Apple Makes Major .Mac Improvements

Late last night Apple unleashed a slew of new features and improvements to their .Mac subscription service, including:

.Mac Groups: .Mac members can now easily create private, ad-free online communities that make it easy for family, friends and private groups to communicate, coordinate and share digital media. With .Mac Groups, members can send emails to the entire group using a single address; post files, pictures and movies with a common group iDisk; publish group web pages and post links to other sites; and keep up-to-date with the latest group events with a shared iCal calendar.

Backup 3: .Mac Backup has been redesigned from the ground up resulting in easier setup, quicker backups and the ability to seamlessly automate the process so users don’t have to remember to run a backup. New features include the ability to automatically back up iLife content, Home folder, iTunes purchased music, and other Mac essentials. Built-in Mac OS X “Tiger” Spotlight search capabilities make it easy to select specific files to backup, while incremental backups help to save time and media costs.

Increased Online Storage: .Mac members now have four times more online storage space than before to host their email messages, documents and digital media files. Storage for individual members has increased to 1GB of combined email and iDisk space, .Mac Family Pack customers now receive 2GB of combined storage. Members can utilize their storage any way they choose dedicating more or less storage space to email or their iDisk. Individuals or Family Pack members can optionally purchase an additional 1GB of storage for US$49.95 annually.

French and German Localization: In addition to English and Japanese, localized versions of the .Mac website are now available in French and German.

I will be diving into the .Mac groups later today, but I must say that for now, I am most excited about the storage increase to 1 GB from a measly 250 MB. Good job, Apple.

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