.Mac finally gets to play with the grown ups

For years .Mac accounts have really been all about having a .mac email address, a useless amount of online storage, a pretty nifty way of syncing your Macs data and a fun way of using iWeb.

Now at last Apple has let their baby grow up and play with the big boys. At 10GB for a single user there is enough online storage for most ‘day to day’ users. Combined with the .Mac Web Gallery there is now a genuine ‘day to day’ use for a .mac account – storing and sharing your photos, but haven’t Apple heard of Flickr:?

“.Mac Web Gallery is an awesome way to share photos and movies on the Internet with friends and family,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “You can share your favorite photos and movies with anyone on a Mac, PC or iPhone, and they can turn them into high-quality prints as well as contribute photos to your site using a web browser or email.”

Apple seem to be fixated with the concept of sharing images and the like with friends and family, and I wonder if that is really worth the cost of the Mac, the .Mac account ($99.95) and iLife 08? For many it will be, and to be fair .Mac starts to make it a more attractive proposition, but as with a lot of ‘things’ Apple, alternatives do exist. They wont be as well designed or integrated with your Mac, but they will be cheaper, and they may well actually do the job better.

Via [Apple]