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dennismurphy
Put me on hold? I'll put YOU on hold
Premium Member
join:2002-11-19
Parsippany, NJ

dennismurphy to Mauricio9

Premium Member

to Mauricio9

Re: .mac is it really worth it?

said by Mauricio9:
I was initially very reluctant to pay for what I once had for free under the name of iTools. I sat a year out, then I test-drove and eventually kept it. What did it for me was the ability to synchronize the address book, calendar and bookmarks across multiple computers. Under Panther it's going to get even better with automatic synchronization of your iDisk to a local folder on each computer. You can work on the same documents on as many computers as you like, picking up where you last left it and not having to worry about whether you uploaded the latest revision or not. .Mac email is also pretty good. It's IMAP, for which your ISP would normally charge you. But again, what did it for me was the syncing ability.
It is absolutely worth the price, *IF* you have more than one Mac.

The simple fact that my calendar at work, and at home, and on my PowerBook are all in sync, all the time, is a *major* bonus for me. Well worth the $99/year in my book.

Not to mention the free games, software, $20 at the Apple Store for renewing, email, home page, etc.

I also find that the homepage/iPhoto process is *so* damned easy it's ridiculous. I love the fact that I can just click a single button and publish lots of pictures instantly...

--DM

sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
MVM
join:2000-07-01
Morristown, NJ

1 recommendation

sporkme

MVM

said by dennismurphy:

The simple fact that my calendar at work, and at home, and on my PowerBook are all in sync, all the time, is a *major* bonus for me. Well worth the $99/year in my book.

I also find that the homepage/iPhoto process is *so* damned easy it's ridiculous. I love the fact that I can just click a single button and publish lots of pictures instantly...
It does really burn me that this has been locked-up a'la M$. WebDav isn't all that new or proprietary, but Apple has set up all the best features so that you must use their (overpriced) WebDav server.

A much nicer, open approach would have been to publish the specs. I'd love to see a ".mac marketplace" where ISPs and hosting businesses (like the one I work for) could offer something special to their Mac users. We could sell a hell of a lot more DSL accounts if included in the base price was X MB of "iDisk" storage that allowed people to upload photos easily, sync their machines, publish calendars, backup important files, etc. And low-click email setup would be quite nice as well (we already do IMAP).

Stupid move on their part; that's not their core business, no need to be so 'proprietary'. I just hope someone reverse engineers it soon. It's a pain to do so, as all communications are encrypted via https, but it's still possible. Just have to find where the more industrious/curious/naughty Mac/Unix gurus congregate.

Mauricio9
Premium Member
join:2001-12-04
Vancouver, BC

Mauricio9

Premium Member

I don't see why bundling .mac type of services with broadband would be a good business model. If I move every two years, I want to be able to get the best broadband around in my new area, but I still want to keep my .mac services. Broadband and WebDAV are not inseparably linked; bundling them would be more M$ type of beahvior than the current .mac policy.

sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
MVM
join:2000-07-01
Morristown, NJ

sporkme

MVM

said by Mauricio9:
I don't see why bundling .mac type of services with broadband would be a good business model. If I move every two years, I want to be able to get the best broadband around in my new area, but I still want to keep my .mac services. Broadband and WebDAV are not inseparably linked; bundling them would be more M$ type of beahvior than the current .mac policy.
No, I want them to *unbundle* .mac. That way for those that want to buy the service from Apple, great. But if you want to purchase elsewhere, or simply use your own server, that should be an option.

As someone that works for an ISP, I think it would be a great selling point to make the already-included web/email space usable via the .mac tools. Where I work, we have many long-time customers, they like us. They'd like us more if we could offer them something the Earthlinks/AOLs of the world don't yet offer...

mgilliland
Premium Member
join:2001-07-28
Joplin, MO

mgilliland

Premium Member

Click for full size
said by sporkme:


No, I want them to *unbundle* .mac. That way for those that want to buy the service from Apple, great. But if you want to purchase elsewhere, or simply use your own server, that should be an option.
sporkme,

If you follow the link that AgentSkelly provided (or others that are out there) you can easily setup a Non-OSX Server (that is the client OSX) to run WebDAV. The tools are a different story in that where they point needs to be changed depending on what server you might set up.

I have been working with it and currently testing on an older iMac to do just what .Mac does. At this time we are able to share iCal calendars, view the calendars as webpages, and just now getting iSync going. The OSX client is OSX Server just with no GUI and all the goodies turned ot (commented out),

For example, to view the httpd.conf file just open TextEdit, Select File and then open. Now in the Go to text box type the below:

/etc/httpd

You will see something similar to the above graphic.

