Apple’s massive data center in North Carolina has been in the news of late, prompting morewide-eyed speculation among some analysts about its ultimate purpose. Possibilities include a music subscription service like Rhapsody, a video subscription service like Netflix, and free MobileMe. However, the most likely service, at least initially, is a digital locker for iTunes.Music storage for a fee would be the latest online service for Apple, the first of which was launched more than a decade ago:
- 2000: iTools offered email, web pages, and online storage.
- 2002: .Mac adds more features, including online backup for $99 a year.
- 2006: Apple launches blogging app iWeb, closely tied to .Mac service.
- 2008: MobileMe introduces “Exchange for the rest of us:” push services for mail, contacts, appointments.
- 2009: iWork.com beta ties online services to Apple’s office suite.
- 2010: Ping social networking and music recommendation service added to iTunes.
- 2011: iTunes storage locker expected for a yearly fee.
While that history looks impressive, the reality for Apple’s online efforts has been markedly different. Apple’s problems started in 2002, when the company began charging $99 a year for online services, going from more than two million iTool users to 100,000 .Mac subscribers in about two months. That was the last we heard about paid subscriber numbers from Apple. In sharp contrast, Google’s Gmail, which launched in 2004 with email and storage for free, now has about 200 million users.
I’m beginning to think Apple doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing when it comes to this.
Since iTools stopped being a free service, has there been any time in your life as a Mac user that, when a friend buying a Mac asked if they should get iTools, .Mac or MobileMe that you said, “sure, it’s totally worth buying!” No, because, since iTools stopped being free, it has sucked.