What services should I buy for my Mac?

AppleCare Protection Plan

  First of all, if you recently purchased a Mac I hope that you purchased the AppleCare Protection Plan. I am an Apple lover and an Apple Certified Technician and I can tell you first hand that this is an extremely valuable protection plan to have. There is a whole lot of technology under the hood of your Mac- more now than ever before and the headroom for defects is shrinking each year. I don't get paid by Apple to recommend this but to know that your Mac is protected from manufacturer defects for up to 3 years is so worth every penny. Most of the repairs that I perform are covered by the AppleCare Protection Plan. This is also partly due to the fact that most repairs are so expensive without the protection plan that it is rarely worth it. In fact, you have up to one year to purchase the plan after the date of purchase. Buy it now or pay for it later. And if you're like me and feel that the universe is constantly conspiring against you, then this is a bet well worth taking. In the event that you didn't ever need to use AppleCare, is that so bad?

One-On-One

  Offered at the Apple Stores, these one-on-one sessions can be an incredible value. They offer up to (52) 1-hour sessions with their in-house folks to teach you whatever you want to know about the Mac. They won't really cover 3rd party products like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop but they can get you up and running for only $99 per year. It's a terrific value and one worth considering if you're new to Mac. I don't think I know anyone who used all 52 sessions but even if you used just 10 of the 1 hour session, isn't that $10 well spent each time!?!?

MobileMe

  I have a MobileMe account and has had one when it was first introduced in 2000 as a ".Mac" (dot Mac) account. It has grown considerably in scope since then. Not only do you get an email address but it links to many iLife features as well. For starters, Address Book and iCal can sync with this service. That means that you can check your address book and calendar from any computer that is online. It also manages the syncing process if you have multiple Macs (or an iPhone!) and want to keep them all up to date. Together with the iPhone, now every individual has almost the same features as Microsoft's Exchange Server or Blackberry's Enterprise Server. In addition, you can post pictures that you take with your iPhone directly to your own web gallery instantly. Other's can view or download these pictures and they can even upload pictures if you allow contributions! With iWeb (part of iLife), you can design your own website with ease. Host your own blog, present home movies that have been edited with iMovie (part of iLife), and have RSS feeds so that those who subscribe to your site get notifications on when your site has been updated! Not only that, but there is also a backup utility that you can use that will backup specified folders to your MobileMe account. Again, at $99 per year, this is an incredible offer. At first, my site was designed and hosted by the MobileMe service. And I may move back to their service for convenience sake since it is so easy to manage and update. But since I had just installed Adobe CS4, I wanted to give that a try and so far, am very happy with the layout and design of this site. However, I don't have RSS feeds yet. I do not have a real "blog" like I did before and everything I do must be manually done. I am still using iWeb for the "Family & Friends" link though.

  These are 3 services that Apple offers and I think that each of them is quite a value.