QUICK! Save iTools!!! (here's how)

R

ropers

Registered
At
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/specs.html
you will find that Apple STILL ADVERTISES iTools AS A FEATURE of their products!

As per the attached screenshot (84KB), Apple says on the Mac OS X (10.2) Jaguar specification page:
"Use integrated iTools services including a Mac.com email address, iDisk storage space and more"


We need as many people as possible to do the following:

- go to the above weblink and make a screenshot and download the above website ASAP!

- purchase Jaguar
(and/or make sure you have previously purchased an Apple product where iTools has been advertised as a feature thereof; e.g. I own an iBook and on the box and in the user's guide iTools is advertised as a feature and even described as free [a time limitation to its availability is not mentioned])

- contact and/or sue Apple to effect them to deliver what they did and still are advertising!!!

Please contact me at ropers@ropersonline.com to dicuss - a class-action lawsuit may be feasible.

While I understand that there are people out there who are hesitant of "moving against their favorite company", let's remember that that company sometimes needed to be prodded into the right direction.

AND WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS ILLEGAL!
AND YOU CAN HELP PROVING IT!!!

Please help the Macintosh community by doing the above.

Thanks all,
Jens Ropers
www.ropersonline.com

P.S:
I still think the macosx email is a great offer - and this post is not intended to discourage people from availing of it.

P.P.S:
Personally I wouldn't even complain about having to pay for webhosting on .Mac, but seing the little man's mac.com email address pulled when it was (and still is) being promised as a feature of products bought - that would hurt me. If they were to allow everyone to pay $10 for a 5MB account (i.e. simply drop the silly requirement that such accounts can only be bought as (up to 10) additional accounts for a full .Mac subscription) I would probably grumble a bit but still say that that's fair enough. But again, what they are doing now is MISLEADING ADVERTISING and needs to be discouraged!!!
 

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Originally posted by ropers
At
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/specs.html
you will find that Apple STILL ADVERTISES iTools AS A FEATURE of their products!

As per the attached screenshot (84KB), Apple says on the Mac OS X (10.2) Jaguar specification page:
"Use integrated iTools services including a Mac.com email address, iDisk storage space and more"
Click to expand...

That is until and unless they pull and/or change that site, so act now please!
 
Roper -
Good call -- but it seems they might have caught on already.. hope you got better screen shots than I did.

At the very bottom of the page, there is a line:
"iTools and other Internet features require Internet access; fees may apply. "

Argh.

J5

Just some thoughts -- if the folks here at macosx are into it - I think a cool idea would be to make our own .macosx or something.. Anyone using the dyndns.org free domain pointing? Just thinking out loud.. but this would be a cool feature I think to have a domain "j5.macosx.com" that pointed to my home machine - which runs all the server software I can throw at it. Similar to what I have setup right now at:
http://psychlonex.dyndns.org

The idea is that we'd all be on the same domain.. folks could put up some shared servers, and we'd effectively create a huge domain of macs. This wouldn't cost macosx.com alot at all as far as bandwidth... the bandwidth used would be ours and that of our isps. Also.. being a web developer.. I love the convenience of "cmd-s" as my web publishing solution.

Feel free to email me if you want to discuss. I'd definitely be interested in helping out if help is needed.

J5
 
Well, but Apple has also announced that they are discontinued the iTools service and replaced by .Mac...
 
i just don't get the iWhiners. what was the point... to sue Apple?

reflect a bit, please. even if somewhere in some documentation iTools are still advertised as 'included' with OS X, it's very much CLEAR by now that iTools has been replaced with .mac, isn't it?

i sometimes think people who sue somebody (or a company) over an issue like that should be shot at the spot where they raise their hands and start to scream.

"You said it was fr.." - Peng.

-- Edit:

After rereading what I've written here - and thinking it might have been a _bit_ harsh, I think I must say clearly that I would never really think like that. It's just a thought that comes to mind. You can translate my whole post into a very short "Please shut up, already!" if you feel violated by the language and ideas I've used.
 
