Apple Buys Me.com? .Mac's New Name?

[MacRumors]

Earlier today, John Gruber of DaringFireball.net suggested that Me.com might be the name for Apple's .Mac rename. There was no real evidence, however, except that Me.com was registered under MarkMonitor's domain service. MarkMonitor is a domain management service that Apple (and many others) use. Gruber admits that this is mostly speculative:

This is proof of nothing, of course, since MarkMonitor provides domain name parking for any company that pays for their services.

Me.com currently redirects users to Snappville.com - a social networking community. Snappville used to be called Me.com but changed names in December 2007 with little fanfare. The current Me.com page simply redirects to Snappville.

MacRumors reader Matthew Yohe pointed us to Netcraft page which curiously lists Kenneth Eddings (eddingsk@apple.com) as the DNS admin. This email address, however, was no where in the Whois lookup for Me.com. As it turns out, Mr. Eddings email address is listed in the SOA Record of the DNS record:





So, Apple does appear to own Me.com. It was likely purchased sometime in December 2007, and it could very well be the rebranding for Apple's .Mac service.

Article Link

[Knolly]

The plot thickens!

My .mac runs out in 13 days... Just enough time to see if renewing is worth it, haha.

[TheYankees1903]

The Service will be called Me... The iPhone support will be called Mobile Me...

You Heard It Here First,
TheYankees1903

[EricNau]

I'm assuming this correlates with the past story and the new name will be "Mobile Me" with the domain name me.com?

I think a name of just "Me" would get very confusing.

[nlivo]

Hmmm, interesting. I don't know if this means something or not? Does it? Is this enough to say that it is quite likely that .Mac will now be known as 'Me', or 'Mobile Me'?

[Applepi]

Originally Posted by TheYankees1903

The Service will be called Me... The iPhone support will be called Mobile Me...

You Heard It Here First,
TheYankees1903

P.S. First Comment

Good work gumshoe.

[metalray@mac.co]

seams very self centered "you know .me and all.

[Decrepit]

Maybe this is their way of weaning people away from the name Mac.

Start on the mobile side. iPhone, iPod...

Change the notebooks to AirBook, and AirBook Pro eventually killing the machine in the middle.

They could go with iDesk Mini for the Mini, iDesk for the iMac and iDesk Pro for the Mac Pro.

Just some wild speculation on my part, but they killed the Apple II line pretty harshly. They could kill the Mac name overnight as well.

[Chris Stroud]

I hope they have a way of implementing the new name so that it makes sense. I think I like dotmac better than mobileme.... it sounds kinda odd or even stupid at this point.

[Dr.Gargoyle]

I seriously hope that they wont kill off the .mac addresses. The reason I chose .mac in the first place was so I could keep my email address.

[thejason]

Wahoo! Good work Matthew!

[Peace]

Same basic info for mobileme.com

Registrant:
Domain Administrator
DNStination, Inc.
303 Second Street Suite 800N
San Francisco CA 94107
US
admin@dnstinations.com +1.4155319335 Fax: -

Domain Name: mobileme.com

Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com

Administrative Contact:
Domain Administrator
DNStination, Inc.
303 Second Street Suite 800N
San Francisco CA 94107
US
admin@dnstinations.com +1.4155319335 Fax: -
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Domain Administrator
DNStination, Inc.
303 Second Street Suite 800N
San Francisco CA 94107
US
admin@dnstinations.com +1.4155319335 Fax: -

Created on..............: 2002-08-23.
Expires on..............: 2009-08-23.
Record last updated on..: 2008-03-30.


Note: the date it was updated.. March 30th 2008

[bc008]

@me.com would be a cool address...

anyone really know why a name change is needed?

[arn]

Originally Posted by bc008

@me.com would be a cool address...

anyone really know why a name change is needed?

I think it's because the iPhone and iPod Touch are not Macs. So it doesn't make sense to provide a service called ".Mac" to people who might not even own a Mac.

arn

[bretm]

Originally Posted by Decrepit

Maybe this is their way of weaning people away from the name Mac.

Start on the mobile side. iPhone, iPod...

Change the notebooks to AirBook, and AirBook Pro eventually killing the machine in the middle.

