06/08/2007, 7:20pm, EDT
Friday, June 8th
Apple, Google at WWDC: .Mac, partnership?
Essentially, the partnership boils down to this: Apple knows user interface design, and has exceptional expertise in knowing how to deliver comfortable, straightforward means of interaction with systems. Google has the raw horsepower of a nationwide super data center, the speed, and user-base that could really benefit from a touch of Apple's interaction magic.
A Wired News blog poster writes "Cloud computing is the hot new thing in the world of technology right now; Apple is a complete laggard; and it knows it needs to fix it. Apple makes beautiful hardware, but it hasn't improved on .Mac, its cloud based storage offering, in years. You get 1GB of storage on .Mac for $100. That's laughable in an era where you can get double that for nothing. Meanwhile, Google runs cloud based hardware and software better and cheaper than anyone in the world right now. How does it make money? By getting as many people as possible looking at advertising alongside search and other various software offerings. Imagine all the traffic from the following: You buy a Mac and you automatically get a free Google account."
Meanwhile, an InfoWorld article speculates on some specific technology tie-ins: Google spreadsheet joining Apple's Pages and Keynote; iWork as a caching front end for Google Docs and Spreadsheets; a Leopard virtual machine that functions like Parallels in Coherence mode booting from a Google hosting OS.
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Wow, an elusive, rare, expensive Google account for free and all I have to do is buy a $1000 computer? Where do I sign?
Going with Google is an interesting alliance.
Too bad they charge $99/year. $69 is the 1st year promo, but only when you buy a Mac. Even at $69 its not worth it. .Mac was free when it first came out, and all we got was an email account and free iDisk.
My company gets a corporate discount on Apple products, and .Mac was recently removed from that program. I decided to get an account last year when I upgraded my Mac. I had it until last month, and decided not to renew. The only thing I sort of miss is iDisk, but I'm not losing sleep over it. gDisk gets me online storage through Google, though its not quite as elegant.
I'm do agree that they need to update the features but I'll keep getting it for mail. .mac allows me to check my email on my MacBook via IMAP and then when I get home I check it via POP, removing messages from the server at that time.
With gmail any mail you check via the web won't get downloaded the next time you check it via POP until you go reset it in the preferences. I haven't checked this lately but that's the way it used to be.
Is that good?
That would be great! Because, otherwise, you'd have to go to all that trouble of going to Google's site to use them!
The website capabilities for someone that doesn't want to deal with the details of a website are also nice. If I just want to put up some photos for family, it's fairly painless.
For the average user, it's a great way to get capability and ease of use. For the Pro user, they should be doing better.
I use dot mac because it removes a layer of BS between me and getting things done, just like OS X does.
8.25$ a month for tight integration, is worth it to me. But I keep an eye out for the discounted boxes during the year, and mine is more like 6$, either way.