Apple fans diss .Mac
You know you're in trouble when even your biggest fans say your products don't rate. The Unofficial Apple Weblog has stacked up Apple's .Mac service against Google's Web-based applications, and found .Mac comes up dangerously short. Sure, Apple's Mail software is prettier than Google's Gmail, but its spam-filtering and email categorization features lag far behind Google's, says TUAW. Down the list, from Web storage space to online calendars, Apple comes up wanting. And worst of all, .Mac users are paying $99 a year for the service, while Google users get all their online goodies for free.
The post has mostly sparked sad agreement. On his Surfbits blog for users who have switched from Windows PCs to Macs, Jeff Powell writes that he'd "love to see Apple revamp the service and wow us all over again." If Steve Jobs is serious about declaring war on bad software, he might want to start doing battle with his company's own Web-based applications. Absolutely. In most things, Apple excels. I'm a life-long Apple devotee. But when it comes to many things web based, they definitely do not. .mac = yuck. So does their supposedly amazing online "help" on their website. The answer to my question is almost never "just a click away".
And um, while we're voicing gripes, how about an iTunes music store that doesn't require iTunes be launched just to browse... and sells ACTUAL mp3s intead of a weird format that self-desctructs after you use it a few times. Remember DIVX vs DVD? AAC protected files sure are dangerously close to that ugliness. But really... how cool would a web-based music store be?! I hate having to launch iTunes whenever i just wanna check out a new artist. SO annoying! (And PC people with locked-down computers at work are just outta luck.) 
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