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

I think this is much bigger than everyone seems to realize. All of this stuff about Mobile Me, me.com, and 10.6. I think it is safe to say that Apple will give us a sneak peak at the newest OS:

Mac OS ME (Millenium Edition)

It will be Mac OS X, just with a few things added, and some stabilization removed.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
 
Well, it makes sense that there would be two different services. There is a variable in 10.5.3, and a set string in the SDK. Think about that for a minute. Now for the name...I don't really like it. It really reminds me of the worst operating system ever, Windows ME. Although I was never really a fan of the name .MAC, I do like it as an email address. I also hated the name Wii when it was announced, but I'm used to it now.

So several people on here are speculating that Apple might kill the Mac branding. If that ever happens, I would expect them to open up OS X to be installed on any machine...which will never officially happen. Mac branding has been around for a long time and is synonymous with Apple. Many people, after purchasing my iPhone last June, asked me "Is that the Mac iPhone?". Yeah I know, stupid, but many people really don't know the difference. It just makes marketing sense to keep the name. That would be like Microsoft changing the name of Windows to Porthole or Skylight.

Guy: "Hey I just installed Skylight 2009 and my computer crashed!"
Buddy: "Fwend, what the hell are you talking about?"

Back to the topic, this is what I want to see in the alleged "Mobile Me" for iPhone:

1. Wireless syncing
2. Mobile streaming and download of Mobile Me storage space files, effectively increasing the storage of the iPhone.
3. Uploading created videos and photos to Mobile Me storage, with Youtube, Facebook and Flikr extensions
4. Incorporating security tools such as GPS tracking, wireless camera viewing and remote wipe into this service for lost and stolen iPhones
5. Wireless control and access to my Mac, like Remote Buddy except better and native.
6. That cool bluetooth and GPS tagging thing that was mentioned the other day that helps you find your keys, illegitimate children, etc.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

chgojcs said:
This just might be a new feature they're adding to .Mac, or just a name change of the service itself. Personally, I think they could have thought of something that fits a little more into the Apple brand, but whatever.

I just would hope that all the people with a @mac.com email address aren't suddenly finding themselves with a new email address. if that's the case, it would piss a lot of people off.
Click to expand...

If and I suppose when apple change the name the email addresses will still be available as well as a new one issued, you will then probably find apple just pushing the emails addressed to the old .mac address to your new one so in effect you would not have to worry about lost emails.

If you a new customer under the new name you will then only be issued with the new .whatever email address and not recieve a .mac address.

This is easily done.
 
Okay, I have a question. Assuming that .mac becomes "push-email" would that mean that while using Apple's Mail app on Mac computer an Email would come in instantly, rather than checking every minute or so? Or does this only apply to the iPhone and the Touch?
 
larry22 said:
Okay, I have a question. Assuming that .mac becomes "push-email" would that mean that while using Apple's Mail app on Mac computer an Email would come in instantly, rather than checking every minute or so? Or does this only apply to the iPhone and the Touch?
Click to expand...

I would suspect the Push email would apply only to the iPhone. Not the Mac.

arn
 
This whole thing is basically 'welcome to cloud computing' - one user account for all devices with personal information stored on Apple's servers.

From there your data syncs seamlessly with your iMac, iPhone, MacBook, :apple: TV, touch-screen tablet and any internet-browser.

Dotmac won't be overhauled - it will be completely replaced. Exciting to see what Apple unveils when they're ready.
 
Punataro said:
I don't think this is official, i work for one of the apple retailer store (in asia) and never heard of the "Me" name. It sound kinda like Microsoft's unsuccessful operating system in 2001 "Windows Me" and i can't believe apple can come up with such a name.
iSpace sounds cooler BTW.
Click to expand...

Here is a story for you: I went to this year's MacWorld. After the keynote the mob went to the floor to get their hands on the new MacBook Air. I chatted with one of the genii who couldn't answer a technical question because he basically said: "I don't know, I only knew of the Air about ten minutes before you got here." So, it seems very likely to assume that you would be left in the dark about a service not yet offered.
 
Cool6324 said:
If that were the case, I would be able to register for apple.com for 100/yr. :p Worded domains cost a great deal of money; things like spell.com, cool.com, etc.

