"Some European customers, meanwhile, continue to cope with extremely slow image upload speeds, often topping at a virtually unusable 78-80kbps."

It's downloads that are a problem - 80kbs upstream wouldn't be so bad. And it's not just images, it's files of any kind.

The other problems with .Mac is an ongoing issue with security. A cursory review of net postings will reveal something that I've had direct experience with. .Mac accounts are frequently hacked and the mail surreptitiously forwarded offshore. Apple persists in denying that this is a problem with their security, even though the problem is widespread. In my particularly case, I'm 90% certain the password was secure. (The 10% possibility being that someone inside the I.T. department at an international finance firm is running a keylogger on user's machines -- which seems unlikely indeed.) The frustrating part is that Apple will not provide any assistance when this occurs. It would be a simple matter for them to provide an access log with IPs that could lend to an investigation, but they won't. Or at least say they won't unless subpoenaed. This is not service, nor security; it is helping to cover up the tracks of criminals at the expense of .Mac's users. Making such a log available directly from within the account would be the easy solution to any legal exposure. However, that wouldn't allow Apple to coverup a security problem if the traced IPs lead back to Apple or its vendors, now would it?

How do you know it's been hacked?

And why in the world would anyone forward mails if it had, when, if they're good enough to hack your email, they could just download them so you wouldn't know at all?

And can't email passwords be stolen right off the stream, since generally email passwords are sent in the clear between client and server?

uses ssl, passwords are encrypted. Funny how I've heard nothing about accounts being hacked. Where are you seeing all these accounts of this?

Often times these things get cracked because people use the same master password on their important accounts that they do on junk accounts other places; on sites that get compromised. Chances are that if mail was forwarded the account was never hacked but rather someone figured out your password.

There are plenty of naieve & ignorant people using passwords made up of their name or family that are easy to figure out, it's just very unlikely any hacker would go to the trouble of hacking a secured site for the purpose of forwarding e-mails from users when they could probably do more damaging & profitable things with that level of skill.

I'm not having issues with my .Mac right now either. I suspect thought that some of these issues could be related to the revamp of .Mac to handle the new Leopard features.

"unusable 78-80kbps"

My stupid cable internet maxes out at 50kbps upload... I WISH I could get speeds up to 80kbps =)

^ The article is correct

1B = 8b

80kb/s = 10kB/s which is painfully slow.

How is 100 dollars a year "basically free"???

Posting to a board? I've always received personal replies when contacting the dot mac-support and they've been quite helpful - mostly, at least. Since I am in Europe, it is slow, though...

How is 100 dollars a year "basically free"???

Well, first, you can actually get it for $80 on Amazon.

Second, .Mac's been around for 5 years, and was iTools for 2 years before that. So, if you pro-rate the cost $500 over 7 years, its more like $72 a year. That's $6 a month, $1.38 a week, just "pennies a day" (20, give or take), and not even a penny an hour.

A penny. That's 'basically free'!

or it was a bit of sarcasm that Apple still can't seem to get its for-pay server business correct after 5 freakin' years.

Ask yourself...

Is the password you use on macnn the same as the one you use for your email account? I think most of you would say yes. What's stopping an administrator on MacNN from accessing your email account? Their word? That this is a trustable site?

Now... how many of you use the same password for "forums.schoolgirlsgonewild.com" that they use on their email acocunt? Not as many, surely, but still there will be some fools out there. Do yuo think THOSE administrators can be trusted?

Think people. Your password for each important account should be different!