David Reynolds - .Mac with iWeb

Back at the turn of the millennium, Apple came out with a suite of Internet tools called iTools, which consisted of a mac.com e-mail address as well as KidSafe (a filter for child-friendly Web sites), HomePage (an easy-to-use tool for building Web sites), and iDisk (20 MB of online storage that was accessible using just about any Internet connection). Apples Internet strategy basically boiled down to a nifty set of Mac-only tools meant to make Mac users online lives a little easier.

Fast-forward half a dozen years. The tools are no longer free and the name has changediTools now goes by .Mac (pronounced dot mac)but the goal remains the same: make Mac users online lives easier. With a mac.com e-mail address, iDisk, and HomePage still at its core, .Mac now also includes tight integration with Mac OS X, as well as a host of other features, all for just $99 a year. Sounds expensive until you look at it this way: It amounts to just 27 cents a day. If youre like me, you can find that under your couch cushions, along with a few stale snacks.

In this chapter, Ill show you how to create your .Mac account, set your .Mac preferences, manage your .Mac account, and set up your iDisk.

.Mac isnt just a single application or Web site. Its a suite of Internet services thats meant to help Mac users get more from their Macs. Ill quickly walk through each of the .Mac services now before going into greater detail on how to use each one later in the book.

.Mac Mail. At the center of your .Mac membership is a full e-mail account ending in @mac.com . You can use this e-mail account to send and receive e-mail on any computer that has a POP or IMAP client available, and thats pretty much every one out there. In addition, .Mac Mail is Web based, so you can send and receive e-mail from any Web browser.

iDisk. All .Mac accounts come with 1 GB of online storage that you can use to keep mail and files on your iDisk. Support for iDisk is built into Mac OS X, and using it is a lot like using any other network serveror even a hard drive, for that matter. iDisk serves as the backbone for publishing Web pages and synchronizing information between Macs.

iLife 06 Integration. With iWeb and iPhoto, members of the iLife suite of applications, you can easily publish Web pages and sites to your .Mac account, as well as create shareable photo albums called Photocasts. And with GarageBand, you can create your own high-quality enhanced podcasts, complete with images, and share them through .Mac.

HomePage. Your .Mac membership includes access to HomePage, handy Web-based software that allows you to quickly build Web pages that serve as photo albums, movie theaters, and file-download pages.

HomePage uses files that you upload to your iDisk. HomePage is also integrated with iPhoto, making it incredibly easy to share your pictures.

Groups. Use your .Mac account to organize your soccer team, your grade-school classroom, or your online-gaming guild. A .Mac Group gives members a group e-mail, a message board, a calendar, and iDisk spacejust for Group members.

Backup. Each .Mac membership comes with Backup, a free utility designed to automate data backups to your .Mac account as well as to CDs, DVDs, and external hard drives. Making sure your important files get backed up doesnt sound very sexy, but when youre facing a corrupt hard drive and you dont have a backup, a simple and free backup utility starts looking pretty good.

Address Book. Your .Mac account lets you synchronize your Address Book data so that its available to you anywhere you have access to a Web browser. And with Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, you can share your Address Book with others.

iCards. With a .Mac account, you can create and send e-mail greeting cards, drawn from Apples professionally designed assortment or chosen from your own custom creations.

.Mac Sync. With Mac OS X v10.4, you can synchronize important information, such as Keychain passwords, Mails Smart Mailboxes, and Safari bookmarks, to your .Mac accountwhich lets you keep that information in sync with another Mac and provides you with a backup copy. Even those running Mac OS X v10.3 Panther can use iSync with .Mac to keep their information synchronized across Macs.