Product Reviews

When Apple launched the iPod nano at a special event before Apple Expo in Paris, many of us wondered what it would unveil at the show itself. It turns out that any hopes of new hardware were in vain: the only announcement during the week of the show was an update to its .Mac suite of Internet services. Was this such a significant launch? Read on to find out.

It's a subscription service - you need to pay every year - so what do you get for your money? Well, at the heart of .Mac is your iDisk, 'your hard drive in the sky'; more prosaically, it's a block of space on Apple's huge complex of Xserves in Cupertino and elsewhere which you access over the Internet. This has grown in capacity from iTools' 20MB limit in 2000 to this latest revision, which stands at a full 1GB. Download bandwidth has been increased from 3GB to 10GB.

You also get an email address (yourname@mac.com), which isn't tied to any Internet service provider, and a preference screen online that allows you to divide your gigabyte of storage between your email and iDisk.

The iDisk is more than just somewhere to chuck a few files so you can access them from virtually any Internet-connected computer all over the world.

One of the most compelling reasons to shell out an annual £69 is .Mac's backup application, called, simply, Backup, it has the ability to backup your files to the iDisk, keeping them safe from any local catastrophes.

Also, there's a new version of Backup available, which Apple hopes is so simple nobody will have the excuse not to back up. Launching the application for the first time prompts you to import any backup plans you have in place from the previous version, or select from a number of preset plans. Of course, you can then customise these presets or create your own from scratch. You do this by defining the source - what you want to back up - then the target (network, hard disk, iDisk, optical media) and optionally

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set a schedule.

Those using Mac OS X 10.4 have a particular advantage here, as Backup can use Spotlight to define the files you want to back up. Unfortunately, the Spotlight implementation is basic; you're limited to entering a search term and picking whether it looks in your Home folder, on the whole computer, or on servers. You don't have any of the richness and subtlety of a proper Smart Folder, so you can't, for instance, automatically backup all Word documents relating to a particular project that were created in the last week. And backing up Smart Folders themselves just backs up the search term, not the items. You're also limited to backing up data only from the active user, even if you're an administrator.

That said, we were impressed with the ability to mix different backup plans, so that vital data can, for example, be backed up to the iDisk daily, and your iLife files can be backed up to DVD on a monthly basis. Backups are now incremental, which means they are much faster after the initial run.

The other headline feature is .Mac Groups. This allows you to create a page for a group or club, where messages, calendars, external links and resources can be viewed. Setup is easy - so long as you can allocate a 100MB chunk from your iDisk - and members of the group don't have to be .Mac members. They will need an Apple ID, but this is free. Calendar groups can be published from iCal (they collapse down into one single calendar on the site), and subscribed to.

Messages sent to the dedicated group email address are redirected to all members and also appear on the site. Members (even on a PC) have access to the group's space on your iDisk so they can add resources, which you can then use with .Mac's regular HomePage and iCard tools to create download, gallery and other pages.

Administration is generally good; as group creator, you can bar members and transfer control of the group to another member. It's a richer experience than Yahoo! Groups, and benefits Mac users by being better integrated into the system.

Plus, there's all the other benefits of .Mac: the ability to sync multiple computers over the Internet, ad-free email, easy photo galleries directly from iPhoto and the rest. And you occasionally get free software and discounts.

Sixty nine pounds every year may grate, but .Mac really is an invaluable extension to your desktop. Put it this way: everyone in the MacUser office pays the subscription fee, and, with the latest revision, we'll all be renewing.