All Articles Tagged Mac

[Note: Official $50 Phone Different Store gift card says our readers can pick a better name than "Mobile Me". See below for details!]

If you hear the steady sound of thumping, as though something were continuously bumping, that’s not the GPS industry going into cardiac arrest at the mere thought of the iPhone 3G’s specs, that’s tiPb’s collective heads as we knock them against our glass screened, glossy facaded, aluminum cased displays in abject terror of what Apple may be choosing to rename our loved-to-hated old .Mac service:

Mobile Me

Sadly, no. (And we thought Back-to-My-Mac was awkward…)

Dear Apple,

We, your loyal iPhone users, realize .Mac was fine for a label pre-.com bubble burst, and has desperately needed a fresh coat of paint ever since. We understand that you need to provide not only ActiveSync for business users, but similar email, contacts, and events “push”-style for consumers as well. We get that the service (perhaps) formerly-known as .Mac is an ideal launching pad for these features. And Jobs-knows that Windows users, your largest install base for iTunes, iPods, and iPhones, would be confused to the point of BSOD by something called .Mac.

But “Mobile Me”. Seriously?

Sure, iSync is taken by local sync features, and Microsoft using ActiveSync for both local and Exchange services is confusing to say the least, but what about Apple Sync? Worked for Apple TV, didn’t it? Okay, Gruber doesn’t like iMobile, but I’d humbly suggest it kicks the sync out of the horribly precious “Mobile Me”.

Please tell Steve that “Mobile Me” just isn’t Zen enough. Tell him it’s already something planned for the “Zune Social”. Or Nokia’s “Comes With Muzak”. Whatever. Anything. Because let’s face it, the line of better names than “Mobile Me” stretches around an Apple Flagship Store sized block a few times.

P.S. I bet the iPhone Blog readers could pick a better name (if not a couple hundred dozen better names). In fact, Dieter’s so sure he’ll pony up a $50 Phone Different Store gift card to the reader who picks the best alternative to “Mobile Me” (to be judged by the blog’s staff).

Readers, have at it,

Apple, warmest namastes,

“Concerned Me”

Ah, .Mac, the poor abandoned stepchild in Apple’s 360 degrees of spherical integration. It’s the online service Google, Yahoo, and even Microsoft Live kick sand at on the playground.

Sure, Back-to-my-Mac can rock, and syncing can be oh-so-sweet, but c’mon, what have you done for us lately?

Could be a lot, if rumors pan out. We’ve already brought you word on possible iPhone 2.0 .Mac “push” mail, and even reports of a total revamp. Now it seems the revamp may be more of a full on renovation, including a brand spanking new name!

[Dmitry Chestnykh, the CEO at Coding Robots] went through the iCal Localizable.strings file in the recently released 10.5.3 update and found a number of changes. In particular, he found a lot of evidence that the .Mac brand name is going to be replaced. Apple is apparently using a placeholder %@ which will be dynamically replaced by the new name, whatever that is, when it’s released.

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Sorry PC Users. And non-iPhone users. And we’re not sorry for you having to think about an upgrade to Vista or Windows Mobile 6.1 either. No, we’re sorry because Google loves us iPhone users more than you. Google has an iPhone Fixation. The newest evidence? The latest and greatest update to the Mac OS, 10.5.3, just came out today and it has a new feature: syncing of contacts with Google. Gmail already works better with the iPhone than it does with any other mail app, now it works better with the iPhone when plugged into a Mac, too.

Odd that it would only work if you have an iPhone, though, innit? If you’re not “one of us” (Google! Goggle!), you can still sync your contacts up with Yahoo, who still is also the only way to get Push email pre-iPhone-2.0.

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Update: Ars Technica chimes in with a hack for your forlorn non-iPhone-owning Mac Users. For my part, I very much want to apply 10.5.3 but I have a policy of waiting at least a week before installing it. Crazy? …Or crazy like a fox?

Updating yesterday’s story about .Mac getting the push-email treatment in iPhone 2.0, TUAW’s tipsters are back with this little gem:

According to our anonymous tipster, .Mac will undergo a complete revamp that will coincide with the iPhone 2.0 launch (which everyone expects to occur at WWDC 08).

Again with the asking and receiving, eh?

Rumored highlights for the updated .Mac include full wireless (cell + wifi?) calendar, contacts, and email (an Apple Exchange anyone?) and .Mac support for — you guessed it! — Windows.

First El Jobso gives PC users a cool glass of iTunes and iPhone, and now a possible consumer-centric push service.

Did I mention how June can’t come fast enough yet?

Ask and ye shall receive, dig deep into the code and ye shall find fresh-baked Apple-y goodness.

