KEY POINTS:
Microsoft's Bill Gates was impressed by Apple early on. So impressed he appears on the brochure celebrating the launch of the first Mac in 1984. He had Word created for the Mac years before a PC version became available, and likewise Excel.
In 1985, the CEO of Apple (then Pepsi's John Sculley) signed an agreement to let Bill Gates use Mac technology to create a version of a Graphic User Interface called ... Windows.
Nowadays Microsoft has a very strong Mac department in Seattle developing Mac software and collaborating on Mac-compatible Microsoft hardware (like many of the Microsoft keyboards and mice).
The Mac BU is well versed in exploring the features Apple's OS X help bring the Microsoft experience to Mac users. This sometimes results in Mac-only features like Word's ability (in Office 2004 and 2008, in Notebook View) to record audio straight into Word docs. So?
Well, Microsoft has always had a healthy respect of what Apple is capable of and so has Bill Gates, who has only just stepped down as MS chief.
If you watch last year's dual interview on EnGadget, Apple's Steve Jobs and Gates act like old chums rather than adversaries. These days, Apple employees no longer like mention of the one-time Apple poster that pictured an old vacuum cleaner. The poster's wording read something like 'The only time Microsoft will make something that doesn't suck is when it makes a vacuum cleaner'. Ouch. (And sorry I brought that up, current Apple employees.)
Microsoft - which is currently expanding its Mac BU, by the way - got in a few great digs of its own, of course, although its position as overwhelming market leader gave the firm a much loftier position.
So what's the point? Apple's imminent deployment of the iPhone 3G and redevelopment of the online .Mac service makes use of Microsoft tech often referred to as 'cloud computing'. Apple's new service, evolved from .Mac, was announced by Apple's Phil Schiller at WWDC on June 10th and is dubbed 'MobileMe.'
The changed name, dispensing with the seemingly red-rag-to-PC-bulls' name 'Mac', may make the service more appealing to Windows users, who could already use many aspects of .Mac without Macs, either independently or between, say, a work PC and a home Mac.
MobileMe is a spruced-up version of .Mac, but with a significant difference. Apple called it [Microsoft] 'Exchange for the rest of us' because MobileMe uses Microsoft's ActiveSync technology to keep email, contacts, events, photos, and files updated on the fly.
Users of MobileMe will be able to sync their data without having to tether an iPhone or iPod touch to a computer via a USB connection or Bluetooth. They won't even need to have the mobile device in the same location as the computer.
MobileMe will continue to offer the usual .Mac features (online storage and backup, web galleries of photos and movies, a website, iTunes podcasting support, Apple iLife software integration etc) but Apple has doubled the base storage to 20GB per subscriber.
While MobileMe will work with native Mac OS X applications like iCal and Mail, under Windows, the same functionality should apply to Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Contacts under Windows XP or Vista.
All of this makes a new iPhone 3G that much more useful, of course. MobileMe will cost US$99 per year (that's about NZ$135; you can explore .Mac with a free 60-day trial - not sure if the same will apply to MobileMe).
But MobileMe will be less of a separate service and more of an extension of what you can already do on your computer, iPhone and iPod touch. Your email messages and mailboxes should instantly be the same on your iPhone or your computer. Contacts and calendar items will sync automatically. A photo you take with an iPhone can immediately be uploaded to your MobileMe gallery, and viewed by anyone granted access via computer, iPhone, or Apple TV.
Transferring files to and from your iDisk (as Apple calls the online storage) is said to be a drag-and-drop operation even in a browser, just as it is in the Mac OS X Finder.
MobileMe is expected to become available in early July with the iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software - Apple's web pages have only stated 'coming soon.' For Mac users, the service will require at least Mac OS X 10.4.11 'Tiger', while Apple Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard' users will be better able to access the full feature set. You'll need Safari 3 or Firefox 2+ on Macs while Windows users will need Safari 3, Firefox 2+ or Internet Explorer 7. [With thanks to Jeff Carlson at TidBits for the MobileMe info.]
If Microsoft and Apple can get along, isn't it time PC users stopped getting so upset about Macs? I reckon.
