One thing I mentioned only in passing yesterday on the many announcements from the Apple Event was the changes to the online .Mac service. Critics have disparaged the service virtually since its debut in 2002 as inadequate and overpriced. The argument goes that you can get a lot of what .Mac offers elsewhere for far less money, and in some cases, free. I agree to a point, but .Mac does have one thing no alternative will ever have -- seamless integration with the Mac operating system.

As a .Mac user since its inception, I like much about it – the ability to sync data (addresses, Safari bookmarks, iCal info), the online iDisk storage that I can access from anywhere, the effortless Web publishing, the extra e-mail address. But it never quite seemed worth the $99 annual fee. I’ve always thought $49 per year to be more reasonable (maybe it’s Apple’s own fault – those who were already members of .Mac’s predecessor, the free iTools service, got the first year for $49.95).

When Steve Jobs hinted at the May D5 conference that big changes were coming to .Mac, my hopes were raised. In my fantasies I imagined getting more services and a price cut, so I have mixed feelings about what Jobs unveiled yesterday. The new Web Gallery feature looks very cool, but I can’t use it until I get iLife ‘08. The 10 gigabytes of storage (increased from 1 GB) is available to me today, but in truth I’d only used up half of my .Mac space and didn’t see an immediate need for more. And when my account renews in 60 days, I’ll pay not $49 or $69 or even $89 but $99 – again.

Of course I could drop the service, but I have come to rely on iSync and my iDisk. I also like the ease with which it puts things on the Web, so I imagine I’ll eventually use the new Web Gallery feature, too. Apparently I’m hooked. Sigh.

Helpful tip: If you use .Mac and can’t figure out why it looks like you have less than 10 GB, log on to your account and click on the storage settings button. Apple splits your .Mac space between your e-mail account and your iDisk. When Apple upgraded everyone’s account, it evidently did so proportionally. In my case, the e-mail account allotment had increased from about 250 MB to 2.8 GB. Dropping that setting to 700 MB restored the 2 GB I had perceived missing from my iDisk.