Apple, Macs & OS X

3 iPhone Media Apps (that Feel a Little Like Magic)

Merlin — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:22:09 -0400

There are so many amazing new apps on the iPhone store that I hope to review here (and I'll certainly spend time on a few more over coming weeks), but today I want to point you to three applications that make me feel like I'm a music fan of the very-near-future -- where personalized data flies through the air, phones play rock music based on your personal preferences, and everybody listens to Silkworm on moving sidewalks and in tricked-out rocket cars.

Remote

Free | Download

Apple's own Remote lets you turn your iPhone into a foxy little remote control for accessing shared iTunes libraries plus your AppleTV box. In seconds, the contents of all shared material pops up in a very sexy, browsable interface that's similar (if not identical) to the built-in iPod functionality. Powerful and fun stuff -- double fun if you're streaming music to multiple Airport Expresses ("Airports Express?") in which case you kind of feel like George Jetson.

Tip: This is a handy way to star-rate stuff as you're wandering around the house. Remember why we star-rate? Yep.

Making it better: This can be a real battery hog if you leave it running the whole time (you do also have the option to not leave it running, which is considerate). But if the connection drops, it takes a few seconds to come back up. Which is bad if your mix suddenly pulls up a very loud Iron Maiden song during the baby's nap, and you can't get to the pause button in time. Or, so I hear.

Screengrabs:

Shazam

Free | Download

Hear a cool song on the radio and don't know who or what it is? Hold Shazam up to the speaker for a few seconds, let it upload your audio snippet to the cloud, and in seconds you'll find out the artist and album, as well as the name of the song. There's other stuff you can do (tag it, buy it, whatever 2.0), but the magic is in the identification, which for me has been well over 80% accurate on the first try.

Tip: For best results, turn the music up a little, hold the iPhone's mouthpiece (down there by where your mouth goes, duh) very close to the sound source, and try to minimize extraneous noises.

Making it better: Shazam fails like bad clams if it can't get a steady connection to their server -- and you don't find this out til after you've recorded the snippet (during which time you could have been writing down a string of the lyrics to Google later). Next version ought to fix this if possible. Very frustrating on an otherwise swell application.

Screengrabs:

Pandora Radio

Free | Download

Wow, have I ever been missing the boat by not using Pandora. The popular streaming service, which utilizes the alchemically wizard-like Music Genome Project, finds songs you might enjoy based on songs and artists you already enjoy. And it's really good at it. Thumb-up the ones you like, thumb-down the ones you don't, and skip past up to 6 songs per hour per "radio station." And, man -- how awesome are the explanations?

Tip: Create a lot of radio stations (so you can skip a lot if you get bored). In adding new stations, focus not just on artists -- try also adding 5-10 of your favorite songs as stations. The MGP seems way smarter about the genomic qualities of a given song, as opposed to bands, who can obviously be kind of all over the map, style-wise.

Making it better: The home screen gets crowded really fast. Add a way to a) organize radio stations into categories while also b) letting me quickly bubble up which stations' 1-hour/6-skip windows have recently reset.

Screengrabs:

Personal: A Word about the Silkworm Documentary

Almost totally unrelated. If it wasn't obvious in the screengrabs, I'm a huge fan of the late, lamented band, Silkworm. (A propos of nothing, I was wearing a SKWM shirt when my daughter was born)

If you are or were a fan, too, and want to help see the documentary about every indie rocker's third favorite band make it to a proper completion and release, please consider making a small donation to help make it happen. I did. Thanks.

Here's the trailer for Couldn't You Wait.

Viva, Dahlquist, friends. The man loved to rock.

