.Mac Enhancements At WWDC?

[netdog]

According to this report at tuaw.com, I'd say yes.

Finally, .Mac appears poised to serve a major end-to-end service in tandem with the iPhone and OS X-based machines.

[Southernboy]

I love .mac and wouldn't be without it, but have always thought that Apple are missing a great opportunity. If they halved the price and gave it some 'must have' features, the user base would likely quadruple.

[FJ218700]

I would love some new features to allow syncing both to .mac and to iTunes libraries without needing to physically hook up to iTunes.

[PlaceofDis]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=481146

been posted for awhile now.

[arkitect]

Well maybe there is some hope for .Mac after all…

But I will believe it when I see it.

[netdog]

Originally Posted by PlaceofDis

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=481146

been posted for awhile now.

Thanks for diligently policing, but the article that I linked to (published the day after) actually has a lot more than push mail in it. Thanks for that though.

This is quite a bit more promising that push mail, not that I don't welcome that as part of a larger overall package.

[twoodcc]

i just had a survey about .mac yesterday. i wonder if it has anything to do with new features coming?

[Teddy's]

".mac sync with windows"

Meh! I wonder what would be the percentage of people that have/want an iPhone and use a Windows PC and would be interested in purchasing .mac.

[MacRumors]

An anonymous source to TUAW claims that .Mac will see a refresh with the release of iPhone 2.0 which is expected at WWDC.

While the site claims .Mac will see a "complete revamp", the details given indicate a less dramatic enhancement-related event, with the main features being exchange-like over-the-air syncing of calendars, contacts, and email via .Mac for iPhone, and .Mac syncing on Windows.

A reminder to readers that anonymous tips, regardless of the publishing entity, should always be regarded with due suspicion.

Article Link

[Willis]

Not exactly ground breaking. And then there's the fact that .Mac users who don't own an iPhone won't make use of these additional features.

However, same can be said for iWeb and photocasting...

[KindredMAC]

I would actually like to see some tweaks to iWeb and .Mac integration.

Would like to see:
• The ability to actually host on .Mac instead of current method of "pointing" to the current .Mac account through iWeb.
• Ability to import SWF's into iWeb without needing the "workaround".

Otherwise I've been very happy since getting my .Mac last Christmas. Been a great vehicle in getting pics of our baby to the grandparents who all live at separate ends of the state and country.

[netdog]

I suspect that it will cause a fair number of Windows users to switch as the integrated Mac and .Mac solution gets better and better.

Obviously they are also taking on RIM in all of this, and that will need to work seamlessly with Windows and OS X machines, so why not throw .Mac into the mix? The number of Windows machines logging into .Mac may grow, particularly among people who uses Macs and the occasional Windows machine.

[walnuts]

So, maybe, apple would set it up so that the idisk from .mac could be accessed from the iphone. This would enable iphone apps to read and write docs without opening up disk access/making a finder on the iphone. It would be a great reason to encourage iphone owners to get .mac....

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by KindredMAC

I would actually like to see some tweaks to iWeb and .Mac integration....

I'm a .Mac user for over 8 years now and (no joke) I would like:

• the sync service to actually sync reliably and consistently (like for more than just a few times in a row)
• my computers to stop randomly disappearing from the list for no reason
• to be able to sync my music through the service instead of using dozens of crappy quasi-legal shareware apps to "steal" my own music for use on a different computer.
• "back to my mac" to work reliably (or at all in some cases)
• the interface on the sync services to make sense in some way that is intelligible by human observers.
• a way to use the web feature without using iWeb (which is almost unusable unless you are a grandmother or a small child.)

PS - I know that the last one is *possible* it's just unreasonably difficult and confusing (like most of .Mac)

[monsoco]

I still wouldn't see .Mac as worth the money. Syncing is not interesting, nor that hard to do. Centralized (cloud) stuff is where it's all going anyway (perhaps with some form of local cache for offline access), making this whole syncing issue a non-issue. Sure you might not store your movie or music collection out there for a while, but I also wouldn't want to sync all that data. The features they're developing around "back to my mac" seem a whole lot more interesting, and I'd rather be able to listen to my music by just connecting back to a home computer from anywhere and streaming it to my current location, which would act only as the speakers, etc. Same goes for movies once the bandwidth gets there. Allowing me to create a "local" pool of all of my devices, regardless of location, ISP, etc. actually would be worth a yearly fee.

[Quillz]

How about Apple actually updates the .Mac pages themselves so they don't look like they came out of 2002? They still have ugly, blocky text, the web templates came straight from the 90s and overall, you can tell very little has really been updated.

[KindredMAC]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

• a way to use the web feature without using iWeb (which is almost unusable unless you are a grandmother or a small child.)

PS - I know that the last one is *possible* it's just unreasonably difficult and confusing (like most of .Mac)

That's exactly what I do before I starting using iWeb, I start thinking like a pre-teen without any web knowledge.
I know and use Dreamweaver and Flash at work, but don't have the time to sit down and bang out a REAL website. Plus I would rather have the hosting done by .Mac than a lot of the fly by night hosting services out there.

