I’ve been a huge fan of .Mac - Apple’s suite of online services for syncing and accessing your address, calendar, email, files and many other types of data - for many years now.
Back in 2006 I first started using .Mac to backup key personal data and OS X settings. It also proved a great tool enabling the auto-configuration of most of your settings and reinstalling data when doing a clean install of Mac OS X. From Panther to Tiger to Leopard, all seamless clean installs.
But today is .Mac’s last day. Tonight Apple will take the service offline and lay it to rest forever. So, .Mac, I thank you and bid you farewell.
Tomorrow is all about Me, no not me, Me, as in Apple’s major revision of .Mac known as MobileMe. It will offer pretty much all the same capabilities as .Mac (minus bookmarking and iCards) but will now also enable real-time seamless syncing of data between devices via ‘the cloud’ without any need to wait for or manually run the sync services.
.Mac MobileMe is essential for keeping my work Mac and personal Mac insync as well as the few instances when I need access to the same data carried on my iPod touch. These days Apple’s online services offer so much more than just data syncing and backup. With services such as Back to my Mac and Gallery (both of which I use extensively), not to mention the new web-based access to iCal, Address Book and iDisk, Apple is offering a suite of tools that are essential to how I run my life and enable me to work and store/accesss data remotely.
And I get a cool @me.com email address, though, I never did use my @mac.com address. Oh well.