”3 iPhone Media Apps (that Feel a Little Like Magic)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 16, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Quicksilver's Back; Nerd Hope Cautiously Restored

Merlin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:22:55 -0400

New Quicksilver builds | Hawk Wings

Since going open source late last year, things have seemed pretty quiet in the world of our favorite app launcher, Quicksilver. Today, our pal, Tim Gaden of Hawk Wings, posts on the availability of a bug fix release of Quicksilver that's come out in the last few weeks. He also points to a thread on the QS Google Group that suggests Quicksilver's auteur and flippered mystery bot, A1c0r, is currently hard at work on a substantial rewrite.

Please note that this is only a bug fix version, the creator of Quicksilver (Alcor) is working on a complete re-write of the frameworks of Quicksilver and should hopefully release it soon ;)

The post by user Patrick also refers to a separate, similarly numbered "Ankur's cleaned-up QS version," which refers to the work Ankur Kothari has been doing primarily to reduce the weight of Quicksilver's code.

These have been white knuckle months for me (and a lot of other Quicksilver nerds), dreading the inevitable OS X update that might break the aging Quicksilver build we've been using. This all seems like encouraging news -- although you have to hope at some point the different folks working on improvements will be able to consolidate their efforts into one big, happy, branch.

As far as the actual update, I installed it this morning without incident, and, notwithstanding the handful of known issues enumerated by Patrick's post, it seems to be running fine so far.

That said, this is a great chance to remind you of the fantastic rooSwitch application -- an indispensable OS X utility that lets you create multiple profiles which save separate versions of app settings and data in situ. Translation: if you accidentally break something important, it's really easy to roll back to a setup that will still work. rooSwitch is also super-useful for application testers and demonstrators who want to protect their "real" data while being able to test new functionality or do a demo with "fake" data. It's become my step 0 whenever I want to play with potentially unstable apps, and I do highly recommend using it with your inevitable Quicksilver experiments.

Screengrabs to give you the rooSwitch flavor:

”Quicksilver's Back; Nerd Hope Cautiously Restored” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 08, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

MobileMe: .Mac's iPhone-Friendly Replacement

Merlin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:16:34 -0400

Apple - MobileMe

There's lots to digest from today's WWDC Stevenote -- not least of which was the dramatic announcement of a 3G iPhone for only $199. But you'll be hearing lots about that in a million places. I want to talk about my first impressions about something even closer to my heart that's at least different this time around, if not entirely new.

Today, Steve announced the upcoming release of Apple's MobileMe service, which will replace the existing .Mac service at the same price of $99/year for an Individual account, while adding some new features, including:

Individual account quota doubled to 20GB of storage, including email and files (.Mac currently offers 10GB at the same price)
MS Exchange-like "push" syncing between applications on multiple Macs as well as your iPhone, via the MobileMe "cloud"
Revamped, web-based Me.com versions of Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, and iDisk applications

As someone who's had strong feelings, high hopes, and occasional disappointmens with .Mac, I'm going to spend some time over the next few weeks looking into what these changes will mean for the always-on knowledge worker -- particularly now that the service is clearly moving toward tighter integration with iPhones, the iPod Touch, and web-based usage. But first, just a few things to note here (quickly and on first impression):

