Apple is holding my data hostage

When my boys' videos started getting some interest via their podcast and the Make film festival, I got 2 emails in a row from Apple's mac.com service saying I was exceeding bandwidth limits, and then I was cut off.

Back when I worked for Apple, they launched mac.com as a free service, and I bagged our family names in their namespace. The integration of iDisk into the OS made it a simple way to post files to the web, and I used it for both work-related sample code and personal bits and pieces.

Later on, Apple did a bait and switch, and started charging for mac.com. I decided the cost wasn't too onerous, and we could keep the email addresses and the hosting. It costs $100 a year, and $10 for each extra email address, but the switching cost seemed high, as we have a lot of friends who use those email addresses, and the hosting integreation is handy.

Later on, I kept getting 'your email account is full' crap, and pointed out that gmail offered 100 times as much storage for free, and they later relaxed the terms a bit.

Then came this, from noreply@apple.com:

Dear .Mac Member,

Please be aware that you have reached 100% of your .Mac data transfer quota for this two-week period and we have turned off external access to your site(s). Attempts to visit there will produce a page explaining that your site has gone over data transfer quota and the material requested cannot be displayed.

You can still publish to your site(s), but you will not be able to view any changes on the Internet until your site is reactivated. Reactivation will happen on the 1st or 16th of the month, whichever comes first. To review your data transfer usage, click here. To increase your data transfer quota by purchasing additional storage space, click here.* For more information see Help.

I thought 'OK, I'll move my stuff to other hosting, and redirect my links' - but the iDisk 'Sites' folder is also disabled on my machine, so I can't get at my files to move them.

So, if some of my posts here are missing movies or images, that's why.
Amazon's S3 service is looking interesting, both Google and Microsoft are preparing hosting services, and there are a plethora of video hosting sites like blip.tv.

Apple's terms are uncompetitive, and stopping me from accessing my own files until I pay is a nasty kind of blackmail.

Technorati Tags: Apple, hosting, mac.com, podcasting, politics

Andrew and Christopher won the Make Movie Festival

Andrew and Christopher
Originally uploaded by Kevin Marks.

Bre Pettis writes:

With so many great entries it was hard to pick a winner, but the Marks Brothers' Fun with Dry Ice shined through. Their top notch explanations of how to have fun with dry ice was really great. The grand prize is a box set of Make Magazines signed by the Make Magazine staff, a Make: t-shirt for each brother, and Make: license plate covers, which they'll have to wait until they can drive to use!

The boys, Rosie and I are dead chuffed.