Mystery Solved? 10.4.10, Yahoo!, and the iPhone

With the release of Safari for Windows, Apple is doing for iPhone what it did when it released iTunes for Windows. e.g. Apple is betting many iPhone users will have a Windows machine, by incorp'ing bonjour, yahoo, google features into Safari + .Mac service (sure to be revamped for Windows users) it now has a PLATFORM (SAFARI) that allows syncing of user data with iPhone, iTunes, .Mac and even Apple TV usr services. Sneeky, but a great gorilla strategy!!!

Hey, i found a new check box in the General Prefs of the Address Book! it says: Syncronize with Yahoo! check it out!

Read the Contacts section of "Get ready for iPhone" at http://www.apple.com/iphone/easysetup/getready.html.

"If you keep your contacts on the web using Yahoo! Address Book, iPhone can sync with them, too."

Three possibilities/speculations help all this make sense to me:

1) Apple isn't doing this themselves because they aren't an ISP. .Mac is a very specific *package of services* aimed at a specific kind of user. Taking on a new load of email hosting and trafficing on the scale that the iPhone is likely to illicit simply might be outside the scope of what Apple is interested in dealing with.

2) While Gmail is popular, especially among the power user crowd, the latest user statistics still places Yahoo! at the top of the worldwide email user range by a landslide. Don't quote me, but I *thought* the last numbers I saw put Yahoo! at something like 250m users worldwide, whereas Gmail only has around 51m.

3) Yahoo! offers both POP and IMAP email - Gmail only does POP. And when you're talking about checking your email across a desktop computer and now a powerful phone as well, POP simply isn't going to cut it. People will want to keep things synchronized, and only IMAP allows for that.

well...... duh.

Really? Wow! Who would have thought that announces 6 months prior about Apple partnering with Yahoo to supply PUSH email would somehow require additional code on your Mac? Crazy!

Seriously though. The iPhone is very similar to the iPod. Everything syncs through iTunes. However, unlike the iPod you can alter the vast information stored in the device. This requires a way to sync your Mail's Yahoo account, Address Book and iCal with possible changes with your iPhone.

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As an aside, I hope this new Apple/Yahoo partnership will bring Y! Messenger into iChat. As well as a full fledged Google Talk client, not just Jabber.

I'm wondering why Apple and sucking up to both Google and Yahoo!... They seem to be firm friends with Google, so why are they going with Yahoo! for their email?

As others have said, why are they going with anyone - can't they do it in-house?

Yahoo? Does any one even use that anymore? Push is cool, I'd love to know if something like this for the Google Services lineup.

I think we are in for some big changes in .mac... its days are numbered.

What wonders me is why Apple isn't using .Mac for this. There is already sync ability and they could adapt .Mac for push mail. All of which makes me wonder if .Mac isn't going to be sold/bartered/given to Yahoo.

I also wonder if there's a way to remove the Yahoo cruft from 10.4.10 since I won't be using it.