I have some old Archies comic books my dad saved.

Can I contact the companies advertising in there, and demand the prices they printed?

Maybe I'll gather up all the old Archie comics owners, and we can start up a class action lawsuit against those companies! How dare they print something and then change their policies! SHAME ON THEM!
 
Originally posted by fryke
i just don't get the iWhiners. what was the point... to sue Apple?

reflect a bit, please. even if somewhere in some documentation iTools are still advertised as 'included' with OS X, it's very much CLEAR by now that iTools has been replaced with .mac, isn't it?

i sometimes think people who sue somebody (or a company) over an issue like that should be shot at the spot where they raise their hands and start to scream.

"You said it was fr.." - Peng.
Click to expand...

i agree fryke..

okay, well, maybe not about the shooting ;)
but, its such a shame how everyone in this country sues over the stupidest things...

"ooh, my coffee is too hot.. i'm going to sue you!"
"ooh, i got fat for eating at your fast food restaurant... i'm going to sue you!"
"ooh, apple.. your actually trying to make money and be profitable like other companies.. i'm going to sue you!"
 
Originally posted by ropers
but seing the little man's mac.com email address pulled when it was (and still is) being promised as a feature of products bought - that would hurt me.
Click to expand...
Yes, iTools was promised to us free for life. However, we cannot sue them, because they discontinued it and replaced it with .Mac.

So therefore, they haven't promised us .Mac free for life, just iTools. And iTools is gone now. They will say the same thing in court.
 
Hmm... I still think that 'free for life' slogan must have come from somewhere else, as I've never read it anywhere.

Plus: Haven't you 'agreed' to some terms when you logged in to .mac for the first time with your brand new trial account (aka ex-iTools account)?

I think it's a pity that Apple made that step, but I can clearly see why (money) they've made it. There are enough freeloader-email-accounts still out there.
 
Hey -
The majority of the time - I agree. I hate the "sue-happy" world as much as the next guy. Makes me sick when people get all money hungry and want to sue everyone for everything. I don't thinking sueing Apple is going to happen, and I certainly don't think we'd win if we tried. We'd waste alot of time and money.. but we'd lose I'm sure. It's a legal battle, and Apple has us beat just in resources alone.

But.. at the same time I do get miffed when I get something for free and then suddenly have to pay for it. It's principle I guess. But you are right in that it does happen, and it makes sense for Apple to charge for it. But I also feel that the lure of iTools sold a ton of early iMacs. What about those people?

Heck.. I don't even use itools except for the email account.. which I don't use too often at all, except for a catch-all for other web-based address's like yahoo. Instead of having to check my mail at yahoo, I simply have all my mail forwarded to the mac account. My yahoo account gets tons of junk mail, but a few contacts for whatever reason still contact me through there, so I like to check on it once in a while.

I liked the thought of the idisk when I had a 2gig drive and had a real job. Now I have 30gigs and work at home so everything I need is right here. And with the dyndns.org setup, I have complete control over my own webserver. And I could put a little "powered by macosx" icon on my site if I wanted...

Plus: Haven't you 'agreed' to some terms when you logged in to .mac for the first time with your brand new trial account (aka ex-iTools account)?
Click to expand...

I haven't used itools at all in a long time... unless you count checking my @mac mail account. I don't recall signing up for a trial account.. but who knows. It's a good point none the less.

I think what we're looking for here is some form of Grandfather clause. Ie -- my sprint pcs phone account.. when I signed up I got one of the first phones that had the voice dial feature. Since Sprint wasn't promoting it yet, and didn't really know what they were going to do with it.. I got that service for free while other people pay for it. I still don't pay for it.

At any rate - all I want for free is the email account. Look at yahoo. You get a few megs for free, and anything more you have to pay for. You want idisk? You pay for it. Want webspace? You pay. etc..

