Here's my first long post at The Apple Blog:

Why I will (probably) not renew my .Mac account

When .Mac was first announced at the July 2002 Macworld Expo in New York (remember those?) it held the rare distinction of being one of the few Steve Jobs keynote announcements to draw silence instead of applause. Of course, why should anyone applaud when they’ve just been told that something they were getting for free would now cost $100 per year? But when even the most faithful Mac users (i.e. the ones who waited for hours outside the building to get into the keynote) aren’t excited, then you’ve got problems.