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Apple's .Mac Service to be Renamed, Revamped?

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Apple's .Mac ("dotmac") service is a $99/year set of online tools that provides customers with email (@mac), web hosting, iDisk, backup and sync services. .Mac services are tightly integrated with Apple's existing iLife suite, allowing you to publish content easily from iPhoto, iWeb and iMovie. Apple appears to be poised to rename and revamp this 6 year old service.

Codingrobots reveals that all references to Apple's .Mac service in Mac OS X 10.5.3 have been replaced with a variable... essentially a blank space that can be easily replaced in the future by a software update. The reason for this appears to be that Apple will be rebranding their .Mac service. This renaming plan is actually spelled out in iCal's localizable.strings file:
%@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac)
Click to expand...

This finding may validate recent whispers that Apple is planning a dramatic .Mac update alongside the iPhone 2.0 release.

In early May, TUAW claimed that .Mac would undergo a complete revamp near WWDC, and include the over-the-air syncing like Exchange and .Mac syncing with Windows. There has already been evidence that .Mac will be begin offering "push" functionality for Mail, Contacts and Calendar items in the iPhone 2.0 firmware, so a WWDC revamp certainly seems possible. Other whispers have suggested that Apple will start offering a discounted .Mac (

Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/05/30/apples-mac-service-to-be-renamed-revamped/
I only hope that they don't start requiring .Mac (or whatever it will be called) for some of these iPhone syncing features.

... and I'm still waiting for the ability to sync and edit Notes on the computer, along with a proper "to-do" app. I'm sure there will be 3rd party apps to solve those issues though.
 
Makes sense

This makes a lot of sense if one of its features is to allow push mail to iPhones.

Given than the vast majority of iPhone owners are Windows users, offering .Mac services to Windows users would be needed.

The current name ".Mac" is not conductive to the windows market.
 
Bring on the revamp. As a .mac user since 2004, I'm eagerly looking for new features to the service.
 
This may push me into finally getting .Mac.

Anyone know of any great advantages to having an account (as .Mac exists now)? Just curious as to what people use it for...
 
Finally bought .mac yesterday... hopefully any upgrades will be offered to me for free, preferably, but I'd accept a discount to upgrade.
Of course if no option is offered and I have to pay full price, I can assure you I will not bitch about apple being unfair like many others would.
 
That would be sweet if iphone owners would get a huge discount or even free.

1 more week til wwdc right?
 
This would be brilliant. Especially if it came with a minor price drop, or discount if used with an iPhone.

I have been surprised there isn't more .Mac support on the iPhone now, as it seems like they'd have a much easier time trying new things on their own email before testing it out on an unknown system (like yahoo or gmail).
 
It's about time. I'd certainly love an easy way to sync my contacts, calendars and to-do's over-the-air. Even if it would just sync wirelessly through my LAN would be a big improvement over having to use the cable.

I think $99 is too much to pay for this service, however. I'm not likely to make much use of .mac's other services. Maybe at a price point closer to $39/yr I'd bite, to save the hassle of manual sync'ing.
 
.mac eats...

why anyone would buy that over a communal ftp server that costs the same but offers a million times more space and bandwidth as well as your own site address (www.mysite.ca, etc.) is beyond me...

now if apple decided that the new .mac was like a communal server that offers a million times more space and badwidth as well as your own site address, on top of integration with iApps, that would be impressive...
 
I'm almost as excited about this as I am about the new iphone. .Mac has so much potential... but right now it is overpriced and it under-delivers.
 
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)

Shasterball said:
This may push me into finally getting .Mac.



Anyone know of any great advantages to having an account (as .Mac exists now)? Just curious as to what people use it for...
Click to expand...

iDisk is pretty neat and a bit useful (not worth the $100 per year though). I got stuck with a .mac account. I had it when it was free and got fully established and then they started charging for it and I didn't want to deal with the hassel of changing my email address with everyone I know.

Other good features include iPhoto web galleries, .mac screen savers, and iWeb web sites. Still not enough to justify $100 per year mainly due to the storage space.
 
No one is trying to guess at the new name :rolleyes: ?
.i
?
.x
...
apple sure likes the two letters...
.xi
...
 
OllyW said:
I only hope that they don't start requiring iPhones for some of these .Mac (or whatever it will be called) features. ;)
Click to expand...

kornyboy said:
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)

Actually some may say that a large percentage of your Mac experience is crippled by not having .Mac. However, if you use iPhone and iWeb exclusively I can say that may be true. Otherwise, I don't fully agree.

iDisk is pretty neat and a bit useful (not worth the $100 per year though). I got stuck with a .mac account. I had it when it was free and got fully established and then they started charging for it and I didn't want to deal with the hassel of changing my email address with everyone I know.

Other good features include iPhoto web galleries, .mac screen savers, and iWeb web sites. Still not enough to justify $100 per year mainly due to the storage space.
Click to expand...
The storage space can be increased and I guarantee that most people would see some value in it. I always thought that they gave a 90-day trial as that was long enough to fall in love with it and really commit to it. Just as that trial expires a user gets all paranoid about changing things around and ends up buying the service.
 
If true, I hope that there is no change to the "@mac.com" email addresses. I could do without the hassle of amending various online accounts.
 
It's about time...

Of course Apple lost their big change when the iPhone was first released. I had been hoping that they would become a MVNO and offered VOIP service tied in with .Mac. Oh well, maybe now it's still not too late to actually offer something unique and different with this service. It's never been anything special but has seriously languished with no real improvements in years. Major lack of followthrough from Apple seeing what they could have done with this service.
 
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