No sooner did Apple drop iPhone 2.0 SDK Beta 5, than the developers began scouring it for any hint of what’s to come, and as usually TUAW serves up what they found:

A certain, unnamed individual sent us some pictures of the latest build of the iPhone firmware showing .Mac push e-mail. The picture shows the main Settings page with a new button: “Fetch new data.” When you click the button, you are taken to a list of your mail accounts, where you can choose between either “fetch” or “push.” According to Mr. Anonymous, while .Mac is offering push e-mail, you are currently not able to do contact or calendar syncing.

Check out TUAW’s gallery for the pics.

Boy, Apple is pushing the features fast and furiously. We already knew about “push” via the Microsoft licensed ActiveSync, which offers full Exchange support, but complementing that with .Mac for non-Exchange users? Very nice!

(Of course, much as I love Back-to-My-Mac, iSync, iDisk, and other .Mac features, it really needs a more competitive feature-set upgrade — Imagine Google-like offerings and capacities with Apple’s ease of use and integration! — especially for the rather steep $100 a year.)

June really can’t come fast enough!

No sooner did our own Chad Garette lay out the case for .Mac syncing via the iPhone, then iPhone Alley, (via TUAW), brings word that El Jobso might be doing just that:

In the just released SDK beta 2, iPhone Alley found a string within a preference bundle that reads: “Syncing with this Dot Mac account will turn off syncing for other Dot Mac accounts and delete any existing synced data.” This suggests the possibility of wireless syncing for non-Exchange users.

This would be awesome additional functionality for both the iPhone and for .Mac. 2.0 really can’t come fast enough.

And note to Chad: How about an article on why the iPhone really needs immediate release in Canada? Please?

Do you use Apple’s .Mac Services? I do. I like the synchronization between my Macs; it really makes life easy. With the iPhone, I really get a lot of benefit. I can add a website, Calendar appointments, Address Book entry, etc on my iPhone and it gets synced across multiple machines.

So why can’t I access my iDisk on my iPhone? I realize actually creating documents might be a stretch, but at least an adherence to Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines for iDisk on the iPhone via Safari should not be too hard. But why stop there. Why not an optimized view of my web-based .Mac Mail? Or Address Book?

I think it would be an awesome value for .Mac subscribers to get an optimized array of Apple’s services to the iPhone. They could start with their own Web App Gallery. What do you think? Would a tighter integration of Apple’s services with the iPhone make it that much more desirable?

A little non-iPhone news:

A widely read piece at Wired on the origins of the iPhone is pretty much must-read. It would have been nice if the article had more named-sources, but on the other hand the entire thing rings very true. If you’re interested in how Apple negotiated the complicated carrier and technical details of the iPhone, it’s the best article on that in the past few months.

But we’re all about Macworld this weekend, so this tidbit caught our eye:

Jobs had reason to be confident. Apple’s hardware engineers had spent about a year working on touchscreen technology for a tablet PC and had convinced him that they could build a similar interface for a phone.

Oh, so Apple was already working on a tablet concept before the iPhone. If it took some work to re-engineer their tablet technology into the iPhone, methinks it would take less work to re-engineer that technology in to a tablet.

Of course, it would be even easier to integrate that technology into a massive touchpad on a thin MacBook, per MacRumors (who gets the credit for the above image).

Our forum integration is hurting just a bit right now, so comments are temporarily down. Expect ‘em back by the big day!

The internet is all abuzz over the latest Macworld rumor – AppleInsider has spotted Apple banners with the slogan “There’s something in the air.” My guess hope is something rather less revolutionary than WiMAX Apple devices or a 3G iPhone – both of which I consider very unlikely. WiMAX is just not widespread enough yet and too much of it is controlled by Sprint and Clearwire. No way Apple is going to get in bed with Sprint given their relationship with AT&T, and Clearwire is just too small.

Instead, I’m hoping for .Mac services on the iPhone. Radically improved .Mac services have been something I’ve wanted to a long time. What I’d really like: Google services integration, iWeb mobloggling from the iPhone, and access to .Mac’s online storage. Please Please.

Meanwhile, check out what our forum members think is coming at Macworld.

AppleInsider | Archives

Apple has just announced new updates to the Mac Pro and Xserve lines. Both have received significant processor upgrades. Why is this good news for iPhone fans – well Apple is making some of the announcements many predicted for Macworld now. There’s only one reason they would do that, and it’s not that Apple likes to keep things spicy. No, it’s that they’ll need to make room for other product announcements. Since both the Mac Pro and the Xserve are “pro” machines, one assumes that the announcements at Macworld will be for consumers.