.Mac Alternatives? 83
peel asks: "In the endless effort to get organized I'm looking for an alternative to signing up for a .Mac account that allows me to sync iCal and the Address Book between multiple computers (mainly work and home). I found iSyncCal to let me sync calendars, I can also publish them using my personal server setup with WebDav. I haven't found any such utilities for addresses. What I really want is something that works more like .Mac but that I can run at home on my server without paying the monthly .Mac fees. What are some solutions people are using for syncing contact info for people stored in multiple places (Palm, cell, work computer, home computer, laptop)?" There was a similar discussion over on MacInTouch, although the alternatives offered cover more basic needs, the information may still prove useful for those looking for "a cheaper .Mac".
Third Device (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Third Device (Score:2)
Re:Third Device (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Third Device (Score:1)
Re:Third Device (Score:1)
Of course Linux is the answer to everything. (Score:1)
Re:I must be new here. (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably by means of typing some cryptic commands. This seems to be an universal answer for all questions beginning with "how to" and ending with "Linux".
Another "how-to" article (Score:5, Informative)
"Six Great Tips for Homemade Dot Mac Servers" [macdevcenter.com]
Re:Another "how-to" article (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another "how-to" article (Score:1)
Or (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Or (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or (Score:2)
The point is, the data is mine, and if I don't involve outside parties in helping me to keep it synched, the likelyhood of it staying mine is much higher.
Re:Or (Score:1)
Monthly Fees? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the translation above...there's no reason to go and gerryrig a pseudo-.Mac when this one works and is integrated already. You will end up spending more than $99/year between labor, etc.
Re:Monthly Fees? (Score:1)
Re:Monthly Fees? (Score:1)
price Vs convenience (Score:5, Insightful)
How much money do you make per hour at your current job, i always put it that way to see if something is worth the time. Of course if its a fun hack to do, then its priceless right?
In the end you may see that $99 (sometimes cheaper) is worth what
Re:price Vs convenience (Score:2)
How much money do you make per hour at your current job?
It's funny you ask that. It seems the longer I work the less I make per hour... I also don't make any more or less overall if I spend time away from work on crazy schemes to avoid spending $100.
Try using enjoyment instead of dollars when measuring the value of what to do with your free time. You may find you'll be happier.
Re:price Vs convenience (Score:2)
Re:price Vs convenience (Score:1)
Re:price Vs convenience (Score:2)
Hmm, opportunity! (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe 80% of the features at 70% of the price? $69 a year, or $5.99 a month, for an email, synching, calendaring, etc?
Re:Hmm, opportunity! (Score:2)
Hardly. Remember that Apple does not give away iTunes, iPhoto, iSync and iOther iStuff for free because it's such a nice company. Basically they do it to promote their products, including dot Mac. If you launch this kind of "competition", Apple will sue your shoes off. And I think they'd be right about it.
Re:Hmm, opportunity! (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean no one else can offer webDAV?
No one can reverse engineer protocols?
I think Apple would be right to respond by increasing their value, whether it be via quality, reliability, service, price, or features.
Suing a competitor is hardly 'right'
That's hardly better than muscling out the competition through legal contracts and price structure schemes.
Re:Hmm, opportunity! (Score:2)
So they would have to develop iSync (et al) for peanuts, and you would just "compete" by offering a cheaper WebDAV service? Do you think this would be a fair deal?
Re:Hmm, opportunity! (Score:2)
I use and love
I think competition is a good thing
Apple should offer exactly what they are good at: Integration, ease of use, usability, service.
If someone can do something better than Apple, it's in Apple's service to *work* with them so everyone wins, not to sue them out of existence.
To use a dif
Re:Hmm, opportunity! (Score:2)
I can drink to that. But this is a slightly different topic - dot Mac is all about integration and ease of use. So if you just want to launch any WebDAV server, I don't hold anything against that. I'll just say that you're not offering "dot Mac alternative", you just offer some storage space by WebDAV.
Re:Hmm, opportunity! (Score:2)
1. prevail in court
2. go into such a suit just for the hell of it
or
3. ever launch such a silly suit in the first place
A simple application that changes your local dns to point to apple's
In reality what I can see this used for is a bonus for people to sign up to for-pay mac group
Why alternatives? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why alternatives? (Score:2, Interesting)
cost me £33 for a year - I make that in about an hour and a half, it's about the same price as a tank of fuel for me!
Re:Why alternatives? (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest thing I'd like to add is the ability to use a different domain name. I've been using a personal domain for a long time now, and don't want to train my visitors to go to a different address.
Re:Why alternatives? (Score:1)
Re:Why alternatives? (Score:2)
Re:Why alternatives? (Score:1)
syncML (Score:3, Informative)
Re:syncML (Score:3, Informative)
How much is your time worth?` (Score:5, Insightful)
Setup & maintain IMAP mail
Setup & maintain sync to iCal
Setup & maintain sync to address book
Setup & maintain 100mb DAV
Setup & maintain CD/DVD/on-line integrated backup
Setup & maintain template driven web hosting
Setup & maintain iPhoto image publishing
Setup & maintain iCards
Substitute anti-virus software
Substitute access to "members only" support
.Mac account is $99.year, if you spend ONE HOUR doing each of the above each year, and your time were worth $10/hr you would LOOSE $1 a year!!! (Presuming no hardware or software costs, just time.)