Lovely tweaks - This is where Apple just obliterates the competition; all the tiny little changes we saw to GUI and workflow on the MobileMe web apps and related iPhone apps reflect a lot of thought and look well-suited for real-world usage. I can't wait to see the improvements to iPhone's Calendar and Contacts, in particular. Kudos, team. An iPhone that makes MobileMe easy and transparent to use is a big win all around. (N.B.: as you might expect, Apple's site has many lovely demonstration videos in their MobileMe section)
Love the "Push" - No longer having to physically plug in your iPhone to sync stuff like Mail, Calendar, and Contacts is terrific for the multiple-device user. Knowing that (at least as long as you're online) everything matches up just means big peace of mind to me. Maybe most importantly, one hopes that the new Push approach addresses some of the previous sync problems that have plagued .Mac users (Nuclear reset, anyone?).
Love the (baby) steps toward true cloud computing - Having such gorgeous and functional apps on the iPhone is a big step in the right direction. How the services that those apps access evolve will be interesting to watch; adding something like broader support for Preferences syncing and better/easier iPhone password management would also be big wins.
Hiya, Windows hold-outs - I don't know enough about "Enterprise" buying decisions to speak intelligently about business adoption, but I will say that MobileMe seems like a smart way reach out to individual Windows users and say, "See? Look how easy this all is!" Similarly, a lot of people I talk to these days are down to a single Windows device, and that's the one they have to use at work. MobileMe potentially keeps them connected to their Apple world, even when they're on a PC. That said....
Where the heck is a modern, functional iDisk? - It looks like the iDisk web interface has been updated (very pretty, actually), and yeah, there's double the storage, but what can I do with all that stuff when I'm not in front of my home computer? Where's the mobile part? I was really hoping to see something more impressive with iDisk this time around -- like a website with honest to gosh, Google Docs-like editing and management. And what about the iPhone? Can I do anything with my iDisk documents on there? That feels like a swing and a miss for a service with mobile in the name.

Questions

Will stability and reliability of MobileMe greatly improve over .Mac? Take everything else away, and at the heart, any .Mac/MobileMe product will not survive if Apple doesn't fix the uptime and sync problems. I know sync is hard. But, lots of things are hard and when other companies are doing it more reliably and for free, it should be easy to see there's a bar consumers expect you to reach.
How will iPhone additions like Push and GPS affect real battery life? If Steve's battery estimates are anything like real-world, it'll be great. But I have a feeling those are CandyLand Gumdrop numbers. I realize this is an iPhone-specific note, but I'll say that a half-day of "Every 15 Minutes" email checking was an eye-opener for me. I can't imagine what kind of power that thing pulls when it's running full-time GPS for an hour or so.
Ready for some competition? With the introduction of independent applications using the iPhone SDK, we can look forward to a bonanza of new functionality that -- based on the game demoes we saw today -- could be pretty eye-popping. Although I don't know details of what functionality is exposed to developers, I have to imagine that the combination of ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and speedy 3G access will bring some much-needed competition into Apple's back yard. I wonder how Apple will react to that.

Bottom Line

Boy, if there's any product that us fanboys want to love, this is it. But it's been a tough few years, even for the superfans. We've watched half a dozen or more other companies' services build similar or better features, provide higher reliability, and charge lower or zero cost in a way that seems to outpace Apple's offering without breaking a sweat.

So, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on this and reporting back to you on how it's working for me. I want it to work great, and I think it can, based on Apple's high standards and ability to control all the pieces. I also stand by what I said in this post from January about the untapped possibilities of .Mac:

...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.

Please share your thoughts, hopes, wishes, and remarks about MobileMe or anything else related to the Keynote announcements here in comments.

[These were quick notes I jotted this afternoon. Pardon any typos; I will fix them as I see them, as well as giving myself a day or two to add links on other coverage as it arises. I have a feeling a lot of people will be talking about MobileMe]

”MobileMe: .Mac's iPhone-Friendly Replacement” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on June 09, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

MBW 81: Throbbers, excess moisture, Johnson Rods, and Male Answer Syndrome

Merlin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:10:06 -0400

MacBreak Weekly 81: Click the Throbber

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Andy Ihnatko, and Alex Lindsay Safari 3.1, security update, Apple mulls music subscription plan, this week's picks and more.

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 81.

Very fun episode this week if I do say so. Andy and I nerded out a lot, there was much jollity, we worked blue a few times, and my (repeat) pick o' the week is SafariStand -- specifically for the amazing "Copy Link as Markdown" and "Copy Link HTML Tag" functionality. Dammit: go pimp your Safari!

