IS THE FREE LUNCH OVER OR WAS IT REALLY EVER FREE?

At the recent MacWorld convention, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said some things that took everyone's breath away. But unlike previous times when it was his showman-like unveiling of some new, exciting and innovative Apple product that caused the breathlessness, this time the stillness in the air came from something akin to sticker shock.

In September, Apple will be ending its free iTools service that included a free email address ending in the "@mac.com" domain name and is replacing it with its new ".Mac" service that will have an annual fee of $99 ($49.95 for the first year). Now while I think it's wonderful that the new service boasts all kinds of improvements and features such as three times the storage of 15 megabytes, antivirus and backup software that definitely makes it superior to the former free iTools, I have a small problem not with the service itself but with the way Apple is handling the .Mac migration. Basically, Apple is making it a mandatory migration. That means the over 2 million subscribers to the soon to be extinct iTools who have been proudly brandishing their @mac.com email addresses now find that they either have to pony up the yearly fee or lose their email address.

How many of us have experienced the pain of having to give up an established phone number just because the phone company changed your area code or made some other switch over which you had no control? Or the Postal Service changed your Zip Code and you had to alter everything including stationary reprinting and reordering rubber stamps. And all that didn't even begin to cover the humongous task of trying to notify everyone of the change before it became final. Fortunately phone companies and the Post Office will let you redirect everything for a period of time so that everyone can get your new number and location information. But Apple won't let you redirect your mac.com email. The fact is once it's gone, it's gone. So if someone tries sending an email to your old mac.com address, it won't be rerouted to the new email address. It will just be sent back with an "address unknown" message.

The other "Silence of the Room" announcement was that the new OS X 10.2 known as "Jaguar" would have no upgrade path. Again, I think it's a wonderful thing to see Apple continue to offer new, innovate and exciting products and Jaguar's over 150 new features while enhancing its already rock solid stability is a wonderful thing. But making the Apple faithful who currently own the 10.1 version pay the full retail price of $129 with no upgrade path is going to go down a little hard. Apple should offer a more reasonable upgrade policy so as to not punish all those early adopters.

I'm not saying that Apple doesn't deserve to make money, but I am saying that they need to be more consumer sensitive in their methods of how they go about doing it. And it's not like Apple doesn't know HOW to do it. Take a look at their QuickTime model. The basic version is free. If you want the extended features offered by the QuickTime Pro version, then you pay extra and get a special unlocking code to unleash the full power. So why not give the current iTools subscribers a minimal .Mac service that keeps the same level of service found in iTools and offer a Pro version of .Mac that unleashes the newer additional abilities for a fee? That way you keep everyone happy by giving them a CHOICE.

But let's not be to harsh with Apple. After all, they aren't the ONLY company in the world to start charging for something that was initially free. Plus Apple really never said that iTools would be around forever. But no one likes being backed into a corner, even if it is for their own good (.Mac really does blow the doors off of iTools). So listen up Apple! If you give your customers reasonable choices and upgrades, they're going to remain loyal and be a lot happier.

You can learn all about the new .Mac service by going to: