Speculation abounds about the possible rebranding of Apple's .Mac (pronounced "dot mac") service as "Mobile Me". Wired's Gadget Lab has an interesting entry up about what this might mean for the iPhone:
Back to My Mac lets you access your home Mac from anywhere on the internet. The routing is all handled by Apple, so you never have to worry about firewalls or IP addresses (when it works, that is). Imagine, though, having full access to your music, movies and files from your iPhone. That would effectively turn it from a 16GB handheld computer into a handheld computer the size of, well, your Mac’s hard drive.
I think this is an idea with a lot of potential. What if you could carry an iPhone, or an iPod for that matter, and use it as a password protected dongle for your virtual identity? Imagine connecting your Mobile Me device to a Mac (any Mac), logging in and being able to use that Mac as if it was your computer. That would be a killer application for any kind of remote work. Of course, it's all speculation for now and we'll likely know more next week after the Jobs keynote at WWDC. WWDC is an event intended for developers, so making an announcement there makes it likely that developers will be able to exploit this funtionality in their own apps. That might lead to some interesting new uses for the .Mac service. I do hope that if they're going to revamp the service they'll also change the rather exorbitant price point.
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