 companies and the “the web is the new desktop” mindset gaining each year, it’s strange that Apple is not playing the game. Not only that, but it’s online service is its weakest offering. We can only hope that the company will finally see the light. Who knows, maybe Steve Jobs already has a Web 2.0 strategy under wraps, in the top secret underground offices of 1 infinite loop. It wouldn’t be the first time we were in for a pleasant surprise. In the meantime, I’ll have to go check on my GMail.
October 20th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Yes, $100 is lot’s of money for the crap that dot mac is. I tried the system for 3 months and quit.
I don’t think however that Apple stands a chance against Google in the web area.
October 20th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
I’ve maintained a .Mac site mostly because I stubbornly refuse to give up the sweet email address I scored when it was iTools and I feel some obligation to take advantage of the other services I’m paying for.
That said, I’m not surprised that Apple hasn’t attempted a Flikr or Facebook themselves. Looking at the current attempts, there are two things that are consistently true: They require insane bandwidth and server support ($$$), and they have no stable or proven revenue stream. Facebook is still living on VC capital, and that’s not a good place to be. I expect .Mac to continue to get better at integrating with other services (like YouTube) so that other companies get to worry about these things. If they haven’t integrated in the social sites yet, there are probably sound reasons and they probably boil down to either technical hurdles (MySpace.com’s hideous ca. 1996 HTML) or financial hurdles.
I really can’t blame them for watching and waiting. Besides, there are lots and lots of dead web sites out there. GeoCities, anyone?
October 20th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
That said, I’m not surprised that Apple hasn’t attempted a Flikr or Facebook themselves. Looking at the current attempts, there are two things that are consistently true: They require insane bandwidth and server support ($$$), and they have no stable or proven revenue stream.
While the part about the “stable or proven revenue stream” is probably be true for most of the current efforts, Apple’s case is different.
See, unlike Google, Facebook or Flickr, Apple is a company that already builds and sells actual products (Macs, iPhones, iPods and software).
A successful Apple range of Web 2.0 services, integrated to OS X, iLife apps and their consumer electronics offerings can increase the usefulness and value of the company’s products.
I already gave an example of how .Mac can serve as an incentive for people to buy Apple products (e.g. by making it free for the buyers of the latest OS X).
Sort of how they use ITMS to sell more iPods (actually, according to John Gruber, ITMS is quite profitable on it’s own).
October 20th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Yes, iTMS is quite profitable on its own.
That’s not an accident. It’s very much by design. It’s why they’re not going to dip their toes into social networking until either they figure out how to make it pay for itself (at the very least), or until somebody else does.
I imagine that what they’ll do is wait for Google to snap someone up, then integrate that as they’ve integrated YouTube. If there’s a company on Earth that knows how to make money from a vastly distributed, bandwidth-intensive service, together with the server cloud to make it really purr, it’s Google. And they already have a good working relationship with Apple.
October 21st, 2007 at 1:29 am
As a shareholder of Apple, I think the most important goal for Apple is to be PROFITABLE. We’ve gone through years where Apple was losing hundreds of millions of dollars, where every anti-Apple pundit was predicting its death (including Dell’s infamous Michael Dell). Apple has done extremely well in this regard since Steve Jobs came back. And I want this trend to continue.
Apple generally does not sell products or services for a loss. Even the iTunes Music Store makes a profit or at least breaks even.
.Mac costs money. Bandwidth costs money. Storage costs money. Features costs money. Apple will not create a service unless it can profit from it. I would not want them to.
Online communities cost money - Generally large communities are MONEY LOSERS. Look at AOL. Look at FaceBook. Blogger makes no money. Skype is a huge money loser for eBay.
I like .Mac as it is. It’s worth the price. If other services offer more for less - good for them. Take advantage of them until they crack and go broke. Good luck to you. You have my permission to go use those services.
If you want something free from Apple, that will cause it to lose money - then you won’t get it. I would vote against it. Let someone else go broke.
