.Mac re-branding is coming
May 30, 2008 by Dmitry
I’m not in Apple rumors business, but… hell… why not?
Apple will rename their .Mac service soon. Hints are everywhere in Mac OS X 10.5.3 update.
iCal’s Localizable.strings file contains the following string:
/* Label of .Mac button in iCal’s General preferences. %@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac) (remove -XX02)
Safari has the following lines in its Localizable.strings:
/* Title of .Mac alert sheet, with .Mac brand name subsituted */ “You need a %@ account that has syncing enabled” = “You need a %@ account that has syncing enabled”;
Same with Mail’s Prefs.strings:
/* Title of button used to open the .Mac system preference pane. */ “AOS_SYNC_BUTTON_FORMAT” = “%@…”; /* Descriptive text for .Mac Sync. */ “AOS_SYNC_FORMAT” = “Use %@ to synchronize Accounts, Rules, Notes, Signatures, and Smart Mailboxes.”;
Almost everywhere “.Mac” has been replaced with %@, which means that the name of Apple’s online service will be inserted programmatically by applications.
I looked into binaries to find out what the new name is, but it seems like apps take this value from /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Mac.prefPane /System/Library/CoreServices/AOS.bundle (thanks, Mike!), which still has the old name. It seems like it will be updated via Software Update once Apple renames .Mac and — boom! — all your apps will have the new name.
Kudos to DeepApple [ru] for finding strings in iCal.
Update: next post: “Mobile Me” name found!
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Cool. Nice sleuthing!
Its also possible that apple is opening up syncing to other services / providers - taking the cue from address book app syncing to google and yahoo.
The new name could be Mobile Me. Apple applied for a trademark on that name in Jan 2006.
Search for it or see http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/06/01/11/apple_applies_for_mobile_me_trademark.html
Maybe the file /System/Library/CoreServices/AOS.bundle will be replaced with a new file? At the moment the AOS.strings inside it contains
AOS_BRAND = “.Mac”; AOS_DOMAIN = “mac.com”;
I guess AOS stands for Apple Online Service
Mobile Me, yuck…
Note that there’s a new top domain called .me too. Perhaps Apple in that case registered mobile.me already?
I’m in the mood for a bold (and somewhat random) prediction:
Rebranded as MobileMe, which will be tied to both mobileme.com and me.com (and mobile.me.com). Me.com is currently pushing to snappville.com, and seems to be a recent rebranding/change.
This is likely just fixing a problem with substituting strings. I’m surprised this wasn’t fixed earlier. All strings should be mutable like this, and in OS X nearly all of them are. Don’t read too much into it.
That would explain the strangeness.
I’ve had my .Mac account since .Mac was called iTools (and was free). I had forgotten that name — iTools — until yesterday, when I ran the 10.5.3 upgrade. On my Intel iMac, my desktop, when the software was finished running, the system ran me through a welcome screen almost as though I’d booted up the mac for the first time. I should have got a screenshot of it, but I was using back-to-my-mac from my aging Powerbook. It asked me for my dot mac ID, and mentioned something about my iTools account being upgraded.
Didn’t think much of it until seeing this.
cool,very very nice