Update, 2008-03-20 16:29:45

Next Week: Patrick Wilson from Weezer

Oh, man. How did I forget this? Next week, MacBreak Weekly's special guest will be Pat Wilson, the drummer from Weezer and The Rentals and the multi-instrumental leader of That Special Goodness. Yeah, I know; I can't believe it, either, but he actually asked Leo if he could be on the show. Weird. I wonder if he sent email to the wrong place and actually thinks we're Grammar Girl or something.

Anyhow, it's on, and I'm thrilled, because I go way back with Weezer. After the jump's a live video of an old Weezer favorite (which, according to WikiPee, Pat co-wrote), "My Name is Jonas."

Weezer - "My Name is Jonas"

”MBW 81: Throbbers, excess moisture, Johnson Rods, and Male Answer Syndrome” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 20, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Nuclear reset for .Mac syncing

Merlin — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:37:01 -0500

How-To: Truly reset your .Mac sync data [Ars Technica]

I never have trouble finding company when it comes to whining about the reliability of .Mac syncing. It's surely not fair to lay all of this at the feet of the .Mac developers -- sync is, we are often reminded, "hard." But if you want to rely on syncing your Calendars, Contacts, Preferences, snippets, Yojimbo, and what have you via .Mac in a battlefield environment, you're going to need a strong stomach, a lot of patience, and reliable backups. Plus, friends, you will regularly have to _reset frickin' everything_.

Entirely overfamiliar with that particular reality, I was pleased to get pointed toward David Chartier's tutorial on saving your .Mac's village by burning it to the ground. It's a handy, illustrated companion piece to Apple's own advice on scorching earth. Very handy, and, yeah, you will eventually need it. So print it out. Maybe even have it laminated.

Apple's .Mac syncing features are sometimes no exception to these problems, and even though Apple provides a number of decent solutions in its .Mac sync support pages, they don't always work. Fortunately, a brief adventure using .Mac sync chat support (found at the bottom of that aforelinked page) cleared up a repeating "merge/overwrite" sync dialog problem for me, and we felt the procedure was worth sharing.

FWIW, here's a few other things I do (as a raving .Mac paranoiac):

manually backup Address Book and iCal Calendars once a week ("File > Export..."); periodically ".bz" and Gmail them to myself
backup all important "~/Library" files offsite via something like Mozy
Whenever it occurs to you, burn a quick CD of your iDisk (or at least throw your most important stuff onto an encrypted Disk Image on a USB stick)

Also -- and I loathe admitting this -- I have accepted that one of our household's Macs is "the master" (i.e., the "the first Mac you re-register" mentioned in David's piece). This means one Mac in the house gets extra-special backup attention as well as being the "winner" whenever I have to do the (increasingly weekly) nuclear reset David describes in this tutorial.

In an ideal world, you should have so much redundant reliability that you can reset from any recently updated machine -- I mean, isn't that the point of syncing? But, as you quickly learn, that's simply not feasible when things suddenly go kerplooey on multiple Macs over a short interval. But, by always knowing where to restart your electronic Marshall Plan -- which box is the true "original" in the .Mac chicken-waving ritual -- you'll have quicker recoveries and a less frustrating experience in general.

There's no pride to be found in being a .Mac whiner. As I've said before, I believe the .Mac offering is the vorpal blade that Apple's hiding under its cape. Done well -- fixed well -- .Mac has the potential to reliably unify every Apple user's digital world. But for now? Yeah, it's more like owning a Fiat where your toolbox always gets to ride shotgun.

[via]

”Nuclear reset for .Mac syncing” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 26, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Life Without a Laptop, Two Months Down

wood.tang — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:21:24 -0500

It has now been two months since I sold my laptop and started working with just a Mac Mini in my office and an iPhone, and I've more or less survived. I never expected it to be permanent, but unless my life changes drastically and I have to start traveling full-time, I could probably go on like this indefinitely. My real work hasn't suffered, because I was doing all of that on the desktop anyway, and with Google Reader's killer mobile version, I've been able to satisfy any web surfing urges away from the computer.

