This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

I’ve been thinking of dropping .Mac. Well, the biggest problem with .Mac is that it costs $100 and many free, much more innovative, services are springing up everywhere to do even more than what .Mac does. For instance, the interface for Gmail is much nicer than the crappy one that .Mac has, and it has 2 GB of storage space, compared to .Mac’s measly 250 MB. In the latter, this space must be shared with everything else: web pages and movies. Yes, it runs out quickly. And for photos, Flickr seems excellent, what Gmail is for email, Flickr is for photos: easy to use, innovative, and free. Yes, Flickr does offer a pro account, but $25 a year is much better than $100, and it’s still a beta with some interface problems. I even have a limited amount of space with my web hosting company (another $100 a year), so posting pictures off-site will be really helpful and more elegant.

Perhaps .Mac’s engineers need to look at these other services and take notes. I’m afraid the days of Apple innovation might be waning. That’s a shame. See what success does for a company: it makes them complacent juggernauts. No, I hope it doesn’t happen, but their recent switch to Intel does not bode well for the customers. The shareholders might be getting excited, but I predict the customers will suffer. We’ll see.

If I do drop .Mac, I’ll miss the cool email address and the ability to sync my contacts, bookmarks, and calendars. Well, the sync works most of the time. Apple should go back to offering a free .Mac account, or include it with the yearly compulsory OS upgrade. C’mon, Apple, don’t get greedy. I’ll decide soon about the fate of .Mac.

In the meantime, check out my new Flickr account.