I thought they were just moving away from the "i" prefex to put the "mac" name in their products? IE ibook to macbook?
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Apple Buys Me.com? .Mac's New Name?
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I thought they were just moving away from the "i" prefex to put the "mac" name in their products? IE ibook to macbook?
Well I certainly hope they don't change @mac.com e-mail addresses.
That's a ton of free advertising right there. Every time I send an e-mail out someone sees it and thinks Mac.
That's a ton of free advertising right there. Every time I send an e-mail out someone sees it and thinks Mac.
Maybe "@me" stands for Macintosh Enterprise, since
is targeting the enterprise market with iPhone 2.0 and its SDK/OS so this would just make sense to alter the @mac service for enterprise customers as well which is where the big $$$ is anyhow. 
Some might find that @mac does not sounds professional for enterprise users, then again I am sure Steve Jobs will pull some survey out skewing his decision for the name change.
StopPoking.Me!
The 24" macMac is awesome, and I love my macPod Touch
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Alright, enough fooling around. Lets talk strategy.
They may or may not change the @mac.com address, and even if they do, they'll probably migrate the existing users straight over. Or they might cut us all lose into the aether, who knows?
Either way, considering the current relatively small user base of dotMac, and the 50/50 chance that they will make some announcement that will inspire droves of iPhone owners to sign up next week, this week might be your last chance to snag the email address that you want. Costs you nothing to snag the free trial, and it holds the name for you even if you let the trial expire.
Consider: I tried to get a Gmail address recently. Entered in bob.jones (not my actual name) for the address. My options were: bob.jones3467; jones.bob.bjones434; bjones.jones44; it was freakin ridiculous.
Consider: I let my iTools expire when it became dotMac and went to a paid model in 2002 (I think?). In 2005 I looked at it again and decided it had value for me now, for various reasons. On a whim, I tried my old iTools user name. Inactive, but ready for me to reactivate with the password (and a fistful of cash of course)
If I was one of the naysayers, someone on the fence, someone with potential future switchers in their family, someone who is waiting to see what is unveiled, someone who thinks maybe not now but someday; I'd go snag me a free trial right now, and hold the name you want, and do the same for family members. And your kids. If you can imagine yourself converting your dotmac to a family pack sometime in the future, then hold your kids names. They can hive off their sub-accounts if they want later.
I'm only posting this because I've already preserved the names of the potential future switchers in my family, nyeah!
just because your friend jumps off a bridge...
And dozens of Fortune 500 companies have had their employee's laptops hacked or stolen allowing those companies secrets (customers SSN's, etc.) on the hard drive to be exposed.
And dozens of Fortune 500 companies have had their employee's laptops hacked or stolen allowing those companies secrets (customers SSN's, etc.) on the hard drive to be exposed.
Will the apple store employees say:
"Would you like Me with that?"
"Can I offer you a special offer for Me?"
"You can also have Me for $99."
"Now you can post photos on Me..."
"You can use Me to send your emails."
"Would you like Me with that?"
"Can I offer you a special offer for Me?"
"You can also have Me for $99."
"Now you can post photos on Me..."
"You can use Me to send your emails."
I'm not saying it can't be done, but if any company exhibits paranoia and needs total secrecy, it's Apple.
But to be fair, they don't need to extend their security to the unsecured homes of retail store employees.
I wouldn't worry about your .mac e-mail address.
Worst case, they would forward any e-mail addressed to mac.com to me.com (or whatever it ends up being).
Best case, you pick whether you want a me.com address.
Worst case, they would forward any e-mail addressed to mac.com to me.com (or whatever it ends up being).
Best case, you pick whether you want a me.com address.
It's sure better than mobile.me as a portal/destination name, but I still don't think it makes much sense as an email address.
"John_Doe@me.com" doesn't say much of anything about a person IMO. It sure doesn't identify them as a member of an online community.
Whereas "John_Doe@mac.com" says "this is my mac account," (a community identification), and "John_Doe@sony.com" says, "this is my email address at work," and even "John_Doe@mobileme.com" says "this is where you can get a hold of me when I'm on the road," "me.com" doesn't say much of anything IMO.
It's a good thought, but likely not true.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.
"Mac" is Apple's longest standing and best brand other than the word "Apple" itself. It's unlikely that they would ever give it up or get tired of it unless for some future reason it becomes a negative.
Good analysis. I agree and think it much more likely that however unfortunate the name might sound that "mobile.me" is obviously the new iphone portal and Me.Com is the over-arching entity that draws Mobile.Me and .Mac together.
Apple wouldn't want to force mobile Windows users to use a mac.com address and not everyone will want to use mac.com regardless of whether they are mac or windows or linux people.
