Believing the hype on .Mac-Google

Forget about not paying attention to other people; sometimes I don't even pay attention to myself. Just four days ago, I went on record in the TUAW predictions post for WWDC with "the .Mac offering becomes an Apple-branded version of Google Apps Premier." Mayhap I should drink my own Kool-Aid, if I'm going to go to the trouble of mixing up a pitcherful.

I'm not that far out on the edge with this prediction, as there have been plenty of hints; Wired's Fred Vogelstein quoted Apple board member & Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the strengths of the companies in collaboration, the D blog picked that up and ran with it based on El Steve's comments about .Mac's decrepitude, and ComputerWorld pushed the meme out to far left field by raising the possibility of integrating iWork with Google Documents and Spreadsheets for blogging (not unlike the existing gApps and Zoho plugins for Office on the Windows side) or virtualizing Leopard-Lite into the browser. Something, as they say in the coffee business, is brewing.

Yet I found myself today -- today, Sunday, T-16 hours and counting from the Stevenote -- setting up SpanningSync for my mother's iCal/gCal integration and getting ready to whip out the credit card for a $25 one-year subscription . McFly, hello, anybody in there? For crying out loud, everybody including me and my kid sister thinks there's going to be some sort of Google integration with Mac OS X/.Mac announced tomorrow, so I smacked myself soundly in the forehead, put my wallet away, and left Mom with the 15-day demo until everything's sorted out. It's like the rule that you don't buy yourself anything right before birthdays or holidays... you just have to pay attention to what's going on around you. Or, failing that, the things you actually say.

View Tags

Source: http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/06/tuaw-predictions-roundup-for-…

Categories

Analysis / Opinion Rumors WWDC Internet Tools

Forget about not paying attention to other people; sometimes I don't even pay attention to myself. Just four days ago, I went on record in...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

14 Comments

Filter by:

Richard

You make me laugh.

Ooh, ooh, improve .mac

And here you are paying $25 to sync your calendar. And thats all it will do. Nothing else.

Makes the Amazon $69 price for .Mac look great in comparison.

June 16 2007 at 7:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Michael Rose

You got me, Charlie -- my $25 (actually, Mom's $25) will be en route later today.

June 11 2007 at 3:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Charlie Wood

Michael,

I hope this morning's WWDC keynote will let you buy a Spanning Sync license without reservation. :-)

Regards,
Charlie
Spanning Sync

June 11 2007 at 3:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mike

.Moogle?

{mooooo(f)}

June 11 2007 at 1:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Michael Rose

#10 -- yes, Cleve, that ComputerWorld article is linked in the main post. :)

June 11 2007 at 8:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Cleve

Computerworld agrees
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9024099&intsrc=hm_list

June 11 2007 at 7:20 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

dallas.com

I assumed that they used Yahoo mail because of ties to ATT having ties to yahoo.

June 11 2007 at 5:34 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tom Robinson

Google is working on something related to Apple, but it's not this.

June 11 2007 at 4:32 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

FeatureCreep

The Yahoo! Mail thing is the odd man out in all this. I'm lucky enough to have my.name@yahoo.com, but on the (much newer) Gmail, I couldn't even get close. Had to go with myname.iphone@gmail.com .. just in case they go that way.

The .Mac e-mail address is my primary reason for keeping the service. I know there's a thousand free routes to go, but I NEVER get spam on .Mac and I like being able to effortlessly sync my two Macs, while also being able to access it all from the web.

T-minus 9 hours 30 minutes 'til Steve takes the stage and some answers start shaking loose.

June 11 2007 at 3:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ben the Dog

To be honest, one of the only things keeping me with .Mac is the email address. i have given it to so many people, it would be a complete pain in the rear to change it. However with 6 months left until my next renewal, if nothing happens with dotmac tomorrow, then I'll happily use the next 6 months phasing out the .mac email address and finding another hosting plan. I've already given up on most of the .Mac "features" (including "one click publishing" in iWeb - I now just use an ftp program to drop it on iDisk).

Slightly OT - I was also pretty gutted when Steve said that "push" email on iPhone would be available to Yahoo mail subscribers. That was a bit of a kick in the teeth to those who supported (AND PAID FOR) .Mac services.

We shall see...

June 11 2007 at 1:36 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply