.Mac Product Overview January 2006
Product Overview .Mac Contents Page 4 Introduction Page 6 New in .Mac .Mac Photocasting iWeb Publishing, Blogging, and Podcasting Online Slideshow Viewer High-Capacity Storage and Data Transfer Options iDisk Access Through a Browser .Mac Blog Articles Page 10 Express Yourself with .Mac and iLife ’06 Sophisticated Websites in Minutes One-Click Blog Publishing Rich Media Podcasting Stunning Online Slideshows Built-in Privacy Protection Other Ways to Publish Page 16 Share Photo Albums with .
Product Overview .Mac Page 24 Coordinate Activities with .Mac Groups Private Group Website Unique Group Email Address Easy Member Management Group Calendar Photo and Movie Sharing iDisk File Sharing Page 27 Stay in Sync with .Mac Sync Page 28 Go Anywhere with .Mac Send and Receive Mail Access Your Files Use Your Address Book and Bookmarks Check Your Appointments Update Your Personal Website Stay in Touch with Your Group Page 30 Become a .
Product Overview .Mac 4 Introduction Your life. On the Internet. .Mac is a membership-based service that combines the simplicity of the Mac with the power of the Internet.1 By extending the reach of iLife applications, Mac OS X, and popular third-party software, .Mac lets you discover a better way to experience the web. Expand Your World with .Mac .Mac is the gateway to the kind of Internet experience you expect from Apple—both easy and elegant. The heart of .
Product Overview .Mac 5 Your automatic backups can be made to a hard drive, iPod, CDs, or DVDs; or you can back up to your iDisk. After you’ve set up a schedule, you’ll never have to worry about forgetting a backup again. Do even more with .Mac .Mac includes a host of other services that let you communicate, coordinate, and manage your digital life. Use .Mac Mail to enjoy the same world-class, ad-free email service whether you’re using Mac OS X Mail on your desktop or accessing email through a browser.
Product Overview .Mac 6 New in .Mac .Mac provides individuals and families with the Internet experience they’ve come to expect from Apple. .Mac now works seamlessly with iLife ’06 to open a new world of personal expression on the web—including one-click publishing of websites, blogs, rich media podcasts, and slideshows. New storage and data transfer options increase capacity for enthusiastic users of these new publishing tools. .
Product Overview .Mac 7 iWeb Publishing, Blogging, and Podcasting Web publishing has become as elegant as it is easy with iLife ’06 and .Mac. This exciting new approach to creating media-rich websites includes the following features: • Drag-and-drop web page authoring. Use iWeb in iLife ’06 to create beautiful mediarich web pages using Apple-designed templates. You can include text, photos, movies, and links, as well as blogs and rich media podcasts you’ve created with iLife ’06.
Product Overview .Mac 8 • Thumbnail navigation. Scroll through the thumbnails at the top of the screen, then click a thumbnail to jump to the slide you want to see. • Slides-only view. The controls disappear until the cursor is moved to the top or bottom of the screen. For more information about web-based slideshows, including the new viewer, see “Express Yourself with .Mac and iLife ’06” on page 10. High-Capacity Storage and Data Transfer Options A .
Product Overview .Mac .Mac Blog Articles The .Mac website now features “.Mac Blog,” a brand-new publication focused on topics of interest to .Mac members. In-depth articles, published as regular entries in a blog format, cover topics such as how to use Safari and RSS, understanding Photocasting, the advantage of modern browsers, and how to make the move from HomePage to iWeb. Previous entries are archived for easy access; you can request topics for future articles through a link.
Product Overview .Mac 10 Express Yourself with .Mac and iLife ’06 .Mac works seamlessly with iLife ’06 to open a new world of self-expression on the web. You can use iLife ’06 and .Mac to create sophisticated websites, attractive blogs, and rich media podcasts, all with drag-and-drop ease. Show o∂ your iLife ’06 slideshows through an elegant new web viewer, or share albums of full-resolution photos with family and friends through Photocasting. .
Product Overview .Mac 11 Now the fun begins. Use the template as is or personalize it. Drag photos from the iLife Media Browser and type your own content into the text placeholders. Or customize your page to your heart’s content by adding text, photos, lists, links to other web pages and sites, links to the iTunes Music Store, and feeds for iPhoto Photocasts, all with drag-and-drop ease. The dynamic graphics canvas in iWeb lets you see your page exactly as it will look, even while you’re making changes.
Product Overview .Mac 12 These are some examples of blogs you might want to create: • You are passionately interested in food. You publish a blog that includes entries about restaurants you love, new dishes you’ve tried, and recipes you’ve created, complete with photos of the finished product. • You spend a month exploring the back roads of the American Southwest and use a blog to keep your family and friends up to date on your adventures.
Product Overview .Mac 13 Rich Media Podcasting A podcast is a form of broadcast that is distributed as a digital media file. You can subscribe to a podcast from a link on a web page or a listing in the iTunes Music Store, then play it on your computer or download it to your iPod. Podcasts can range from a simple audio recording to a photo podcast that synchronizes still images with a soundtrack to a video podcast that includes a chapter menu for skipping to specific sections.
Product Overview .Mac 14 The .Mac slideshow viewer makes it easy to enjoy the slides, because the controls are on the screen only when you want to use them. The thumbnails and arrows appear when your cursor moves over a control zone at the top or bottom of the screen and disappear when the cursor moves away. A button that plays a set of photos in the .Mac slideshow viewer appears on every photo page published through iWeb. The new viewer also plays slideshows created automatically through .Mac Groups.
Product Overview .Mac 15 Built-in Privacy Protection Apple does not publish directories of .Mac sites; only the people you notify will receive the address of your website. If you want additional security, you can password-protect any site you create. Other Ways to Publish .Mac provides two alternative ways to publish web pages: • Publishing without iLife ’06. Members who do not have iLife ’06 can continue to create and publish basic photo, movie, and text web pages through .Mac HomePage.
Product Overview .Mac 16 Share Photo Albums with .Mac Photocasting Sharing photos means much more than just looking at prints. You may want to send your photos to your family and friends in digital form so that they can view them in slideshows or use them in projects like iPhoto books and calendars. It can be di∑cult to send an album’s worth of large digital photos in an email. If you send images on a CD, you have to burn a new disc every time you make changes to an album. .
Product Overview .Mac 17 Collaborate E∂ortlessly with .Mac iDisk In a world that relies increasingly on the Internet, it’s common to collaborate with people who are not in the same place—whether they’re across town, on the opposite end of the country, or on the other side of the world. iDisk is personal storage space on Apple servers that you can access anytime you are online. Use your iDisk to exchange media files and documents with friends and colleagues, especially files that are too large to email.
Product Overview .Mac 18 Drag-and-Drop File Transfers It’s easy to open an iDisk—your own iDisk or a friend’s—using the Go menu in the Mac OS X Finder. After you’ve accessed the iDisk you want, an iDisk window appears on your desktop. Transfer files by dragging them into the folder you want. Create folders, move files, and delete items just as if you were working on your own hard drive. The Public folder on your iDisk is the perfect way to share large files with other people.
Product Overview .Mac 19 Back Up Your Files with .Mac Backup 3 Making backups is a little like changing the oil in your car. It seems like just enough trouble that you’re inclined to put it o∂; then, when you have a problem, you kick yourself for not having taken the time to do it. It’s far too easy to erase a file accidentally, make and save changes to the wrong version of a file, or have some other problem you can’t anticipate.
Product Overview .Mac 20 Customized Plans If you want to go beyond the preset backup plans, it’s easy to customize a preset plan or create your own from scratch. You can create as many di∂erent plans as you want.
Product Overview .Mac 21 Backing Up to iDisk It’s always a good idea to keep a separate copy of your most important files at a location that is far from your home or o∑ce. That way, if something happens to your local backup, you’ll still have a safe copy in another place. One of the easiest ways to create an o∂site backup is to back up files to your iDisk. .Mac Backup 3 allows you to back up more than one Mac to your iDisk, so you can protect your important files no matter which computer they’re on.
Product Overview .Mac 22 Communicate with .Mac Mail Some email accounts can be accessed only on your desktop; others require you to use a browser, so you can’t read or write email when you’re oπine. Some ISPs o∂er both desktop and web access to email, but they erase your mail from the server after you open it on your desktop. This means that you can’t see any of your previous email when you access your account on the web. A .Mac email account gives you the best of desktop- and browser-based email. .
