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Friday, June 08, 2007

WWDC, .Mac and Google aps

I almost forgot. Apple's WWDC is Monday.

In addition to Leopard's "top secret features", I'm also anxious to see what Stevie J. will announce about .Mac.

I hope he gets rid of it. Everything .Mac does, Google does (but better and free). The exception is iDisk, though with rumbles of "Platypus" (GDrive) and 20 MB Gmail attachments, that's not much of an issue.

All Apple needs to do is make iLife Gears-friendly.

For example, iWeb would publish to Blogger. iPhoto would sync/upload directly to Picasa (better than the current plugin) and, ideally, Flickr. iCal and Address Book would sync with Google Calendar.

This person wrote an interesting article about the integration of .Mac and Google Docs. I disagree with some of his points. You can already access Google Docs from anywhere, and Gears will soon make all of Google's apps available offline. So, why would you need .Mac? Of course, Apple could make iWork with Gears which would make your docs available online through Google Docs without cannibalizing either product.

Apple isn't offering anything unique in .Mac. And with free, online apps (all of Google's, for example) going offline, it provides a great opportunity for Apple create innovative ways to interact with these new web applications.