Enough of my ramblings.. my opinion is that itools should continue to be free for those that have been members for over a year or something. Anyone signing up for an account now can pay for it. Seems it'd be the right thing for Apple to do for it's long-time users.

my .02

j5
 
i guess, ultimately, it's the changing times of the economy..

just as we remember someone as saying "640 K ought to be enough.."

we'll remember someone else as saying "free for life"

=)
 
--In response to the first message by: ropers--

1st:
What you forget is that when you signed up for iTools, you agreed to a "contract" or "terms & conditions" when doing so in which it was stated Apple reserved the right to discontinue or modify the service. This is exactly what they have done. Features change from time to time and some things never last. I bet if you look hard enough in past ads and spec (manuals, etc.) you will find a "subject to change" or some kind of reservation of rights to "cancel" or "change of service" within them.

2nd:
They specificly said iTools was free, iTools alone and never anything else. .Mac is a different service altogether. The only similarity is the ending of your e-mail address and some features. They have increased offering on the features & etc. with .Mac which constitute a new service. You are not required to use or pay for .Mac to use your computer, this is not as if they said you were required to purchase the service to us the tcp/ip or networking features of the OS.



While I do wish it was free (always nice), I can see the reasons for charging and think the price is fair. This is a new service.

I would suggest dropping the idea as 3 things are bound to happen:
1.) You will be laughed at by the court system (and any reputable attorney you seek as counsel) and will loose...badly.
2.) You will owe a very large bill to a unreputable attorney...for nothing.
3.) It will be a waste of time...again, for nothing.
 
This might going to get a _little_ off-topic, as I intend to talk about the 'changing economic times' and 'the internet' as we know it - or don't know it.

Everywhere around the world, people (business people) are talking about the time of free services being over. That we will adapt to pay for content, that we will pay for services.

I just want to show some 'trends' I have seen. And I think it's a pity for all of those who want to make money on the net.

1. Whenever a service went 'pay', it lost many, many 'customers' (freeloaders). For example, there was this good service called 'AvantGo' for Palm devices. Well, it's still there, but they charge fees from the content providers. Good content was lost in this process. Being unable to get my favourite newsfeeds, because the content provider cannot or doesn't want to pay the fees, I left AvantGo for a free alternative (until _that_ one goes 'pay').

2. The hacker motto 'All Information Wants To Be Free' is right on the 'net. If online newspapers and other info-channels go 'pay' and 'restricted', people who have access will republish the facts in other form. They don't care about the copyright. If you don't believe this, think Napster and how fast it went big (and gone, yeah, but it was replaced, right?).

3. The content providers will get fees from the little percentage that will stay. Maybe that'll be enough for them, but they just _won't_ make the money they wanted to make.

4. People like the RIAA (and companies like Microsoft) will try and restrict access to copyrighted material wherever they can. That they are trying EVERYTHING to prevent copyrighted material from leaving into the wild shows, that 'All Information Wants To Be Free' is true. Leaks all over the place.

Okay, now, so what has this got to do with .mac? Well... There's ALWAYS going to be free E-Mail access. Free webspace. Free tools. If there is no free backup solution, it's enough that ONE freeware developer makes one. And he's going to get ALL he wants: Reputation, image, kudos. But it's not that bad yet with free E-Mail, right? There's still plenty of services around. And when one fails, you can switch.

But there is a _real_ solution coming along, too. With broadband all over the place and dynamic IP following (dyndns.org et al) services, you can be your own ISP serving E-Mail addresses. Get your domain from any service. Let the dynamic DNS service know that you're the machine that handles mail. And configure sendmail. You'll have to handle spam by yourself, but there ARE spamstoppers for UNIX.

If you have the time, you can set up your own web- and mailserver with webmail and everything on a cheap linux box that is always connected, while you use your precious Mac as the client machine.

Think Different.
 
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