News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

May 30, 2008

speculation

A .Mac by any other name?

Posted May. 30, ’08, 9:06 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Apple » Speculation

Dot Mac stringsDon your tinfoil hats, friends. With every new OS X update, there are those in the legion of curious Mac fans who will pore over every changed file to see if they can suss out anything about Apple’s future plans.

Skimming string files is a time-honored pastime, bringing us such great moments as Apple TV games. The latest discovery (that’s a Russian link—I’ll spare you my attempt at remembering my high school Russian), though, is somewhat more interesting. iCal received some slight changes in 10.5.3, and in the app’s Localizable.strings file (which you can find for yourself by going to your Applications folder, choosing “Show Package Contents” for iCal and navigating to Contents/Resources/English.lproj/), there are some interesting references to .Mac.

/* Label of the .Mac button in iCal’s General preferences. %@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac) (remove -XX02) */

/* iCal could not update your .Mac synchronization settings. %@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac) */

Et cetera. %@ is a placeholder variable; in 10.5.2 and earlier, the name of the service was hardcoded instead. Similar references have been found in Safari and Mail as well. But it seems that Apple is at least considering changing .Mac’s name (ooh, I suggest iTools. Kidding!). Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber digs up an Apple trademark application for “Mobile Me,” suggesting that as one possibility for a re-branded .Mac.

One certainly hopes that there’s more than just a name change at stake here; .Mac as a service is woefully outdated and in need of serious love and attention from Apple. Might we see something at WWDC? If it coincides with over-the-air syncing for the iPhone, as Gruber suggests, that seems a distinct possibility. And, just to throw out my own piece of speculation, if it somehow tied in with an API to make .Mac syncing more accessible (and useful) to third-party developers, that would be a perfect fit for WWDC.


1 Comments

maclia said:

Try and go to the .mac website, or pull email into entourage. It's not been working for at least an hour now...

June 2, 2008 5:06 PM

Leave a comment

 



Visit other IDG sites: