I hope you’re right. I feel a sucker for having paid the $100. The product simply doesn’t work. I thought it’d be a great solution for syncing my work imac and my home macbook, but now I’ve decided to go back to one computer - probably a MBP. All I can say is this doesn’t feel like an Apple product!

@manp

I think your record on predicitions stands. I don’t think your idea is bad (one tiny molecule in my fingertip could be one entire universe…) I just think you are giving Apple far too much credit. The Google train has already left the station on this. I set up Google Apps for my domain recently and it’s already become pretty central for my business life. Once I’m locked in with that, why would I want to switch to Apple’s pay service again? Plus Google has the advantage of working with every computer in the universe. Forget synching, everything lives on Google.

I dunno I think you are thinking, hey if Apple is going to sell an overpriced laptop with no peripherals, a small hard drive and one USB port, ergo they must have some sort of cloud computing strategy, but for some reason, I don’t think they do. The Mac Air and the iTV2 are both simply the new Cube, beautiful, cool looking and largely useless.

Having experienced the pitfalls of many synchronization-focused products, this is a hard one to get right. I think Apple is up to the task if they want to, but I am inclined to think this would be a long-term goal and we won’t see it any time soon. I love the idea - essentially dumb terminals were the MacBook Air is the “dumb” and the internet is the “server” - but today we are still dealing with iPhones that need to be plugged in instead of downloading podcasts wirelessly. A feat that should be easy. Anyway, I like it. I think you are on to something. Don’t know that it’ll be soon.

As I use several computers, and have been for a while, I hope this comes true some day.

Sharing data is fairly easy, if one takes the time to set it up. You mention SuperDuper, I personally use Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/index.html), and they work great as long as one only cares about the bits, not what they mean. I can easily duplicate my iPhoto library, or my iTunes store, but as these programs do not “understand” what the bytes mean, I cannot be more fine grained (such as synchronizing only a subset of my photo or music libraries). Yet I would love to be able take a (smart folder) subset of those libraries on my laptop, where space is limited. For iPhoto, it seems that .Mac already has an answer. Not yet for iTunes. And this is definitely something that could make me a paying .Mac subscriber.

One funny thing is that my day to day job is as researcher in computer science. And one thing I’ve studied, with many people much smarter than me, is the issue of data synchronization. This has made me realize this is a marketing and engineering problem, not a research problem (anymore), for a basic solution. In other words, what’s really missing now is some company deciding to attack this problem, and committing the engineering resources to it. I hope Apple will do it, through its .Mac service, as this would be the seamless solution for many consumers. But I also hope some external approaches (such as the Portal project from the My Dream App contest) get somewhere.

In any case, I believe that this small problem for me is a problem for many other persons.

Thanks for reading all this.

Alan Schmitt

"right now, Apple deliberately keeps .Mac a dim-witted, sleeping giant. It's so unsexy, broken, and behind-the-times right now as to seem like a product out of a less forward-thinking company."

sed 's/\.Mac/the Finder/'

I agree that .Mac needs to be rethought. But I don't think that is indicative of Apple planning to rethink it.

MM is spot on. It’s bloody obvious. I have three Macs, two at home, one at work plus a Touch. Given that I do not have three versions of me with three different requirements to I would love some consistency between the 4. At the moment I only get that with a few Google apps. Otherwise I have to arse around with syncing, which for a dumbass like me means that I always have one machine chasing the others which in turn eventually farks up the others.

All I want is consistency between my machines and given that I pay Apple close to £100 a year for .Mac that;s not a big ask and if it was done right I’d even pay more.

Google wants your data so they can advertise to you. The more you muck about with their stuff, the more eyeballs they have and the more of your data they can sell to advertisers. Not knocking Google but this is what they do. We get great web apps. I’m OK with this deal.

Apple sells hardware and dabbles in media increasingly. They don’t care so much about your data beyond your buying their goods and services. Syncing your data isn’t sexy, it isn’t profitable. Selling you beautiful machines it. Selling you media is.