An Apple stockholder - and damn proud of it.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:52 am
As a shareholder of Apple, I think the most important goal for Apple is to be PROFITABLE. We’ve gone through years where Apple was losing hundreds of millions of dollars, where every anti-Apple pundit was predicting its death (including Dell’s infamous Michael Dell). Apple has done extremely well in this regard since Steve Jobs came back. And I want this trend to continue. Apple generally does not sell products or services for a loss. Even the iTunes Music Store makes a profit or at least breaks even.
.Mac costs money. Bandwidth costs money. Storage costs money. Features costs money. Apple will not create a service unless it can profit from it. I would not want them to.
I think you overestimate the operating costs. As a motivator for switching to the Mac, a .Mac 2.0 could more than pay for itself. Think of it as part of their advertising budget. Apple has lots of room to grow market share-wise.
Or, they could offer it for free on purchase of some of their products (a new Mac, OS X etc) until the next revision of the product comes along. In this way, it could be thought as a sort of a rebate. Surely, a $100/year rebate is not that much, if you consider that their margins allowed them to drop $200 off of the iPhone price.
Lastly, a paid “Pro” .Mac offering could also cover the operating costs. There are a lot of profitable online services with a dual free/paid model (6 Apart, 36 Signals, SnugMug, etc).
Online communities cost money - Generally large communities are MONEY LOSERS. Look at AOL. Look at FaceBook. Blogger makes no money. Skype is a huge money loser for eBay.
Yes, but you don’t acknowledge how these examples differ from a hypothetical Apple online community. As I wrote in my previous comment, unlike Facebook, Blogger et al, Apple actually makes and sells tangible products. Products that can benefit and gain usefulness (and, thus, market share) by integrating with a vibrant set of online tools (and community).
Apple does not even have to bear the costs on its own. They could cooperate with Google or Yahoo! and re-brand or adapt their offerings under an Apple umbrella.
I like .Mac as it is. It’s worth the price.
Yes, but how many other people agree to this? .Mac is the most complained about Apple product (excluding the Finder).
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:49 am
I’m not sure I’m interested in a .Mac 2.0 offering. I’m more in favor of third-party developers putting better hooks into the iLife stuff.
I thought I read somewhere that they’ll let any developer have access to the iLife media browser. So instead of Apple putting together a branded Flickr competitor, I’d rather some developer just make Flickr hook into the Media Browser somehow.
Same goes for blogging. Apple shouldn’t compete with WordPress or Blogger. Instead, they should develop an open-enough O.S. to allow a third-party to develop desktop clients for WordPress or Blogger that have the feel of a Mac app.
I mean — most of us already have our social networks already set up. Instead of adding a new one to the mix, Apple should make it as easy as possible for third-party developers to hook the O.S. into those networks.
With that being said, .Mac’s new “Back to My Mac” feature is pretty damn cool, and might be worth the price of admission.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
@Kyle
You have some very interesting ideas. Yes, open hooks for iLife apps would be greatly appreciated. In fact I believe Apple should provide an easy to use, official plug-in framework for it’s apps (Safari, Mail, iLife apps, iWork apps etc). It already does for Aperture, IIRC. It would be a good idea for Apple to invest more in the scripting-bridge to ruby/python they provide in Leopard for that purpose (and, oh, please let Applescript die already!)
I don’t see this as an either/or proposition though. I mean, sure open access to Blogger, Wordpress et al from Apple apps would be greatly appreciated. However, Apple is also in a position to create Web 2.0 applications far beyond what a simple plugin or third-party integration is able to provide (stylish, too, if we are to judge from the Wiki application included in Leopard Server).
December 7th, 2007 at 1:09 am
I am with you. I have not abandoned .Mac because I have faith is Apple and think that they can pull something off if they try. I also really like they mail because it works seamlessly with the mac (duh) if only they could expand their service and do other things that work well with the mac.