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.Mac: Future of a sleeping giant?
Merlin Mann | Jan 18 2008
My tall, new friend Scott McNulty interviewed me yesterday for TUAW's Macworld coverage -- unintentionally providing me a fine bully pulpit from which to perpetuate my baseless theories and half-baked forecasts about how Apple might eat the lunches of about three different industries over the next couple years. If they can pull it off, if they can fix .Mac, and if they have the vision to re-imagine themselves as the company who makes your entire digital world safe, fun, ubiquitous, and flawlessly integrated. Anyhow, on with the motley, but stay tuned after the jump for value-added hand-waving. So, exactly what the hell nonsense am I talking about here? [Admission: This is a super-fast first draft of an admittedly far-fetched idea that's still taking shape, but I really wanted to get it out of my head while it's still fresh-ish] As the record shows, I'm practically useless as a technology forecaster, but I can't help feeling that Apple is slow-broasting some really interesting changes over the next year or two, centering around the currently enfeebled .Mac service (cough, cough, cough). In a nutshell, based on products and services -- both released and announced -- as well as opportunities presented in the marketplace, I wouldn't be surprised to see any or all of the following changes from Apple (roughly in order).
But, why? Well, in essence, your Mac Pro, your MacBook Air, your iPhone, your iPods nano and shuffle, and your Apple TV would all become agents for using the stuff you've stored on .Mac. Heavy (invisible, background) use of rsync-like diffs-syncing (ala Time Capsule?) will ensure that all your devices have the stuff they need, and in the appropriate size and format; e.g., 720p version of Weekend at Bernie's 2 goes to the TV; more modest size goes to the iPhone, etc. The value and attraction to consumers strikes me as obvious; on the same day, your electronic world becomes ubiquitous, backed-up, and very easy to maintain or access from anyplace. If this is anywhere near do-able, Apple would be taking the concepts behind Spotlight, Time Machine, iTunes, and Smart Folders to their logical conclusion, creating an environment where Apple sits at the center of all your electronic needs, contextually syncing and serving what you need, when you need it, in a totally seamless fashion. In conjunction, I'll bet we're going to see an explosion in alliances with companies like Google (for online apps), plus a heavy push for companies like Amazon and Disney to build iPhone apps that will leverage access to both the cloud and your increasingly PayPal-like .Mac account. ("Buy the song I just heard on this Disneyland ride, deliver four sets of Mickey Mouse ears to our hotel room, plus show me the best vegan snack within 5 minutes' walk of where I'm standing"). Think about it: a new lightweight laptop with a small hard drive; an iPhone that's getting dangerously close to becoming a remote for your home and life; an Apple TV that doesn't even require a computer; an iPod Touch that (rather mysteriously) now needs your credit card info and a login to get new apps onto the device. Then, fold in a couple big spoonfuls of the company's clearly increasing interest in becoming the people who sell or rent you the entertainment media that goes on all the machines you bought from them. I dunno. I suppose it's my (still congealing) contention that right now, Apple deliberately keeps .Mac a dim-witted, sleeping giant. It's so unsexy, broken, and behind-the-times right now as to seem like a product out of a less forward-thinking company. But what happens when that giant wakes up, stretches, and then starts standing in the middle of every single product Apple (and its partners) have to sell? It's so mind-boggling to consider the implications, especially given that it stands as one of the few persuasive explanations for why such a smart company would stay so quiet for so long about allowing a premium pay service go to seed this badly. I think something is up. Big time. But, what do you think?Am I high? Will Apple make .Mac the center of their consumer offering? Or will it just continue to frustrate its paying customers until Google replicates all its services for free? What did you see in the tea leaves after the keynote? 21 Comments
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I also hope it comes true one daySubmitted by brab on January 18, 2008 - 3:14pm.
As I use several computers, and have been for a while, I hope this comes true some day. Sharing data is fairly easy, if one takes the time to set it up. You mention SuperDuper, I personally use Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/index.html), and they work great as long as one only cares about the bits, not what they mean. I can easily duplicate my iPhoto library, or my iTunes store, but as these programs do not "understand" what the bytes mean, I cannot be more fine grained (such as synchronizing only a subset of my photo or music libraries). Yet I would love to be able take a (smart folder) subset of those libraries on my laptop, where space is limited. For iPhoto, it seems that .Mac already has an answer. Not yet for iTunes. And this is definitely something that could make me a paying .Mac subscriber. One funny thing is that my day to day job is as researcher in computer science. And one thing I've studied, with many people much smarter than me, is the issue of data synchronization. This has made me realize this is a marketing and engineering problem, not a research problem (anymore), for a basic solution. In other words, what's really missing now is some company deciding to attack this problem, and committing the engineering resources to it. I hope Apple will do it, through its .Mac service, as this would be the seamless solution for many consumers. But I also hope some external approaches (such as the Portal project from the My Dream App contest) get somewhere. In any case, I believe that this small problem for me is a problem for many other persons. Thanks for reading all this. Alan Schmitt » POSTED IN:
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