Bites from the Apple: It's Not You, It's Mobile Me
It's one week till 3G day, and it can't come soon enough after weeks of swirling rumors about the iPhone 2.0 (it'll be subsidized by AT&T! Or not. But maybe outside the US). I'm ready to get this thing announced and move on. And one rumor that surfaced this last weekend has certainly piqued my curiosity: the revamping of Apple's .Mac service. I've been a subscriber to .Mac for many years, but I haven't been using it to its full potential and thus not getting the full value of the subscription I pay annually. (Here's a money-saving tip: buying the subscription through Amazon or other retailers, rather than directly from Apple, can save you between $20 and $30.)
First off, it looks very likely that .Mac is going to be rebranded as Mobile Me and hosted at Mobileme.com (and possibly Me.com). MacNN highlights the coding in the recent iPhone SDK (software developer's kit) that points to this possibility, Ars Technica delves into the domain name registration angle, and Macenstein offers its take on what an Apple ad for the rebranded/rebooted service could look like (at right). Well, a new name would definitely be better than the clunky .Mac, but what would the new service provide? Wired's Gadget Lab has a couple items on its wish list, including Back to My Mac for the iPhone and over-air synchronization. I'm hoping for far more online storage space so I can truly back up my most important data (family photos and videos as well as all my professional bits and bytes), which takes up far more than the 10 GB of space that .Mac currently provides.
- It's looking like GPS on the 3G iPhone is all but confirmed, but Brian Lam points out a few reasons for not wanting GPS (slow signal lock, bad battery life).
- Speaking of moving on, iLounge recently held a contest for its readers to design the next iPhone, and the Grand Prize winner was the iPhone twist design by Christopher Doan, which doesn't really seem that far-fetched based on the various twisting screens and QWERTY keyboards that we're now seeing in cell phones.
- If you're a Mac user and a Twitter-er, O'Reilly's Mac blog has a couple of suggestions for native Twitter applications you can use rather than the Twitter web site. I've been using the old version of Twitterific, but I might give Thwirl a whirl.
- Looks like AT&T is getting ready for the 3G iPhone release with some updating to its 3G network. Electronista notes that the upgrade is already up and running in the New York City area, and the HSPA network speed has now jumped from an average peak of 800Kbps to as much as 1.5Mbps, or slightly more than the 1.4Mbps promised by the company.
- Matt Asay, who writes for for CNet's Open Road blog ponders why Microsoft always gets the shaft while the secretive, close system-loving Apple gets a free pass, and comes up with this: Microsoft makes products that people have to use. Apple makes products that people want to use.
- The previously mentioned aTV Flash, which was supposed to provide easy hacking access to your Apple TV, has been pulled from the market due to some legal questions (as well as complaints that it wasn't quite the easy peasy solution as advertised).
- If you've got a load of Palm software from your old Treo, you might be able to use it if the StyleTap Palm OS emulator makes its way to the iPhone (though iPhone Atlas notes it has a few hurdles, mainly the fact that "Apple's iPhone software development agreement implies that no emulators will be allowed on the platform").
- John Gruber at Daring Fireball found that the recent 10.5.3 Mac OS X update has brought some fixes to the Spaces feature of Leopard. You can now select an option that enables you to switch to (or open a new) application without switching to another space.
- I've recently run into a problem where parts of my iTunes library has been corrupted (both on my main hard drive and on my back-up drive -- looks like I should have taken the time to back up to disc), but luckily the files are just fine on my iPod. However, Apple prevents you from just grabbing those files off of the iPod due to DRM reasons. But there are third-party options for transferring those files, and Gina Trapani at Life Hacker rounds up the best methods
- And finally, a hidden feature (discovered by HP employee Rahul Sood) of the MacBook Air's Ginsu-like thin edge: cake cutting!
--Agen G.N. Schmitz
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