Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

.Mac Services

In January 2000, Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained to the Macworld Expo crowds that he and his team had had a mighty brainstorm: Apple controls both ends of the connection between a Mac and the Apple Web site. As a result, Apple should be able to create some pretty clever Internet-based features as a reward to loyal Mac fans. Later that same day, the Apple Web site offered a suite of free services called iTools.

Then the technology bubble burst.

In July 2002, Steve Jobs once again appeared before an Expo audience, this time to announce that iTools would no longer be free. It would now cost $100 per year, bearing a new name—.Mac (“dot-mac”). For a full description, see Figure 18-9.

What .Mac Gets You

For anyone who’s willing to pay the fee, the crown jewel of the .Mac services is iDisk, which creates a 100 MB hard-drive icon on your desktop. Anything you drag into the folders inside this icon gets copied to Apple’s secure servers on the Internet. Meanwhile, on your end, it appears to work just like a very, very slow hard drive.

In other words, iDisk can be helpful for people whose Macs don’t have floppy drives or Zip drives—and even a good idea for those who do. Because this backup disk is off-site, if a fire or thief destroys your office and your backup disks, your iDisk is still safe.

Furthermore, you can pull the iDisk onto any computer’s screen—Mac or Windows—at your office, at your home, at your friend’s house, so you don’t need to carry around a physical disk to transport ...