I have been a long time .MAC subscriber…
Despite the fact that I can get everything that .MAC offers me for free from other web providers, I keep paying for the seamless integration with my Mac’s that the service offers me. That said, I do seriously consider ditching the service each time my renewal comes around. After all, $199/year is a lot of money to spend for just 4 Gigs of storage. Microsoft and Google both offer me 2GB for free. I can get a 4GB thumb drive for less than $50, and Mozy will give me 50GB of storage for less than $60/year.
It’s always a tough call…
Well it just might be possible that my loyalty to .MAC – although tenuous – will soon be rewarded. Rumors are flying that Apple and Google have partnered on the next generation of .MAC, combining Apple’s strength in user experience with Google capabilities in cloud based storage and applications. There was a great article in Information Week that explored some of the possibilities. The most exciting possibility would come from Apple and Google bridging the gap between desktop and web based apps:
The most important piece of the puzzle might just be iWork, which could be a caching front end for Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Use it when you are on an airplane, at grandma’s house with no Internet, in the subway, or wherever Internet access is spotty. Or how about this curveball: Apple could port its iWork and iLife applications to Windows?
That would be a powerful, compelling proposition. There’s could be a lot more than Leopard going on at today’s WWDC keynote.
I guess we’ll know in about an hour…
Pingback: An Update To Apple’s .MAC?… at The Digital Edge Blog