iTools: No more free rides

Apple plans to charge for its iTools online service - and users are furious

Recipe for a firestorm: take something that is free on the net. Start charging for it. Stand back in case you get your eyebrows singed.

It's a lesson that many have learnt, but Steve Jobs, head of Apple Computer, must have been looking the other way. Ten days ago, he did it too. "The world is changing," he told the Mac faithful in New York. "We're going to have to reflect that too."

Jobs announced that Apple was discontinuing iTools, which had offered free online storage of up to 20Mb, and free e-mail to an "@mac.com" address, to be replaced by the paid-for ".mac" service. For $99 a year ($49 to present iTools users, until September), users would get 100Mb of data storage, free anti-virus software, a backup program able to save files to the online store, and 15Mb of e-mail storage and forwarding. Within hours, thousands of people had posted angry messages on Apple's discussion boards at its website.

It all came at the end of an expensive week for the Macolytes. First came QuickTime 6, for which a "Pro" registration (making it feasible to code music in the new AAC format) would cost $19.99; then the pricing of OS X 10.2 at $129; and then this.

With 2.2 million accounts, iTools had been quite successful. But a poll of more than 1,000 at www.tidbits.com last week showed that among existing iTools users, 75 per cent wouldn't take ".mac". Just 11 per cent thought it worthwhile; 1 per cent of non-iTools users thought it was tempting.

The sources of annoyance are that people will lose their free "@mac.com" e-mail addresses (we said last week that these will continue; it turns out that this is only true if you have a paid-up .mac account, or transfer your e-mail under the wing of someone with an account); and that what's being offered as extra isn't worth having.

Mark Rogers, Apple's UK managing director, responded. "We have a fairly complicated product line, and didn't want to add complications to .mac," he says. "We wanted it to be a one-stop shop."

What's in the shop? Antivirus software – which, for Apple machines, is almost worthless, because the only viruses on that platform affect Microsoft Word.

Apple's Backup software is free, and reports suggest that's the right price: it's a simple GUI on a Unix utility. There are better shareware products available. So the benefits of .mac seem to boil down to the bigger disc space and e-mail. But anyone online gets e-mail and web space through their ISP anyway. It's a sub-commodity.

Rogers sounds uneasy about the reaction to .mac: "It has been mixed," he admits. "Some people are clearly disappointed. Others have been pragmatic, saying it's good. It's in line with what the market is doing; there's a move away from free services. It's difficult to offer the services for free because there are significant costs at the back end."

So, as Jobs said, the free ride is over. The problem for Apple may be that a lot of people will get off. There's a chance it will change its mind; watch this space.