.Mac's new name

A while ago I blogged about a rumoured upgrade to Apple's .Mac service. Well the rumour is back with a vengeance after some coders sniffed through Apple's OS X 1.5.3 update.

Russian website Deep Apple is reporting on changes to the source code for OS X 10.5.3 and found this gem:

What this screen purports to show is code prepping OS X for a renaming of the .Mac service.

So is .Mac getting a whole new name as well as new features? There's no way of knowing for sure, but it certainly seems to be heading that way.

This is probably a good thing. After all .Mac was always a daft name. Newcomers to the Mac don't know what it does, most people don't even know how to pronounce it (dotmac). Search engines struggle with it because they generally dismiss the dot and then confuse it with Mac.

Hopefully Apple will come up with a better name. I'm hoping they go with Apple Live to pay Microsoft back for swiping Multi-Touch.

Any other suggestions in the comment box will be most welcome.

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Comments received

MarkHattersley said on Friday, 30 May 2008

Also I've just realised. The reason Apple will change the name is because they will launch the service for Windows as well as Mac, and calling it .Mac would probably make the whole exercise pointless.

PostScript said on Friday, 30 May 2008

.Mac needs to be faster for UK users.

Access to Web sites hosted on .Mac from the UK and Japan is atrocious. It's roughly four times slower than my UK host provider. After a bunch of people in the U.K. recently complained to Apple, .Mac's Web Gallery feature suddenly got a lot quicker (i.e., usable). Apple said they'd done something but didn't say what. When I ran a traceroute with Mac OS X's Network Utility, gallery.mac.com is now 8 hops away, but web.mac.com is 18 hops, so there’s definitely a physical location difference.

Just make it faster!

jmshaw@mac.com said on Friday, 30 May 2008

Mobile Me, apparently.

MarkHattersley said on Sunday, 01 June 2008

I just heard that on Mac Rumours

www.macrumors.com/2008/06/01/apple-buys-me-com-macs-new-name/

They claim it's just me.com not mobile me.

I guess me.com is a good enough replacement for .mac