Today I let my .Mac subscription expire. I’ve been a .Mac subscriber since Apple began charging for what was once a free service, but I can no longer justify the ‘equivalent of £5.75 a month’ for Apple’s suite of Internet services. I’ve grudgingly paid the $100 fee for the past couple of years, largely for the ability to sync my bookmarks, calendars and contacts across machines, even if each time I’ve felt vaguely conned at having to pay for something that ought to be free (the same feeling you get on finding out you need to purchase a new QuickTime Pro key with each version bump).

Even with the latest upgrade from 250MB to a mere 1GB of combined email/storage, as webmail .Mac really doesn’t cut it alongside Gmail and for $8/month with Strongspace I’ve got four times as much secure offsite storage.

So it’s goodbye .Mac.

Update: One of the things I did like about .Mac was Apple’s Backup app, which at version 3 was finally worthy of its name. Here’s a way to replicate Backup’s handy ‘Personal Data and Settings’ plan using rsync and Strongspace.

Update: ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch on why “Backup 3 is easily the worst piece of software Apple is shipping today”. Although version 3.0.1, just released via Software Update, may address some of these issues: “Backup 3.0.1 addresses file restoration and other issues and is highly recommended for all users of Backup 3.0″.

Update: on the subject of QuickTime Pro, here’s a fantastic rant about “the split between Quicktime and QuickTime Pro and what a silly anachronism it is”.

(Technorati tags: dot-mac | strongspace)