.Mac to become Mobile Me? Really?
All this talk that .Mac’s set for a re-branding and service improvements sent us away to search for some more incidental information. Here’s what we’ve come up with:
- Apple filed an application for the Mobile Me trademark in January 2006. (Source, Daring Fireball).
- The Mobile Me URL was transferred to one of Apple’s favourite domain registrars, Mark Monitor, on 11 January, 2007. It was parked on 13 January, 2007.
- Mark Monitor serves up to half the Fortune 500 companies, and was last widely discussed in connection with Apple earlier this year when it purchased the following domains on behalf of Apple: MacBookAir.net, MacBookAir.org, MacBookAir.us, MacBookAir.info, MacBookAir.biz.
- These domains were registered on Apple’s behalf (as it turned out) by Mark Monitor just before the Macworld keynote this year, when Apple introduced the MacBook Air.
- Mark Monitor is also the registrant of record for Apple.com, iPhone.com and numerous additional Apple URLs.
- Today’s reports all claim Apple to have carefully hidden code within Mac OS X 10.5.3 that would enable the company to rename .Mac and its services with a subsequent update.
- Current rumours suggest .Mac is set to be revised with a host of new features, including ‘push’ email. It has also recently been claimed Apple will abandon its .Mac trademark in preference for a non-Mac-based mark in order to offer a version of its service to Windows users.
- Given Apple’s focus on mobile phones with iPhone, is it possible the company plans to finally enable portability of a user’s Home folder? If it does, will it make this a feature of .Mac, under the Mobile Me trademark?
Returning to the MobileMe trademark, here’s what it covers:
“Telecommunication services; electronic transmission and retrieval of data, images, audio, video and documents, including text, cards, letters, messages, mail, animations, and electronic mail, over local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular and satellite networks; electronic transmission of computer software over local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks; electronic mail services; facsimile transmission; web site portal services; providing access to databases and local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks; internet service provider services; message transmission services, namely, electronic transmission of messages; telecommunication services for the dissemination of information by mobile telephone, namely the transmission of data to mobile telephones; mobile telephone communication services.” (Source, once again, Daring Fireball).
Oh, and if this isn't enough..."MobileMe" has been found in a number of iPhone SDK files...
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- This is going to hurt:
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Comments (37)
No way they would ever go with a name that uninspired.
of course not-- the people who brought us "macbook air" and the oh-so brilliant "iPhone" would never stoop so low! please, think again. really, the only surprise to me is that it's so microsoft-like.
well they can't do worse than .mac. idisk is truly hopeless
GOD! Somebody save us.
Oh god.. we'll have all the yanks saying it incorrectly! Moble Moble.. come on! It has an i in it... say it all together... MOB ILE :-)
yeah and it's pronounced AL-U-MIN-I-UM? get over yourself you wanker!
it's spelled ALUMINUM - where's the MINI in there?
Strictly speaking, it IS spelled "aluminium." Just ask any scientist. "Aluminum" is an "acceptable variation" according to wikipedia. So it must be true. :)
The American Chemical Society uses Aluminum.
The International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which is the final source for all things chemical nomenclature, uses both spellings but prefers Aluminium.
So, both are accepted. No controversy here.
Besides, the different pronunciations of methyl and ethyl are much more interesting.
MacBook air as you will know was announced at macworld not WWDC. Better make a wee edit.
It doesn't say WWDC. It says "Macworld keynote". Where did I go wrong?
What about .mac getting incorporated with some of the Google services? Apple and Google are very good friends, and maybe Steve is going to partner up with Eric and let him handle all that .Mac stuff. Kinda like your .mac mail will become a gmail account, I don't know. Also, as a Canadian I resent being grouped with the yanks, we are different then then them even though some of us do say moble.
"as a Canadian I resent being grouped with the yanks" And just what is so bad about being "grouped" with us yanks? Who is it that everybody turns to when the going gets tough?? Nobody seems to appreciate us until they need something. Not saying that everything we do is right but there is nobody on THIS world that I would rather be grouped with than the good 'ol US of A. I am speaking from a point of view from Alaska that seems to not always be considered a State, but more of a foreign country by the rest of the US.
I'd call you a Waah-mbulance
but you'd probably shoot at it and call me a terrorist :-)
Aw. I don't think us yanks will ever say Mo' Bile. It would make us think of stomach acid (ok, no we are just too lazy to learn really). Although from the reactions here, we may all be tasting some of our own if they follow through with the name change.
Great story, Space!
That's a horrible name. I hope to God that's not it. I've found myself on more than one occasion pitching .mac to friends and family. I'd feel pretty stupid singing and dancing for "Mobile Me".
.Mac, iPhone, iPod are mostly multilingual but Mobile Me is not. I just cant see this happening !
From Quebec !
In Quebec, it will be Le mobileme, or La mobileme for the ladies.
A good point though, they do tend to prefer names that don't need to be translated too much. Like Souffle.
But I hear where you're coming from, I had a French Canadian roommate for three years and he would have had a week's worth of rants on this one, and at least two inappropriate jokes. Don't ask, he could do that with any topic.
MobileMe, however you pronounce it, is so microsoft i can't stand it.
Whenever I read it, it instantly evokes an image of an advertisement with a still shot of a 30-ish woman in casual pants leaping through a blue cloudy sky with a big shit-eating grin on her face, and a whole bunch of tech specs obscuring the rest of the picture.
Anyone else get that? Anyone? Yanks?
Must be me.
OSXi
say it with a little i, it sounds so much better.
I don't care what they call .Mac (although I agree with Kev Orng that 'Mobile Me' sounds way too microsofty, and that blue loudy sky metaphor just cracked me up), as long as they don't do away with the @mac.com address.... thought I had that more or less for life unless something really drastic would happen, and it is worth even the $ 100 a year to me.
Mobile Me... like, ieeuw!
They could call it iPoo for all I care. As long as they make it do cool stuff.
Mobile Me sounds as if Microsoft named it.
course, maybe all of this is just to ensure Microsoft, erm, don't use it...
Every time I read yet another Canadian rant about Americans being the bad guys, I just want to puke. I am so sick and tired of weak minded fellow citizens who can feel good only if they are putting down the only country on Earth that seems to take the forward evolution of humanity seriously and actually does something about it, usually at its own great expense.
Gospel gets really moody over this.
Tibet needs friends
Really? You think starting unnecessary wars based on false pretenses, consuming and wasting resources to excess, de-funding education, imprisoning non violent offenders, reinstating capital punishment, and putting business before environmental stewardship are indicators of the forward evolution of humanity?
Oh, just call it Mini Me :)
Maybe, like cocoa, it's a name for an underlying technology and won't be the marketed name. Could be the iPhone underpinnings in .mac.
This one wins. Thus far Mobile Me is only found on the iPhone, right? Makes sense that the Mobile Me would just be a new part of the service, like iDisk, etc. That sounds more like Apple.
Why would they pick a name that most people are going think is "Windows Mobile ME?!?" (as in "millennium edition") They fact that they've had the name registered for years and NOT used it speaks volumes.
Hope they don't change the @mac.com email address, I've had mine since the beginning of iTools.