.Mac and Me rumors: TUAW inside look at Apple's next-gen service

Noooo! I got my .mac address the very day iTools (as it was then known) was announced and love it.

If they're forwarding mac.com to me.com in perpetuity, then I don't see any reason to harass all my friends and family into updating their address books.

I have .Mac and thought I would try to make some aliases with my .mac mail account prior to the switch. I kind of liked "look@mac.com --> look@me.com"

Unfortunately, .Mac is preventing the creation or edit of any mail aliases until June 11th.

We all seem to agree @me.com sounds awful and conceited and .Mac is definitely preferred. I'm a happy paying customer as I love the integration for posting videos and photos and VPNing. I know everyone says you can do this for free with a bunch of different services but I really like that it's all in one place and done for me. Back to My Mac has worked flawlessly for me and since I got married and moved my wife and I have been able to show photos and videos to family back home. I know how to do all the different things but I don't want to have to download and tweak everything. Plus I like it's great syncing, I plan on getting a MacBoook and I like that all I have to do is set up my .Mac account and I'll have all my contacts, calendars, widgets, bookmarks synched seamlessly. For me the $8 a month or so is worth it. But I do agree after I did more exploring of the online offerings it looks too tiger like.

Do you really think Apple will make all of us .Mac users switch email addresses? To force us to change our email addresses and coordinate telling everyone, online accounts, etc. seems like an idiot thing to do. Given us an option, however, would be the more acceptable method....but then again, that makes too much sense to actually happen.

Apple, please let your users choose between @mac.com and @me.com address. I really don't want to lose my @mac.com address!

Makes no sense to get rid of the @mac.com suffix. I think the rumors are getting a little out of hand. A better service? Perhaps. A Windows version? Excellent! A complete rebranding? Probably not. I think "Mobile Me" will be an extension of the .Mac line, not a replacement.

They better offer forwarding of @mac.com forever, there is no reason not to. Ultimately, I don't want to go around changing my emails everywhere, and honestly, I don't want to hand out s*****@me.com. Sounds a bit conceited. I plan to continue handing out my @mac.com address. Actually, why not just let current .Mac users keep their @mac.com emails and aliases, and even let us create new ones. Why take it away? You have the domain, and I doubt you will be letting go of it soon if ever.

Sounds good. I know a lot of people don't like losing the @mac.com, but it does make sense in a way. They're trying to move what is a currently Mac-only service into a service that will work between Macs, iPhones, iPods, and PCs. .mac for Windows would be a bit silly, no?

I just hope it's free. If not, no thanks. How about a free and premium service?

Mobil.me??? Are we serious? Am I that out of touch? I do hope this is wrong. .mac is a natural. Apple Mcintosh. Apple .mac. It's the "Apple". The service seriously needs an overhaul. $100 worth of value is long overdue, but the name is not the issue here. Or are we just in some kind of "cute" warp here.

Add one to the chorus of "MobileMe is a horrible name, keep .Mac in some form"