[stagi]

I hope they give us a few extra items, I have had .mac for awhile and never get much use out of the $70 yearly fee, hopefully if they upgrade it I won't mind paying for next year and will renew.

[Virgil-TB2]

While we are tossing out suggestions how about .Mac as an actual community?

As a .Mac member, why can't I somehow interact socially with all the other .Mac members? Why not put in some social web like components? If I am looking for a good designer, and I knew that a .Mac member who was a designer also lived in my city, I would prefer to hire them. Currently, I have no way to know if they are or not. If this *is* possible, it's not exactly front and centre.

The reason I come to this web forum is primarily because it's a community of like-minded, somewhat intelligent, mostly progressive mac users. No offence to arn, but this exact kind of forum, hosted by .Mac with access only to .Mac members would blow this site out of the water! There is so much untapped potential in .Mac that way, it could be the 1337 of all Mac web sites and users, and it just isn't. At all.

MS Zune might be a joke, but they did get one thing right, and that's "the social." MS is distinctly ahead of Apple in that regard. The whole sharing and linking up with other people is something that Apple still hasn't really "got" yet IMO. I don't think it's even on the radar, which is a flaw that competitors could exploit (if there were any worthy competitors out there).

Social networking is the biggest web-related story in the last five years, but Apple is doing absolutely nothing in this area. I'd rather hook up with people on .Mac than get on FaceBook and have every old high-school idiot I ever knew try to "friend" me. I have nothing in common with those people.

Probably this hasn't occurred to them because "the Steve" is such an antisocial loner to begin with.

[thaytis]

I hope that it includes some basic changes to iCal. Such as allowing others who are subscribed to your published calendar (with your permission) to edit your calendar. So that your wife, or family member or secretary could update, edit and add to your calendar. It seems to me that this would be a welcome addition and easy change, especially if you are a .mac family or small business.

Oh... and one other thing to Virgil... Great idea on some type of social network within .Mac, but just remember, owning a mac does not necessarily a progressive make. You'd be surprised at the number of conservatives who also enjoy Macintosh.

[jlanuez]

A needed feature for me would be the ability to "beam" (like we did on our old Palm Pilots) an appointment (iCal) or a contact over to my wife's iPhone sitting across a table from me.

We might be out to dinner, or even at home, discussing our schedules, and we often have to do double entry to get the same things on our two iPhones.

For example, I scheduled in "vacation" from June 16-27 and I'd like to just "beam" it over to her and it would go right into her iPhone's iCal.

As is, she needs to reenter what I have on my iPhone. Seams VERY 1980's!

A VERY missing feature of the iPhone vs. the old Palm Pilot.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by thaytis

... Oh... and one other thing to Virgil... Great idea on some type of social network within .Mac, but just remember, owning a mac does not necessarily a progressive make. You'd be surprised at the number of conservatives who also enjoy Macintosh.

Yeah, I heard about Carl Rove and all.

Used to be that way though.

Originally Posted by jlanuez

A needed feature for me would be the ability to "beam" (like we did on our old Palm Pilots) an appointment (iCal) or a contact over to my wife's iPhone sitting across a table from me....

wow, great idea.

I used to love doing that with the Palms. There was like this special feeling that you were part of some secret elite group.

That's kind of like what I meant about the Zunes. I am on transit eery day with a hundred other people and literally 50 or 60 percent of them have an iPod or iPhone of some sort. There we all are with the same hardware, bluetooth enabled, wi-fi etc. and none of us can communicate with each other or even see what we are playing on the pods.

That always seems crazy to me. It would be so easy to implement something like that but it's like it never even occurs to Apple to do so.

[jlanuez]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

Yeah, I heard about Carl Rove and all.

Used to be that way though.

So funny that "open-minded progressives" are so close-minded to "conservatives"

[jlanuez]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

wow, great idea.

I used to love doing that with the Palms. There was like this special feeling that you were part of some secret elite group.

That's kind of like what I meant about the Zunes. I am on transit eery day with a hundred other people and literally 50 or 60 percent of them have an iPod or iPhone of some sort. There we all are with the same hardware, bluetooth enabled, wi-fi etc. and none of us can communicate with each other or even see what we are playing on the pods.

That always seems crazy to me. It would be so easy to implement something like that but it's like it never even occurs to Apple to do so.

I'm not even saying doing anything "community or social or being part of some "secret elite group", I'm simply looking to get a appointment, or contact, into my wife's iPhone. I wonder how this could be missed by Apple.

[jlanuez]

Originally Posted by thaytis

...allowing others who are subscribed to your published calendar (with your permission) to edit your calendar. So that your wife, or family member or secretary could update, edit and add to your calendar. It seems to me that this would be a welcome addition and easy change, especially if you are a .mac family or small business...

I do something similar, as a work around, by using BusySync.