I tend to believe that .Mac offers decent services for the money, although I think one year's membership should come free with the purchase of a new Mac or a new version of OSX.
One point also: I think the refernce to YouTube in the following sentence "People watch videos in YouTube, not Quicktime." is inaccurate. It is Flash Video that is taking the web by storm. Quicktime player (and other iLife tools) should export to Flash making it easy for users to share their media in the growing internet social network.
.Mac Needs to Be Radically Retooled