S.Mac-ed

Further to my recent rant about Apple's new .Mac "service":

The fires are raging over at the Apple.com Support discussion forums ñ with loyal Mac customers lighting torches and starting up the road to Steve Jobs' castle. Even though Apple.com's policy states that the forums are only to be used for discussing technical issues, people are instead dissing and cussing out Apple. The moderators are deleting the bitch posts en mass, but the protestors just keep reposting them until it looks like maybe the moderators have given up. If an objector's account gets blocked, they just sign up under a different name and start reposting their complaints.

Mac users are MacPissed. An on-line petition has gathered over 18,000 names (including mine) in only a few days. Everyone knows how loyal Mac users are, but these people feel really betrayed.

See this article for further background and initial response from Apple.

Apple is not going to look very good if they don't at least try to address the concerns of these users.

If you're a Mac user and you're pissed off by this "bait-and-switch" ploy, I'd urge you to sign the petition.