Will Steve Jobs Set Me Free?

June 2, 2008, 11:47 am
By Saul Hansell

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/will-steve-jobs-set-me-free/index.html?ref=technology

Enough about my iPhone; let’s talk about Me.
It’s exactly one week until Steve Jobs takes the stage the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference to present another basket of fetish objects to his many worshipers. The diviners have fully examined the pigeon entrails and shipping manifests to prophesize the rebirth of the iPhone: It is said to surf faster, know its location better, and take pictures with more pixels. And it might even be cheaper.
Now there is a flurry of speculation about improvements to a minor icon an the Apple Pantheon: the .Mac online service. For six years, .Mac has been a $100 a year bundle of handy Internet services, now including e-mail, online hosting, backup, photo sharing, and tools to synchronize calendars and address books. Industry reports say Apple has between 1 million and 2 million subscribers.
Those diving into the latest update to Apple’s operating system found that it no longer contains the text “.Mac” but uses a variable “%@” so the name can be updated on the fly by Apple. Indeed, hidden in the software is the phrase “%@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac).”
Saturday, John Gruber at Daring Fireball found that “Me.Com” appears to be owned by Apple. “Me” has been on Apple’s mind since 2005, when it registered “Mobile Me” as a trademark for “telecommunication services for the dissemination of information by mobile telephone, namely the transmission of data to mobile telephones” along with “music players,” “digital video players,” “MP3 players,” and “software related thereto,” according to Ars Technica.
And Macworld discovered that Apple has filed for a number of domains in the new “.Me” top level domain that is about to be begin ostensibly for the former Yugoslavian republic of Montenegro. These include apple.me, ipod.me and itunes.me. (This may mean nothing as companies often register their trademarks in new top level domains.)
Now is certainly a great time to expand and rename .Mac. Much of the energy in software development is around online applications, which would be a logical evolution for Apple’s iLife and iWork software. Moreover, the iPhone and iPod Touch are particularly suited to services that blend small local applications with storage and other processing handled on an Internet server.
But the .Mac brand needs a change. If you chat on your iPhone, jog with your iPod Shuffle but still grind out your spreadsheets on a PC, you might find using an online service called “.Mac” a bit jarring.
While Apple no doubt will stay abreast of technology and create artful marketing, I wonder whether it will also keep up with the realities of online economics: Google has decreed that most online services are supported by advertising not fees.
Amid all the superlatives thrown about at a Steve Jobs keynote, “free” is rarely heard amid the barrage of “unique” and “amazing.” Mr. Jobs has been very content to position Apple products as offering superior technology and design for premium prices. Moreover, Apple has not yet come to terms with how to fit advertising into its music and video businesses.
The introduction of the successor to .Mac may offer a window into how Mr. Jobs sees advertising and the future of Apple. If the service, or a large part of it, is free with advertising, this may be the beginning of a shift that could build a significant new revenue source for the company (and possibly lead to a shift in the structure of the music business).
Then again, Mr. Jobs might well not want to open a two front war with Google (which despite the presence of its chief executive, Eric Schmidt on Apple’s board is competing taking on the iPhone with its Android phone design). It might be enough work to get the iPhone established in dozens of countries around the world.
Thus he could stick with what is most comfortable and simply improve what is offered at $100 a year, keeping a lucrative if modestly sized business. Or perhaps he could create a free service as a “hobby” (as he referred to Apple TV), with no or limited advertising, as an effort to lure subscribers to a premium tier.
So when Mr. Jobs unveils his golden idols next week, watch to see if it accompanies them with a mini-Me or a maxi-Me.