With all of the mac fanboys biting their pillows tonight in delirious agony, I thought this would be as good time as any to make a small prediction regarding the just-delayed OS X 10.5. Actually, scratch that — this is more of a guess than anything based on any real information, but here goes:
When OS X 10.5 is released, .Mac will be radically changed (how, I don’t know) and in its place many of the iApps will have Google integration. So iCal will have true syncing with Google Calendar, iPhoto will allow you to push photos to Google’s online photo service, and Address Book will sync directly with Gmail’s online contacts.
Why do I think this? Well, partially because .Mac sucks pretty hard these days, and partially because I don’t expect Apple wants to invest a lot of energy continuing to provide web services. Jobs hinted that Google and Apple had some other products up their sleeves during the iPhone demo at the last Macworld, so it seems like a natural fit. Replacing the mostly craptacular .Mac service with Google’s much more robust offerings would solve most of the outstanding .Mac issues in one fell swoop.
Anyway, it’s a thought. As far as the announced delay in OS X 10.5 shipping it really doesn’t provoke more than a insubstantial “meh” from me. I have more important things to get worked up about than the delayed release of an operating system.
Update: Forbes posted an article covering the Google - Apple relationship and what this could bring. Also, I was reminded a couple of days ago that Yahoo! (how could I forget?) is providing the push email solution for Apple’s basically vapourware iPhone, so that may also be a consideration.
