Apple's Web strategy all about Me

It's hard to believe that no one in the "Me Generation" beat them to it, but Apple has apparently registered Me.com as a possible replacement for its .Mac service.

Could Me.com be Apple's portal linking the iPhone and the Mac?

(Credit: CNET Networks)

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has assembled a list of evidence that Apple is holding onto the domain, with the likely scenario that the company wants to launch a new Internet service. The domain is currently held by a company called MarkMonitor, but the administrator of Me.com bears an Apple e-mail address. Last month, Network World noticed that Apple had snapped up a bunch of Montenegro's new Web addresses, such as apple.me and itunes.me, and the company trademarked the term "MobileMe" a few years ago.

Apple's $99-a-year .Mac service is not all that popular among the Mac community mostly because of its price tag, even though it makes Web publishing and online storage fairly easy with tight links to its iLife software. But the big opportunity these days for .Mac could be related to the iPhone.

Monday marks the official kickoff of iPhone Month within the Apple universe, although some would argue it started long ago. Apple is expected to release a faster iPhone with additional features perhaps as early as next week, and new software and applications should be out by the end of the month.

Mac users appear to be intrigued by the idea of extending .Mac's syncing features to their iPhones, allowing them to access files and resources stored on their home Macs via the iPhone. This could be an interesting opportunity for Apple to get iPhone buyers on the Mac train, and to entice current Mac users to obtain an iPhone.

A new .Mac service would be an afterthought to the 3G iPhone as well as any news about Mac OS X 10.6 that might arrive during Steve Jobs' keynote speech next week at the Worldwide Developers Conference, but it bears watching.

[amandachuck]

.Mac also gives a nearly spam free email experience, and coupled with mail.app, I get no spam to any of my .mac addresses. That's worth something. The synching and the idisk web access is also valuable. Not that other ways aren't possible, but it's all in one easy to deal with place.

[superswiss]

You get a spam free email experience with gmail for free. Best spam filter in the industry.

[ColinPape]

Acquiring Me.com was an extremely smart move. As I've stated in my analysis ( http://www.colinpape.com/?postid=10000179 ), .Me will be the glue that ties all of Apple's assets together and ensure the company's dominance in our digital lives.

[rcrusoe]

"Apple's $99-a-year .Mac service is not all that popular among the Mac community " and, IMO, changing the name to something.me or me.com isn't likely to gain them any users. It's too much like all the "My Computer ", "My Documents", "My Blue Screen of Death" crap on Windows. I am so tired of people naming stuff "My whatever".

[InklingBooks]

I agree with rcrusoe. Having "me" in a name grates on my nerves in the same way that all the "My" stuff in Windows does. It sounds so childish, so like someone who never outgrew ther "Terrible Twos."

That said, Apple does need to supplement .Mac with something cheaper, something that'd offer desktop to laptop to iPhone sync features in the nothing to little price range. As a writer, I hate the hassle of keeping files and data synced on my iMac and MacBook. I'd hate it even more if I had an iPhone.

--Michael W. Perry, Untangling Tolkien

[minimalist]

I'll believe this name change when I see it.

MobileMe sounds like some silly toy cell phone you would give a 3-year old so they could pretend to be like their mommy or daddy. Not to mention I will stop using .Mac email if my address changes to [e-mail]. That is even more uncool than a Hotmail or AOL address.

MobileMe might be the name (or codename) of a new PART of the .Mac service but I highly doubt Apple would rebrand the entire thing with such a silly name.

[KellyLieberman]

For those who care, for $9.99 at GoDaddy you can buy a domain of your choosing and use that as your email account.....I use Spidertel.com but as a domain investor I have over 2000 domains to choose from. That is just one of the benefits of a good domain.
Steve Jobs is looking at the future, the ME generation. Those in line to take over and move in quickly. It is my 14 year old daughter who can take apart and put her Mac back together in a New York minute that he is selling to. It's that crowd and the college kids that can do more on their iphone in 10 minutes than most people could accomplish in a day.
If you don't get it, it is because you don't "get it" just like my folks "don't get" the internet or TIvo. But just because you don't see the bus coming around the corner does not mean it is not going to run into you.....
All I am saying is if you don't want his products, fine, but I would sure as heck by his stock...