So you go to Me.Com to sign into your online life. When you get there, you can access your "mobile.me" stuff (which will be a fantastic new site that is Win/Mac agnostic but laid out expressly for iphone access), or you can log into your .Mac account (hopefully renamed to plain old "mac.com"), or Google, or Facebook, or (shudders) MySpace or whatever.
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: 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)
That's really good for you. Personally, I want to keep mine but I just don't want to have to deal with the hassel of changing email addresses. I'm sure many others here feel this way.
Knolly said:
That's really good for you. Personally, I want to keep mine but I just don't want to have to deal with the hassel of changing email addresses. I'm sure many others here feel this way.
No way they would kill off the email addresses. I use it as well for a LOT of things and I suspect they have a LOT of other people using it for the same thing.
I would be surprised if they didn't just allow people to keep it for as long as they want but new people to sign up for the new @whatever email service
Ok well I guess we all know what's coming:
Apple is working on a place where personal data will be sync of from the iPhone/iPod touch and where media would be shared among a social network used by iphone/iPod touch owners. A marketing strategy to develop the popularity of the devices.
Media would be send via email (like web galleries) using @me.com email addresses probably based on a subscription model and the system will also be applied to @mac.com members.
what's next?
Apple is working on a place where personal data will be sync of from the iPhone/iPod touch and where media would be shared among a social network used by iphone/iPod touch owners. A marketing strategy to develop the popularity of the devices.
Media would be send via email (like web galleries) using @me.com email addresses probably based on a subscription model and the system will also be applied to @mac.com members.
what's next?
Providers usually retain the e-mail domains. Look at former Ameritech, SBC, CompuServe, and Prodigy e-mail addresses. Those customers still keep their domain names.
I wouldn't just rule it out. First, imagine if Google had come to your same conclusion when they introduced their own search engine in '99. There were plenty of products to choose from back then, right? Perhaps I'll name a few, WebCrawler, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, Excite, etc. Google displaced them all. Apple has the same kind of raw talent, and I believe they could displace Facebook, MySpace, etc if they wanted to. Social Networking sites are the hot web properties right now. If they can crack/monetize them more efficiently, they'll be just as profitable as Google. Its no easy task though.
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)
As others have intimated, I think changing .mac addresses would be a way of getting rid of much of the subscriber base. At the moment, I think it is seen by many as an email+ service, as all of the rest of the services are not very well implemented, at least not when you consider it in a Web 2.0 environment. What will be interesting is what Apple does with all their old services. .Mac at the moment is a mess of various generations of products. To use the example of photo publishing, you have Homepage, iWeb, and .Mac galleries all operating concurrently and co-existing with various products. There will be an inevitable backlash if support for any of these is ended. So is there a possibility if there is a me.com product launched leaving the .mac product orphaned, perhaps providing access to both products at the same price ?
As others have intimated, I think changing .mac addresses would be a way of getting rid of much of the subscriber base. At the moment, I think it is seen by many as an email+ service, as all of the rest of the services are not very well implemented, at least not when you consider it in a Web 2.0 environment. What will be interesting is what Apple does with all their old services. .Mac at the moment is a mess of various generations of products. To use the example of photo publishing, you have Homepage, iWeb, and .Mac galleries all operating concurrently and co-existing with various products. There will be an inevitable backlash if support for any of these is ended. So is there a possibility if there is a me.com product launched leaving the .mac product orphaned, perhaps providing access to both products at the same price ?
By the way there is another possibility that has not been explored with me.com:
Blackberry providers let you create Blackberry exchange accounts where you can set up your existing email to receive it as push on your device.
My gf set up her gmail account and linked it to some @bouygues-blackberry.com email address and she now receives her gmail messages with push (bouygues is the operator)
i would not be surprised to learn that the Exchange technology had been set up on the me.com servers to let use generate email addresses and link our own personal email over there.
Blackberry providers let you create Blackberry exchange accounts where you can set up your existing email to receive it as push on your device.
My gf set up her gmail account and linked it to some @bouygues-blackberry.com email address and she now receives her gmail messages with push (bouygues is the operator)
i would not be surprised to learn that the Exchange technology had been set up on the me.com servers to let use generate email addresses and link our own personal email over there.
It's ridiculous to think that they would actually make people change their email address just because they rebrand the service. They'll always own the mac.com domain name, whether they name the service dotMe or dotPoopyPants. In fact, they might even offer a choice of addresses when you sign up, ie:
__@mac.com
__@me.com
__@mobileme.com
__@iphone.com
etc
Wow the porn companies could have a field day with this...
I wont even post the ones that come to my mind LOL...