I'm guessing a clean 50 million. "Me" is only two letters!
Click to expand...
I'm not 100% sure, but don't you need to have 3 letters for a domain name? That's what I always thought.
 
lofight said:
I'm not 100% sure, but don't you need to have 3 letters for a domain name? That's what I always thought.
Click to expand...

you are clearly mistaken:

http://www.me.com
http://www.ge.com/

edit: though in researching it, it does appear that if a 2 letter domain expires, you are not allowed to reg it again. but existing 2 letter domains are allowed to persist.

arn
 
Well, everyone get ready after the keynote to grab the best and shortest email addresses.
look@me
smile@me
stopscreaming@me

etc.
 
Interesting. Some good sleuthing right there.

Not entirely sure if I like the 'me' domain though, it does come across as a bit self-righteous.

Mmm, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Oh and the earlier suggestion someone had of Apple doing their own social-networking website; I'd never even thought of that. If done well, it could be the next big thing.
 
chgojcs said:
This just might be a new feature they're adding to .Mac, or just a name change of the service itself. Personally, I think they could have thought of something that fits a little more into the Apple brand, but whatever.

I just would hope that all the people with a @mac.com email address aren't suddenly finding themselves with a new email address. if that's the case, it would piss a lot of people off.
Click to expand...

There is no reason that Apple needs to abandon .mac domain. Rather, they could offer current .mac subscribers the new .me addresses in addition to their .mac addresses.
 
jonharris200 said:
This whole thing is basically 'welcome to cloud computing' - one user account for all devices with personal information stored on Apple's servers.

From there your data syncs seamlessly with your iMac, iPhone, MacBook, :apple: TV, touch-screen tablet and any internet-browser.

Dotmac won't be overhauled - it will be completely replaced. Exciting to see what Apple unveils when they're ready.
Click to expand...

I think this post is closest to the money.
 
oh great!

You'd think the naming is purposely done to be headline news friendly and news anchor friendly.


Corny News Anchor line: "So with all the revolutionary services out there such as Youtube and Me dot com . the real question remains , what's more important , me or you ? "
 
jonharris200 said:
This whole thing is basically 'welcome to cloud computing' - one user account for all devices with personal information stored on Apple's servers.

From there your data syncs seamlessly with your iMac, iPhone, MacBook, :apple: TV, touch-screen tablet and any internet-browser.

Dotmac won't be overhauled - it will be completely replaced. Exciting to see what Apple unveils when they're ready.
Click to expand...

I'm sure this is right. If this also works with Windows, it's even further down that line than you suggest.

There is one major area of cloud computing that hasn't quite been realised for home users, which is identity management. If I can create a 'me' account, which contains a series of variable permissions to access my contact information, websites and public directories, I can grant (and withdraw) secure access to this information to other people. Then if my email address or mobile number changes, I would update my profile, and the changes would be distributed to my 'subscribers'. In turn, my account is given permissions by other users to access their data. Eventually, we would stop thinking about contact details and just get used to contacting a person (via whatever 'channel' seems appropriate - email, phone, IM) - a dynamically updated 'ID' which we have hold across all our devices.

I doubt that Apple have this planned for us yet, but being able to sync our own data wirelessly across all our computing devices, including iPhones and iPods, is a significant step towards it.
 
jonharris200 said:
This whole thing is basically 'welcome to cloud computing' - one user account for all devices with personal information stored on Apple's servers.

From there your data syncs seamlessly with your iMac, iPhone, MacBook, :apple: TV, touch-screen tablet and any internet-browser.

Dotmac won't be overhauled - it will be completely replaced. Exciting to see what Apple unveils when they're ready.
Click to expand...


I like this gentlemen's idea.

This concept is clearly the next big thing. Our digital lifestyles supported by fully linked devices and seamless integration. :cool:

There's hundreds of billions in this concept and Apple are continuously adding products and services to bring this dream to a reality. I've considered the .Mac service but found it a little confusing and useless really. But if they can make it an integral part of the Mac - iPhone - AppleTV - Wifi combination then it has huge potential. :D

I reckon WWDC 08' going to be huge. Although many people would disagree, stating the WWDC is purely for Developers etc.. But you see, the direction for Developers this year appears to be this integration concept. Apple needs to delivery nifty gadgetry for the developers to work with.

Bring on WWDC 08'. Hope Macrumors will post a spoiler-free link to the Keynote once it's available!
 
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