They could go with iDesk Mini for the Mini, iDesk for the iMac and iDesk Pro for the Mac Pro.

Just some wild speculation on my part, but they killed the Apple II line pretty harshly. They could kill the Mac name overnight as well.

Except they specifically changed the name of all their products to contain Mac instead of "Power" since the Power stood for PowerPC. The i now stands for Intel I guess. When the iMac came out he said it stood for internet. Internet Mac. The goal of the first iMac was to be incredibly easy to set up and get on the internet. Now I guess the i is just an i.

[koobcamuk]

Originally Posted by arn

I think it's because the iPhone and iPod Touch are not Macs. So it doesn't make sense to provide a service called ".Mac" to people who might not even own a Mac.

arn

Makes sense, but I prefer .Mac.

It's easy to spell out as an email address and I just like what it assocaites me with. @me.com sounds stupid to me.

[Chris Stroud]

Originally Posted by bretm

Except they specifically changed the name of all their products to contain Mac instead of "Power" since the Power stood for PowerPC. The i now stands for Intel I guess. When the iMac came out he said it stood for internet. Internet Mac. The goal of the first iMac was to be incredibly easy to set up and get on the internet. Now I guess the i is just an i.

Yeah because the original iPod had no internet connectivity, that is just their thing. iMovie, iWeb, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iCal, iChat, iSync, iLife, iTV (code name), iDVD, iWork, iBook, of course Stevo (iCeo), iCar.... did I miss any?

[Mykbibby]

Not bad... I like .Mac, but this beats the crap out of MobileMe...

[Decrepit]

Originally Posted by bretm

Except they specifically changed the name of all their products to contain Mac instead of "Power" since the Power stood for PowerPC. The i now stands for Intel I guess. When the iMac came out he said it stood for internet. Internet Mac. The goal of the first iMac was to be incredibly easy to set up and get on the internet. Now I guess the i is just an i.

True.

But there's been the Mac, Mac SE, Mac+, Mac II, Mac LC....... and so many more.

Just wondering if they're getting tired of the name. Again, just thinking out loud. :-)

[Chris Stroud]

And if you think about it, it would have to be set up like me.com being the .mac replacement, and have MobileMe be the iPhone/iPod touch protocol for accessing features such as Push email etc... it couldn't be two separate services.

[Mac OS X Ocelot]

Maybe it has nothing to do with .Mac but instead Apple is going to attempt a full-fledged social networking website. Maybe it means nothing and Apple felt whimsical at the time.

[Nermal]

Originally Posted by Chris Stroud

Yeah because the original iPod had no internet connectivity, that is just their thing. iMovie, iWeb, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iCal, iChat, iSync, iLife, iTV (code name), iDVD, iWork, iBook, iCar.... did I miss any?

You forgot Steve, the iCEO

[bc008]

Originally Posted by arn

I think it's because the iPhone and iPod Touch are not Macs. So it doesn't make sense to provide a service called ".Mac" to people who might not even own a Mac.

arn

does make sense, this looks promising!

[Chris Stroud]

Originally Posted by Mac OS X Ocelot

Maybe it has nothing to do with .Mac but instead Apple is going to attempt a full-fledged social networking website. Maybe it means nothing and Apple felt whimsical at the time.

No way, Apple would never create a Social web site, the demand simply isn't there. People already have several great ones to choose from. The references to .Mac have been changed to a variable like a% or something idr, these can be changed in 10.5.4(maybe) during WWDC.

[ingenious]

Originally Posted by bretm

Except they specifically changed the name of all their products to contain Mac instead of "Power" since the Power stood for PowerPC. The i now stands for Intel I guess. When the iMac came out he said it stood for internet. Internet Mac. The goal of the first iMac was to be incredibly easy to set up and get on the internet. Now I guess the i is just an i.

The official word from Apple was just that they wanted to emphasize the "Mac" moniker with all of their products. Just like iPod... i.e. iPod classic, iPod nano, iPod touch, etc., we have iMac, Mac mini, MacBook, Mac Pro. In other words, Apple said it had nothing to do with the "Power" part of PowerPC. The Intel transition was just a good time to change the names.


Also, the "i" doesn't stand for Intel. You're right that it stood for "internet" to begin with, but I don't think it really stands for anything now.