Product Overview .Mac 23 The IMAP Advantage .Mac Mail streamlines your use of mail through the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). Because your .Mac mail is stored in a central location, you can access it from your own Mac or through a browser without having to transfer messages or attachments between computers. .Mac Mail even lets you access your email from a PC. Integration with Mac OS X Tiger Tiger users enjoy seamless integration with .Mac Mail. If you set up your .
Product Overview .Mac 24 Coordinate Activities with .Mac Groups .Mac lets you organize groups with elegance and ease. Everyone is busy, and face-to-face meetings can be hard to schedule. If you’re a member of a team, club, or other organization, you can use .Mac to take the burden out of communicating and collaborating with the other members of your group. Here are some examples of ways you can use .Mac Groups: • You’re the coach of your daughter’s soccer team.
Product Overview .Mac 25 Private Group Website Every .Mac group has a dedicated private website. The site is password-protected; only members you invite can access the site. The control center of a .Mac group is the group page, which includes the name and description of the group as well as the following sections: • Group image, a photo or logo that represents your group • Play slideshow, which uses the new .
Product Overview .Mac 26 Unique Group Email Address Each group has a unique group email address. Any message you send to the group email address reaches all the current members of the group; members don’t have to maintain group lists in their personal Address Books when members join or leave the group. Email from senders who are not group members is automatically screened out, so you won’t have to worry about receiving spam.
Product Overview .Mac 27 Stay in Sync with .Mac Sync Many people use more than one Mac. You may have an iMac in the family room and an iBook for personal projects; or a PowerBook at home and a Power Mac G5 in the o∑ce. .Mac Sync bridges the gap between the flexibility you need to use multiple computers and the consistency you want when you access your personal data. .Mac Sync captures all the information you rely on when you use your Mac and stores it on .Mac.
Product Overview .Mac 28 Go Anywhere with .Mac It’s not unusual for people to have a Mac at home and a PC at the o∑ce; use a computer at a friend’s house; or spend time on a shared computer at an o∑ce, Internet cafe, or service bureau almost anywhere in the world. The challenge comes when you want access to the information you use every day, like your email, contact information, and bookmarks. .
Product Overview .Mac 29 Use Your Address Book and Bookmarks When you’re away from your Mac, .Mac Sync makes it possible to view and edit your .Mac Address Book and Safari bookmarks using a browser on another Mac or PC. Any changes you make online will be reflected on your Mac when you get back home or to the o∑ce. Check Your Appointments Publish your iCal calendars to .Mac, then view them on the web through .Mac. You’ll always have access to an up-to-date schedule, no matter where you are.
Product Overview .Mac 30 Become a .Mac Family If you’ve ever found your bookmarks cluttered with your teenage son’s online game sites or your iDisk filling up with files your daughter is using for a college filmmaking class, you’ll understand the value of separate .Mac accounts. However, you may be reluctant to buy individual accounts for all the members of your family. The .Mac Family Pack provides the perfect mix of privacy and family sharing—at an attractive price.
Product Overview .Mac 31 Do Even More with .Mac In addition to the powerful features you can use every day, .Mac o∂ers a host of options to help members expand the use of their Mac computers. .Mac Learning Center The .Mac Learning Center is available to .Mac members through the Member Central area of the .Mac site. It features a catalog of step-by-step tutorials for a wide range of Mac products; members can use the courses at no additional charge.
Product Overview .Mac 32 Member Benefits .Mac provides a steady stream of discounts for Mac-related software and services, as well as other member benefits: • Free software. Go to .Mac Member Central for free downloads of popular Mac software. • Special discounts. .Mac members receive discounts on selected products. • .Mac upgrades. Receive a year of free updates to .Mac features. Integration with Third-Party Software Many popular Mac applications are integrated with .
Product Overview .Mac 33 Product Details Pricing and Availability .Mac is a subscription-based service. The U.S. retail price of an individual membership is $99.95 for one year; it includes 1GB of storage and 10GB per month of data transfer.4 A Family Pack membership, which includes one master account and four sub-accounts, is $179.95 for one year.
Product Overview .Mac For More Information For more information about .Mac, visit www.mac.com. 34 1The .Mac service is available to persons age 13 and older. Annual membership fee and Internet access required. Terms and conditions apply. For details, see www.mac.com/1/membership_terms.html. 2Mac OS X v10.4.4 or later is recommended for iLife ‘06 and is required for iPhoto Photocasts, iMovie HD themes, and iChat recording in GarageBand.