Just open the httpd.conf file and uncomment the items that you wish to use serverwise. If you uncomment the two dav lines and install the mod_dav module that AgentSkelly point to you will now have WebDAV up and running.

The two lines are as below: (just remove the # from the front of the line)

#LoadModule dav-module liibexec/httpd/libdav.so
#AddModule mod_dav.c

You can even set up basic authentication by using Terminal for access to your WebDAV share.

For this, we use the 'htpasswd' command.

1.make the directory that will contain this file: sudo mkdir /etc/httpd/passwords.

2.Use htpasswd with the -c option to create the file: Of course use someone else's name besides mine (Michael)

sudo htpasswd -c /etc/httpd/passwords/webdav.access Michael.

3.For any other users you want to add, including a 'guest' or anonymous user, use a command like sudo htpasswd /etc/httpd/passwords/webdav.access guest. For each of these, of course, you will be asked for a password for the given user.

Those are the basics and you probably knew that information.

Michael
[text was edited by author 2003-09-02 19:26:49]

shavano
Even in America -- I long for America
join:2003-06-08
Dallas, TX

shavano

Member

Michael,

You mean I could just enable WebDAV on one of my Macs and then use iSync with it instead of .Mac to keep my B&W and my TiBook synchronized?

jet

MadDog3057
Ex Astris, Scientia
Premium Member
join:2002-02-26
Miami, FL

MadDog3057 to mgilliland

Premium Member

to mgilliland
Who names their Hard Drives Plato and Socrates?

mgilliland
Premium Member
join:2001-07-28
Joplin, MO

mgilliland to shavano

Premium Member

to shavano
Shavano,

It is not as simple as that at all. I have only begun to look at iSync and alternative syncing solutions using the software. If you control-click on iSync and then select show package contents you can see everything for the application. The information for where iSync syncs is in those files.

This type of thing is an area that one has to be careful of with Apple or any other companies software. Don't want any one to think that their software is being altered thus causing conflict with the end-user agreement.

Right now WebDAV and iCal is a simple matter and anyone can get their system to do that easily. The rest of the stuff is a bit different.

Michael
mgilliland

mgilliland to MadDog3057

Premium Member

to MadDog3057
MadDog,

Well, probably not many individuals would choose such names. I received two more drives to install in this particular system and will have to work on names for those.

My B&W G3 (courtesy of a great trip around the US) has a couple of drives in it and they are named Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn. There are some composers names in other systems.

Michael

Mauricio9
Premium Member
join:2001-12-04
Vancouver, BC

Mauricio9

Premium Member

said by mgilliland:
I received two more drives to install in this particular system and will have to work on names for those.
Isn't it obvious? Aristoteles and Onassis!

sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
MVM
join:2000-07-01
Morristown, NJ

sporkme to mgilliland

MVM

to mgilliland
said by mgilliland:
Shavano,

It is not as simple as that at all. I have only begun to look at iSync and alternative syncing solutions using the software. If you control-click on iSync and then select show package contents you can see everything for the application. The information for where iSync syncs is in those files.

This type of thing is an area that one has to be careful of with Apple or any other companies software. Don't want any one to think that their software is being altered thus causing conflict with the end-user agreement.
Interesting. Are you saying that somewhere in the isync Resource folder there's a setting for what server to point to for syncing? As you may have guessed, I have webdav running (apache 2/freebsd) and already access my iTunes folder that way. That lets me access my music with my ibook anywhere I've got a decent internet connection, and I don't have to open AFP, NFS or anything nasty like that to the outside world; just good old port 80/443.

I've gone as far as setting up my internal dns server to point to my webdav server for the .mac stuff, but the idisk stuff asks for a config file before it will consider "mounting" the remote share. You can sign up for a trial and capture the traffic, but it all goes over https, so it's encrypted. Blocking 443 outbound just breaks it; it won't fall back to simple http. If it did, it would be less of a challenge to reverse engineer...

I'm sure someone has figured this out, but I'm not up on where the uber-gurus of os-x hang out.

As for the software license, I'd feel OK about doing it as long as I wasn't altering any software on my client machine. I'd only be altering my own nameserver and perhaps writing a little perl or php app to spit back whatever xml-based config info it wants to mount my server's share...

mgilliland
Premium Member
join:2001-07-28
Joplin, MO

mgilliland

Premium Member

Sporkme,

It seems that iSync does use port 443 and goes to the URL of syncmgmt.mac.com. So you have to somehow get it to recognize a different URL to use for this service.

I do remember reading somewhere on the net about some people trying this but can not seem to find the bookmark.

Michael