I love Apple and they do great stuff, I just don’t see syncing as such a great quest for them. I mean once your iTunes library is bigger than your iPod, you are pretty much screwed synching wise. That doesn’t seem to bother anyone at Apple.

Even if they wanted to do the kinda thing Merlin suggests, I think they’d be hamstrung by digital rights management in the media department. They don’t really own the content so as much as they’d like to send a copy to your 1080p TV and another copy optimized for your iPhone, the people whose hold the copyrights in their infinite paranoia want you to pay twice.

Good idea, ain’t going to happen.

I agree with the above criticism of .Mac as an expensive service that doesn’t perform adequately. The model Google is implementing (providing an increasingly wide range of online services without charge based primarily upon advertising income) doesn’t seem to be one that Apple will follow.

There’s no question .Mac needs to be revamped entirely. However, a great place to start would be to provide one year of .Mac free (or for a nominal fee) to anyone purchasing any Mac computer, iPhone or iPod Touch. Then they need to develop online apps that will rival Google’s. They do not need to be free to the public, probably better if they are not.

However, an integrated suite of apps that work seamlessly with Mac computers, iPhones, and iPod Touches would provide the kid of private, exclusive club atmosphere that attract many people to purchase their incredibly well-designed products.

Apple’s success with iTunes needs to be followed up quickly or they might end up one of multiple online music sellers. Simply by undercutting price, offering special features, packages, etc., Amazon and others can eat away at their near monopoly. Apple knows it needs to do with video what they’ve done with music.

It seems to me that Google has diluted itself to some extent, trying to do many many things. As long as they are done well and function properly, that’s great.

To compete, Apple needs special features and programs that will accomplish things that cannot be done via Google. The ultimate goal of allowing iPhone users to easily purchase and download information to any of their Macs seems like a very logical step. Somehow the iPhone needs to work completely wirelessly (except for power recharging). Perhaps they need to purchase a highly secure Bluetooth-like communication system.

The only explanation I have for the lack of Bluetooth on iPhones is a concern with security and hacking. If Apple had a wireless method that automatically included hard encryption, that would ease many minds (consumers and media companies alike).

The MacBook Air is absolutely the latest, coolest version of the Cube. If Apple is serious about pushing everything in the wireless direction, it needs to deal with integrating their multiplicity of devices so they all work together cooperatively (at a minimum). Purchasing a movie using your iPhone to download to your computer (or AppleTV) so you can watch it when you get back home over the weekend would be just one example of such integration.

If designed and implemented properly .Mac has the potential to pull these disparate functions and appliances together as an integrated suite of “lifestyle devices”.

I believe a key factor in making .Mac a dynamic, rapidly expanding service is to provide an API platform for users to develop applications to perform magical feats of integration that no one on earth can presently imagine. Like? Well ordering custom paint colors to be mixed and ready for you to pick up that you found surfing Flickr groups, composing and sending cards and matching flowers, ordering food to be ready at a particular restaurant at the time you will be arriving (based on a cooking podcast you just watched or a scene in a movie you viewed on your iPod Touch, etc.)

The combinations of functions are not predictable because they will be based upon instinct, emotion, appetite, and the general desire for instant gratification. Apple needs to find the way to speed people to all of the things they want in life: a bison burger, Japanese rice paper, a Fellini movie, a sitcom theme-song, French Fries hand delivered to their apartment, custom-made pizza delivered to your car, etc., etc.

No one can predict these sorts of things in advance. If Apple can use .Mac to become THE cool lifestyle implementation connection, they will have found manna from Jobs.

merlin, i agree with you except in location. i think that your data (your ~/user/library folder) should be available to you everywhere, but not let it live in the cloud (on a .mac server somewhere) but instead let it live in your office, on a new sexy looking Apple box thats essentially a “versioning media server.” a box that seamlessly talks to apple hardware (laptop, phone, apple tv, ipod, desktop, etc.) through the cloud and delivers appropriately sized content to each, as well as keeps all changes, etc. synced. that way your data lives in a physical box that can be upgraded, changed, backed up, moved, etc. by YOU as opposed to leaving that data in someone else’s hands.