That's not to say that I haven't chafed a little with this setup. We (self included) make the mistake of assuming that using a laptop during "downtime" or around a spouse/significant other is a bad thing. This isn't always true. At the risk of outing myself as an even more colossal tool, when I did have a laptop, my wife and I would often spend the evening after the boy was in bed, sitting side by side on the couch, watching TV and pecking away at our computers.

On the surface, that might sound like the makings of a horrible marriage, but it was really quite nice. We talked to each other. We showed each other stuff we had found online, asked each other to proofread emails, etc. It was probably more interactive than anything else we could have been doing (okay, maybe not one thing), and it was relaxing. Neither one of us was doing "work," but rather catch up, idle surfing, or shopping.

That's one time when I miss having a laptop. I often saved that evening downtime for personal blogging, checking in at forums, or posting pictures and links: all the random unnecessary web stuff that's fun but not important enough to do during the day when I'm working at the big boy computer. Not a huge loss though; like I've said, we can all pare back our online existence a little, plus it gives me more time to read books. I still often use the iPhone during this time, but it's not the same. I'm getting better at some of those things with it, but until it gets cut and paste or a Bluetooth keyboard, I'll probably just have to go without.

What that's doing in a GTD sense, though, is creating some hard boundaries between my various contexts. I've always struggled with defining contexts, and when you have a laptop you can carry anywhere, the lines between @computer, @office, and @home start to blur because you can theoretically do just about anything, anywhere, save housework and errands. Now those divisions are very clear. I can only do so many things when I just have the phone, and the rest will have to wait until I'm back at my desk. It also makes me pay attention to the non-computer tasks. Instead of defaulting to the fun computer stuff because there's always a computer around, I'm often forced to make those phone calls or proofread those drafts because I can't do anything else.

I haven't tried any significant travel with just the iPhone though. I'll get the first real test of living without a laptop when I go to the South by Southwest Interactive conference next month. Since I'm just going there for kicks, it'll be okay if I can't do all the normal things I could do with a real computer. Yet I'm curious to see how it feels not having the crutch of knowing that my computer is in the next room. Maybe this year I'll meet a few more people because I won't be hiding behind a screen the whole time.

”Life Without a Laptop, Two Months Down” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 13, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

1Password beta: Secure name and password filling for iPhone's Safari

Merlin — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:31:45 -0500

Safari AutoFill for iPhone and iPod Touch (Switchers' Blog)

Babies, iPhones and very-high-security passwords can be a bitter cocktail; it's really hard to enter a 28-character/mixed-case/special character password on the iPhone while you're holding 15 lbs. of undulating infant. Trust me.

So, if you caught video of my recent interview with Agile Web Solutions' Dave Teare, you could see how excited I was to learn about a then-upcoming beta which would support autofill name- and password-entering via secure bookmarklets on your iPhone. Well, the day has arrived, and, brother, am I ever loving this.

click to view larger

From Dave's post on the company's blog:

Every iPhone and iPod Touch user has cringed when they realized that Mobile Safari does not remember web site logins. Coupled with the fact Copy and Paste is nonexistent on the iPhone, users were forced to type their login information every time they wanted to access any password protected site...

After browsing to a password protected website that requires you to login, simply bring up the Bookmarks menu and select "1Password Logins" to bring up the 1Password AutoFill window...

All the confidential information stored within the bookmarklet is encrypted using Strong Cryptography (448-bit Blowfish encryption) and can only be accessed once the correct Access Code is entered. The confidential information is decrypted within Safari on the iPhone and no communication with the 1Password web servers is required.

Dave tells me via email that the hosting service he'd mentioned in our interview is still being planned, but, personally I'm thrilled that this "just works" out of the box as well as it does from this first cut. I have seen a few problems in 1P seeming not to remember a login associated with a site, but more often than not, it's been just spot-on -- even when entered with my one, daughter-free hand.

Anyhow, check 'er out. 1Password is shareware ($29.95) and a free download. The updated functionality appears to start with version 2.5.10 (build 6102).

One of my favorite Mac apps just made life a lot easier for iPhone users.

”1Password beta: Secure name and password filling for iPhone's Safari” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 31, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Macworld Expo '08: Merlin talks with the makers of 1Password

Merlin — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:28:57 -0500

Aha! Embeddable video for a third MacBreak interview at Macworld '08 has turned up -- this one's with Dave Teare at Agile Web Solutions, makers of 1Password.

As we discuss in the video, I'm really looking forward to seeing 1Password's secure password bookmarklet for iPhone.

MacBreak: Macworld 2008/Agile Web Solutions

And, as a bonus -- just so Dave can catch up with his some of his countrymen's peerless pop music -- here's videos of three of my favorite Canadian bands.

Flashing Lights / "Highschool"

Sloan / "The Good in Everyone"

Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline)

”Macworld Expo '08: Merlin talks with the makers of 1Password” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 22, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Getting Sandy in my Face

gordonmeyer — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:03:09 -0500

For quite a while now, Tasks Jr has been my task management tool of choice. I switched to it from my own Tinderbox-based system after I decided that having access to my list from any 'net-connected system was important to me. But now I've switched again.

Over time, the aesthetics of Tasks Jr's design, its limitations (which are resolved by the more advanced versions, I must admit), and the fact that a recent MySQL/PHP update at my web host caused problems made me think about finding another solution.

So I've begun the great migration to Values of n's Sandy. Its integration with Twitter and the almost magical email-based interface are icing on the cake, beyond what Tasks Jr offered.

The aphorism "out of sight, out of mind" could have been created with me in mind. To make the most of any system, Tasks Jr or Sandy, I need to have it constantly open and visible. With a web site, it's easy to lose the window when opening another URL, or simply absentmindedly closing a Safari window. I've tried every trick I can think of to keep my task list open and at-hand, including Dock icons, setting it as my browser home page, and even the nifty WebDesktop application.

But thanks to a comment here on 43Folders, I discovered Fluid. The work of Todd Ditchendorf, Fluid allows you to create WebKit-based dedicated browsers for webapps. In other words, it makes a standalone app whose sole purpose is to connect to a specific website. This allowed me to create a Sandy application that lives in my Dock, and I don't lose my place when opening web pages or surfing with Safari.

You can use Fluid with any web application of course, and there's a Fluid Icons group on Flickr where you can get images to use with the app. Thanks to Rael at Values of n, I uploaded a Sandy-specific icon the other day, which you see in action in the screenshot above.

So far, the combination of Sandy and Fluid is working out quite well. Sandy is smart, easy to use, and reminds me of appointments via Twitter and SMS. Thanks to Fluid, my Sandy digest is omnipresent to keep me on task while at the computer. Give both of them a whirl and see if they don't work well for you, too.

”Getting Sandy in my Face” was written by Gordon Meyer for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 20, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

.Mac: Future of a sleeping giant?

Merlin — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:52:04 -0500

TUAW Interviews Merlin Mann

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).

Basic .Mac services will not only become free, but they may be required in order to take full advantage of future functionalities.
For the majority of .Mac power users who want more of whatever the offerings are at a given time, modest to crazy-expensive upgrades will be available.
.Mac will expand in several directions over time, to include:
- Order of magnitude more storage on pay accounts
- Automated backups (via something like Mozy)
- "in-the-cloud" hosting of all your Mac stuff, including "~/Library/" contents; music, photos, and videos; plus every document you ever make.
The Preference syncing in .Mac now will be taken to the next level, to a point where a tweaked window view here is also reflected there (ala Migration Assistant?)
In sum, .Mac will become your secure Home directory. Or, more properly, it becomes the master copy from which all your hardware, hard drives, and flash media will in some fashion be synced.

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?

”.Mac: Future of a sleeping giant?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 18, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"