Rumor: .Mac relaunch to coincide with iPhone 2.0?

that is a great idea, i currently don't use my .mac much and when i do (as a 10 GB hard drive on the web the transfer speed is painfully slow)... i wouldn't mind putting it to use through my ipod touch (or is this another iPhone only thing unless touch owners pay?)

All I want is the ability to send emails from other (verified) email addresses with the online dot mac mail client. Some of us prefer using our own domain names rather than being stuck with ".mac". Until they add this feature, I'm sticking with Yahoo! Plus.

Well, let's read between the lines. Why would Windows users need to get a .mac account????

What do Mac users get other than mail, backup, with a .mac account? VIDEO CONFERENCING.

What does 3G allow one to do because of the increased speed over the present iPhone technology? VIDEO CONFERENCING.

What else does a Windows user need to do VIDEO CONFERENCING? iChat AV. Does iChat AV exist on Windows? NOPE. Not yet, anyway.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm......

I don't work for Apple, nor do I get any insider information.. Just reading between the lines.

ALL SPECULATION AT THIS TIME, but it wouldn't surprise me. :-)

At this point, I can't justify $99/yr for .Mac when I'm getting what I need from Mark/Space SyncTogether and MissingSync and free services like Google / Yahoo. Mac still hasn't addressed Firefox syncing. (Sorry, Safari is of limited use to me right now.)

And I've been waiting for a better version of the iPhone, too, before making that hefty investment.

It's fine to be a *really* early adopter, but I'd rather wait until the technology and programming has settled in and Apple has worked out the issues that inevitably arise in the early versions. I just want to see them continue to get better at what they do and meeting their customer needs.

What would be a huge improvement would be if .Mac users could actually read their email, without having to add it to the iPhone's mail accounts. My wife is always grabbing my iPhone while we are out to check her email, but she can't because apple assumes that if you want to read mac mail, you'll add it as an account on the iphone.

Apple's ridiculously paternelistic attitude with .mac destroys it. As long as you only have mac, and only want to access you email/calendar etc. from a mac then it is ok.

Throw a PC in to the mix and forget it. I am away from my mac right now, and can't use .mac to access my calendar. (oh sure, you can publisher your calendar to the web from the calendar app...but you can't add or change events!)

Sync your bookmarks? With a mac, sure. Anything else forget it. Access your saved passwords? Forget it.

They should take a few of the .mac developers and make them access their email, calendar, etc. only with PC's. Their mac myopia would clear up quick I bet.

I sure hope this is true. My .Mac experience has been pretty underwhelming. Curiously, I got an email from Apple yesterday, asking me to take part in a survey regarding .Mac.
It was a pretty thorough questionaire, and it took about 15 minutes to complete. asked about what worked, what din't, what was important, what wasn't, and it covered pricing, even mentioning "advertising-supported". Sounds like this is happening, and they are tweaking the feature set, as well as trying to determine pricing.

I understand that a lot of people aren't happy about the $99/year. I am sure that there are cheaper options, but for myself, 30 cents a day isn't going to break the bank. I just want more/better functionality.

I too think Apple should make .Mac free. Isn't this sort of the model they take with iTunes? Loss leader to sell more hardware? If they offered OTA syncing and push mail for free for all iPhone subscribers, it would be even more fierce competition for RIMM.

I got suckered into buying .mac and have regretted it ever since. iDisk is terrible as files take way too long to upload/download. Often I am unable to login to the web to check my mail as the service is down. iWeb isn't too bad but I have switched to smugmug.com for my photos as the one through .mac has very few features. I don't mind paying for a service but right now I am basically paying $99.00 to have a @mac.com email address that I can access on my macbook pro and my iphone which is a waste of the service, and my money.

I enjoy using .mac, I get it the cheap way through Amazon when I can. But it has a few shortcomings. If my calendars and whatnot could sync over Wifi to my iPT I'd be pretty happy.

But give me web-based access to my iWork docs, and I might pony up for iWork as well