Open letter to iTools users: Nothing comes for free

"Jeez, the folks coming from the Windows world have to think we're all a bunch of whiners."

That quote is from one of the many Mac e-mail lists I belong to. Just a couple of days after my rant about Microsoft's whining, I can't believe I'm updating again, trying to stop the massive amount of whining reverberating among our own kind, the people who populate the online Mac world.

Yesterday, during Steve Jobs' traditional keynote speech that kicks of the MacWorld Expo, he delivered some bad news to all of us. Yes -- I agree, it's bad news. Apple's free iTools service, which offers IMAP e-mail and homepage hosting, will no longer be free as of the end of September. Current users who pony up before then will pay $49 for the first year to keep the service, while new users will pay $99 per year. For the money, you get e-mail storage, 100 megabytes of online storage (that's a decent amount, people), backup and virus software and homepage service for you pics that you resized and cropped in iPhoto. It doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.

Steve pre-empted this by saying that with all of these new Mac users from the Switch campaign and from the company's fleet of Apple stores, use of iTools has grown dramatically.

Out of all of you whining out there, have any of you ever actually worked with bandwidth (as in as a Web site administrator or an IT situation) before? Probably not, I'm assuming. Running your own servers, which Apple does, does cut out of some of the costs, but those packets of information that go from your network out onto the Internet and back can cost serious money. And if use is growing as much as Apple is saying it is, it's probably costing them an arm and a -- well, a lot of money.

In case you've forgotten, just days before Jobs' speech, Apple CFO Fred Anderson was giving a dire outlook on the state of the PC market in general, and in particular, Apple's situation. These are not good times for the industry, even Apple.

I've seen a lot of notes on the e-mail lists from people who expected to have free Mac.com e-mail address "for life." This is laughable. I mean, Apple is a company! If times change, and they have, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that Apple will want to remain viable as a company.

Do we not want Apple to continue to innovate, to continue to make cool machines that we all want to buy, to continue to wow us with newer versions of OS X (or OS XI, and on down the line)?

The alternative is to whine and complain and force the company that provides these things to us to wither. Then you'd be left with Windows and Linux and eMachines and Dells.

Is that what you want, my dear Mac friends?

Let's not forget that over the last couple of years, especially during the transition into OS X, Apple has listened very closely to what people want and don't want. Jaguar, of all things, actually brings back spring-loaded folders, a feature that is dear to many Mac users, but not something that Apple had to do.

We want a flat-screen iMac. Well, there you go, and it's even cooler than you thought it would be. We want the screen to be bigger! OK, it's now 17 inches. Is that good enough?

Everything is not perfect on OS 10.1.5, nor will it be perfect on 10.2, but things keep improving at an amazing pace, and I'm excited for what the future may bring and the innovations we may see. Jaguar is already looking like quite an upgrade -- and worth the $129. Apple seems to be working as hard as it can to continually improve what it offers and to respond to our wishes and desires.

I want them to continue to be able to do that. So quit whining and either pony up the dough, or just use the e-mail account that comes with your Internet service -- almost all of them do come with e-mail accounts, by the way.

Finally, there are two petitions that have been started to deal with this non-issue. One is for those who want to complain about having to pay, and the other is for those who want to complain about the complainers. I don't think I have to tell you which one I signed. I'll leave it up to you -- and your conscience -- to decide which one you support.