*snooze*

I can just imagine that the M$ reps were standing up on the stage, announcing this new, innovative, never before seen service. All the while there were people in the audience cringing at the obvious similarities to the most innovative company ever -- Apple.

Apple creatith, and Microsoft copyith. Same 'ol sh^H^Hsituation.

I look at this as being rather good news. It just might put a little pressure on Apple to provide its services (and I hope improved upon services) and differing tiers including a base level free service for all licensed users.

Well, first of all, I agree that a base level service for all licensed users would be a good idea, and an opportunity that Apple squanders. This could be either a free service, with minimal features (well, having an iChat name would qualify almost for that); or a free year of limited .Mac with the purchase of a new Macintosh. The adoption rate of .Mac would increase tremendously, and an 'upgrade' offer to upgarde capabilities and storage would probably yield good conversion rates, particularly when the first year is up, and it's up for renewals.

Certainly, I understand the need to live by dollars & cents, but a minimal level service could provide 100 megabytes of storage, e-mail, iChat w/encryption, and limited to only one e-mail account - that should be covered by the profits of one Mac sale.

Though, hoping for 'competition' from whatever Microsoft will provide is kinda amusing - my take is that MS once again believes that all they need is provide storage and email to compete, missing the bigger picture of the kind of USEFUL features iDrive and .Mac provide.

Yeah, a service like that would be nice... wiat a sec, I think I remember almost that exact same serive... oh yes, it was called iTools.

As much as many of the Apple faithful dislike to see competition in this fashion, it is ultimately to the benefit of the consumer. It'd be a shame to see a company like Apple begin to ever rest on it laurels and be in the least bit complacent.

And I completely agree with zinkdifferent about the bigger picture. Though, I must say, even if it may be a sinful thought around here, if Microsoft had the ability to get it and make the superior product, I'd adapt.

since they copy everyones ideas.

I can just imagine that the M$ reps were standing up on the stage, announcing this new, innovative, never before seen service. All the while there were people in the audience cringing at the obvious similarities to the most innovative company ever -- Apple.

Yes, because before Apple came around, not one other company thought of offering email accounts and on-line disk storage accessible. Not one. And still, to this day, only Apple offers such a service.

Of course, MS can never win. If they don't offer such a service, everyone talks about how they're completely missing in said space. They offer a service, then its just them copying. Or, to take it further, if they don't integrate their service into their apps (auto posting movies from Movie Maker to the site, that kind of thing), its "Yeah, but its class MS, lack of integration, yadda, yadda, yadda". If they include it, its either "There they go, copying apple" or "There they go, abusing their monopoly power to try to force out the competition"

That's because MS is based on bullshit. They're not a real technology company; they're a cheap sales company that simply got lucky 10 years ago. These guys can't code for the life of them and the only way they got ahead was by abusing and breaking the law, and extortion. Yeah, no kidding, the world hates them. I for one think, that MS should simply shut down and avoid further humiliation. There is no way that they'll ever amount to anything much now that the real players are back in business and that there are laws and regulations that dictate what you can and cannot do. Besides, it's a simple fact of history... new era, new power. MS has been dead its been 5 years now.

"Displaying a strong resemblance to Apple's....."

MacNN, you didn't need to waste the space by including this comment.... it was a given.