Roll your own .Mac

Derik’s earlier post on .Mac spam sparked a faint memory inside my head. Not long ago, I’d been thinking about ditching .Mac. I have another mail account that suits me just fine, as well as my own web space, etc. The problem is, like Derik, I do make use of the Mac-specific .Mac features, namely syncing and my iDisk. But would it be possible to replace those features with something else?

Matt Simerson of The Network People Incorporated says “Heck yeah!” Well, not in exactly those words. I’m reading between the lines here. But Matt did manage to set up a solution that not only replaces most of .Mac’s key Mac features (iDisk, iSync, iCal sharing, and Backup).

A warning for those of you whose pulse rate has risen in the excitement of getting rid of that $100 yearly expenditure: this is not a simple process. Some experience with the Terminal and web technologies like Apache, DNS, and WebDAV is pretty crucial. You may be able to just follow the instructions, but there’s no guarantee, as it’s full of sentences like this: “Since you cannot packet sniff the https connection, get the info from your Apache logs to see what URLs are being asked for. Once you have that, install a script there that dumps the POST info to a temp file.” If that makes you break into a cold sweat, this may not be the project for you. You’ll also need a computer on which to run your faux-.Mac server; Matt used a FreeBSD machine, but it would work in theory on anything from Linux to OS X to possibly even Windows if you’re crazy daring enough.

The major downside to this plan, the way I see it, is that one of the values of .Mac for me is having an off-site backup for my crucial files. If my house—god fordbi—burns down, then a lot of my critical documents are backed up on the .Mac server in California. If you supplant it with your own system on a local network, as Matt does, then when—er, if, right—your house burn downs, there go all your files. But if saving $100/year is important to you, it’s a possibility.

Update: Yes, as Marshall points out below, iSync does not quite work. For enterprising adventurers, you can check out Jeremy Baker’s page for some experiments on getting it to work, though he hasn’t managed to get it working completely either.