Since a
I COULD change my own oil, but to me, it isn't worth $20 every 3,000 miles to do it.
Re:How much is your time worth?` (Score:2)
Re:How much is your time worth?` (Score:2)
CAUTION: Contents may be extremely hot!
Re:How much is your time worth?` (Score:1)
It's not cost-effective to roll your own. (Score:3, Informative)
For example, look at the scenario of what if a hard drive dies. If it dies in your server, you go out and spend $100 on a new hard drive, and possibly lose months of information, and may have days of downtime while you reconfigure everything. If it dies in a
Re:It's not cost-effective to roll your own. (Score:1)
Oh, I can use
The only reason a lot of people signed up for
Re:It's not cost-effective to roll your own. (Score:1)
And yes, I have known mac users who've gotten viruses. Recently. I'm not talking about "I know a guy who had nVir on his Classic 12 years ago.", I'm talking about something recently came into email, and caused us to buy Norton AV for an entire department of mac users.
If you don't use the other servi
Re:It's not cost-effective to roll your own. (Score:2)
Re:It's not cost-effective to roll your own. (Score:1)
With
You get a resonable price for drag-and-drop web publishing, without ha
Re:It's not cost-effective to roll your own. (Score:1)
Re:It's not cost-effective to roll your own. (Score:1)
Re:It's not cost-effective to roll your own. (Score:2)
Well, now that you mention it..
I ended up just installing gftp via fink and then used that in the meantime. It is rather odd though.
.Mac - it's worth it! (Score:1, Insightful)
Not just for Macintosh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems that many of the
On a local box at my house, I've considered setting up Apache+WebDAV, IMAP, LDAP & iCal servers; all available via a password-protected/SSL website, or via their normal protocol (with encryption, if possible).
But the devil is the integration of these services. I'm not sure where to start.
An idea (Score:2, Informative)
I do remember seeing one person that had sniffed the communications to
Maybe it's not about money, but about convenience (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's kinda funny how all these comments center around the fact that .mac 'is only 8 dollars a month'.
I'm not interested in saving money (I'd just get an el cheapo x86 machine instead of a Mac to really save money... :p as if), I'm interested in really sharing my information between my different machines.
Just look at my setup: at home I've got a G3 powerMac and an Ibook, at work it's a powermac G4 and the aforementioned iBook. I'm just looking at an easy (or maybe better 'straightforward') way to share Jaguar's address book and calendar between the three.
I could do this via .Mac, but only if I have an internet connection. Now, having an internet connection isn't a problem in itself (i've got cable at home and dsl at work), the stupid thing about this imho is that, since the machines are networked anyway (through ethernet, in a powermac to ibook type of deal both at work and at home), why do I even need to go via .Mac? I just want to be able to sync locally.
The current workaround I've got is using my T68i bluetooth phone. It works pretty well, but I think it's a shame I have to use this workaround...
IMHO, apple should support local sync without .Mac.
So for some, it might not be about money.
Cheers.
Re:Maybe it's not about money, but about convenien (Score:2)
The easy way to go would be mac OS X server but at $500 that's a bit pricey just to bring things in hosue for a few computers.
Re:Maybe it's not about money, but about convenien (Score:2)
Re:Maybe it's not about money, but about convenien (Score:2)
It's about independance. If Apple should ever decide to kill the
What if you want to emulate the
It's these little things that Apple needs to address. I'd love to use a
Sigh...
Re:Maybe it's not about money, but about convenien (Score:1)
Saint Fnordius said: .mac service, who do you turn to?
If Apple should ever decide to kill the
What, like they killed off Hypercard (or HC 4.0 in QT), mklinux, Newton or OpenDoc? One of the things that pisses me off about Apple is that when they decide to kill off a project they make sure it's dead. Port hypercard to Carbon or release the source code: forget it.
When the winds change and Steve Jobs decides to get out of the .Mac business you'll
Re:Maybe it's not about money, but about convenien (Score:1)
Perhaps they'll start offering AirPort base stations with hard drives in them...
- Ert
one-way sync (Score:1)
I'm reluctant to simply delete all the data on the Mac as this will probably delete all or some of the contacts on the
Re:one-way sync (Score:2, Informative)
If I recall correctly, the first time I performed a sync between my computer and my T68i, I got a dialog box asking
Re:one-way sync (Score:1)
Yes, that's the problem - it's been a couple of weeks and I'd forgotten the details
Well, the Calendar data turns out
It's about the bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
Personlly, I think they should add local
iExchageServer for XServes... (Score:1)
I love iCal and Address book and would love to see my whole department using it. but I am not about to spend thousands of dollars to get a
Apple needs to offer these services on their servers. This would make them much more attractive to small businesses. iCal needs some serious work before larger orgs will adopt but it is suffie
Re:iExchageServer for XServes... (Score:1)
Sync between iCal and Evolution (Score:1)
Thanks.
1 word: iPod. (Score:3, Interesting)
CVS (Score:2, Interesting)
CVS is a system specifically designed to (among many other things) keep text files in sync across multiple machines. It can handle binary files also, but not particularly well. If you have a system in which you can set up a CVS server (all the tools are built into Mac OS X + Development Tools) I recommend experimenting with that.
The iCal calendar files are text files that could be synchronized. Note that I have *not* tested how well this would actually work with iCal.
The Apple Address Book application
Money really isn't the issue (Score:1)