
Twelve years later, Apple is still trying to erase mac.com email addresses - doener
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/31/twelve-years-later-apple-is-still-trying-to-erase-maccom-email-addresses
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jayofdoom
If you don't own that domain that your email goes to, you don't own the email
address.

Any number of things could happen to cause you to lose access to that email
address:

\- the company who owns that domain is sold \- the domain is sold during
bankruptcy proceedings after the company goes under \- the company that owns
that domain decided to get out of the email business \- the company has a
vested interest in migrating you to a new domain (as is here)

I'm surprised at the number of people – even in tech - who are willing to use
an email account on a domain they don't have any control over.

~~~
nateroling
I bounced around a few custom email addresses and finally ended up on gmail.
It's easy to tell people (everyone knows gmail) and if gmail closes shop, I'll
have approximately a zillion blog posts to look at for migrating to something
else...

~~~
kadoban
Migrating your existing messages isn't typically the hard part. Though you
should try to keep some backups in case they disappear (or in the case of
gmail, lock you out). The hard part is years of updating the rest of the world
to your new address.

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jentist_retol
The comments on that article (and a few in here), are lamenting the churn and
loss of addresses due to the whims of the market. People holding onto email
addresses like precious items. It's surprisingly affordable to just have your
own domain!

I won't get into other core benefits of paying for mail (no ads, business
model where you're the customer, etc). But...

You can

\- have a personal domain and email address for as low as $15/yr (weird tld,
small mailbox)

\- have something more reasonable (domain+email for $45-65 a year with 20-30GB
+ various PIM functionality depending on provider and price)

\- go all the way up to fully hosted personal cloud solution via something
like Microsoft365 ($150/yr)

\- self host everything yourself - $7-15/yr for the domain

If you use email heavily, and/or if you value having the option to self-host
more things, then it's absolutely worth it.

Personally, I self-host my cloud drive with a freenas box in a very close to
default configuration, and use Fastmail for mail+PIM.

If my provider starts sucking, I can switch easily. The more paranoid could
use the more expensive protonmail or fully self-host! But what's important is
that should I ever choose to switch, it will be a one-and-done thing that
probably takes me about an hour of work!

~~~
kungato
Damn I hope I never have to leave gmail and bother with this self setup crap.
Would you self hosting guys feel silly if gmail existed in 30 years and you
wasted all this time doomsday prepping for nothing?

~~~
Marciplan
You could have best of both worlds: Hook up a private domain to GSuite. If
Gmail starts sucking the next 30 years you can move it to the next best thing
:)

~~~
kadoban
GSuite isn't free anymore for most though (only for grandfathered in domains).
For some the cost is negligible, but it depends.

But ya for me the piece of mind is worth it. The serious risk, as you allude,
is probably not gmail disappearing, it's gmail getting worse in any number of
ways.

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kvn_95
I agree that you don't own the email where the domain is not yours, but for
the majority of people, setting up your own domain & mail is a large technical
challenge. Even moving to a different email address may pose an insurmountable
challenge (different interface, different workflow, etc.).

I think it's commendable that Apple is keeping the @mac.com for so long and
not just simply cut off people's access to it.

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jrnichols
I still have my @Mac.com email address, and I have a screenshot of the sign-up
message showing a Jan 5 2000 date. (I was working on a contract at Apple at
the time and got in when iTools first appeared)

I forgot that you can now use the other domains as well.

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gumby
I still have and use an Apple ID and developer account that isn’t an email
address at all: no @ and in fact has a space and a dash in it. Still works
fine.

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antonyh
I still use mine actively. It can only hope it remains usable, even though I
no longer use Mac (iOS only nowdays) and the talk of needing to change
settings occasionally is disturbing.

I don't see why they need to kill it. As an aside, I still have a Rocketmail
address I use that survived Yahoo! buying them out (so, 1996-1997). I'll never
give that up either.

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jasonv
How is icloud.com as a mail provider? It has push on iOS, right?

~~~
67868018
Push isn't exclusive to Apple anymore but others had to jump through hoops.

