Hello Everyone,
I thought this article over at TUAW was interesting, and I thought we could have a good discussion about it here.
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/08/24/macs-dramatic-resurrection/
Personally, I'm not that creative in thinking about new types of services, but I hope that Apple really fleshes out .Mac into something easy to use, reliable, and with some features that would make me kick my shoes off in a fit of joy. After that, there are two things that I'd like to see:
1. Free Services - after pimping out .Mac into something really outstanding, I'd like to see Apple have two tiers of services: free, and paid. Free can include basic stuff , like email, online calendar and addressbook w/ syncing, etc. The paid for services could include backup and other forthcoming outstanding features, just make it really enticing and worth it.
2. Make it work OS-independent - I think this is extremely important. I work from a windows pc during the day, and it'd be nice to do a lot of syncing or what not when I'm at work. I don't have time to do stuff on my mac all the time when I'm at home. Of course, hopefully there'd be plenty of services that take advantage of iLife that wouldn't necessarily work on pc's, but that's just incentive for people to switch. Plus, if it was done really, really well, it could have a similar effect as the iPod halo. Sure, iTunes and the iPod work great together, but show people what else Apple is capable of and what they're all about. Plus, think of all of the @mac.com emails floating all around between pc users.
I think Apple has a great opportunity here. It may not necessarily generate a lot of revenue on it's own, but it'll get more recognition out there and perhaps net a few more switchers.
So, what do you all think? What new features could Apple add to .Mac?
I thought this article over at TUAW was interesting, and I thought we could have a good discussion about it here.
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/08/24/macs-dramatic-resurrection/
Personally, I'm not that creative in thinking about new types of services, but I hope that Apple really fleshes out .Mac into something easy to use, reliable, and with some features that would make me kick my shoes off in a fit of joy. After that, there are two things that I'd like to see:
1. Free Services - after pimping out .Mac into something really outstanding, I'd like to see Apple have two tiers of services: free, and paid. Free can include basic stuff , like email, online calendar and addressbook w/ syncing, etc. The paid for services could include backup and other forthcoming outstanding features, just make it really enticing and worth it.
2. Make it work OS-independent - I think this is extremely important. I work from a windows pc during the day, and it'd be nice to do a lot of syncing or what not when I'm at work. I don't have time to do stuff on my mac all the time when I'm at home. Of course, hopefully there'd be plenty of services that take advantage of iLife that wouldn't necessarily work on pc's, but that's just incentive for people to switch. Plus, if it was done really, really well, it could have a similar effect as the iPod halo. Sure, iTunes and the iPod work great together, but show people what else Apple is capable of and what they're all about. Plus, think of all of the @mac.com emails floating all around between pc users.
I think Apple has a great opportunity here. It may not necessarily generate a lot of revenue on it's own, but it'll get more recognition out there and perhaps net a few more switchers.
So, what do you all think? What new features could Apple add to .Mac?
