.Mac's dramatic resurrection

Yesterday, we outlined just a few of the reasons we've become disenchanted with .Mac, focusing on mail, storage space, calendaring and synchronization. Today, we're going to look at what could be .Mac's dramatic resurrection. Like a Phoenix from the ashes, we all know that .Mac will rise again, better than ever before (because Steve and Co. just can't let it stagnate forever, right?). We're going to avoid the usual and more obvious .Mac wish-list items in this post, like increased storage space, a speedier iDisk, reliable synchronization and so on, and focus on all new, would-be features that could really knock our geeky socks off.

Read on, after the jump.

Exhibit A: Hosted applications

Who needs the desktop anymore? Let's all use web-based, hosted applications! Ok, so that thought might be just a little premature, but these webapps are getting better all the time. When I think "Apple," I think "cutting edge" and "innovation," and web applications fit the bill.

Homepage

With the introduction of iWeb, poor Homepage has been all but forgotten. When it was first introduced many years ago, I was thrilled with the idea. I could easily make a nice looking web page for friends and family with minimal fuss and no coding. Images and files lived on my iDisk and hosting was built-in. iWeb really blows it away, and now Homepage is a loaner (unless you've opted not to buy iLife '06). I say, let's integrate the two.

Homepage is already online, so we've got a bit of a head start. Other services like Vox, Typepad and many others let you update your site via a browser. Imagine! Live, web-based blogging from Apple! These other services also allow for complete customization and html editing via a browser. Or, you can simply pick and choose your layout and design options without having to place a single tag. How about a web-based interface for updating .Mac-hosted iWeb blogs and galleries? Perhaps the ability to move between one iWeb template and another with a single click? Vox does this beautifully, by the way. Just find the template you like and click "Apply to blog." No need to wait while your site rebuilds or anything. Or, .Mac subscribers could have access to exclusive templates and other such goodies. If there is one company that can make the above experience pleasant and beautiful, it's Apple.

Now, I know that some of you are going to call iWeb "web building for soccer moms," but I like web building for soccer moms. Sometimes I don't want to get all fancy with a hand-coded site, total customization and so on. Sometimes all I want is a simple site that I can use to keep friends and family updated with photos and videos of the kids. If that site can be edited online and integrated with my iLife data, then terrific.

Appleworks goes live

Remember Appleworks? Or for you older geeks (like me), Clarisworks? For the uninitiated, Appleworks is a long-ignored productivity suite by Apple that includes a word processor, spreadsheet app and database application (kind of like "Filemaker Lite."). It has sat in Apple Limbo for a number of years, and .Mac 2.0 (or are we at 3.0?) is the perfect time to roll out the all new, fully integrated, web-based Appleworks.

Consider Writely and Google Spreadsheets. Both are web-based applications by (who else) Google. They're quite basic at this point but pretty much allow you to do what you'd want to do. Now imagine each done with Apple's style, functionality and integration with the revamped Homepage mentioned above, or even the OS itself. Create multi-author, collaborative, password-protected documents and spreadsheets. Keep previous versions accessible via the web, so if Johnny from the office comes in and really hoses your document, you can go back to the day before he went hog-wild and restore that version. Easily post files to your Homepage site(s), access them from the Finder and so on. Web publishing in Filemaker (meaning making your database available online) has gotten easier with each new release. I imagine a trimmed down version as being the successor to Appleworks' database app. Now a little league coach can easily keep track of his players, games, practices, equipment etc. online with the web-based database, spreadsheet and word processing of .Mac's live successor to Appleworks.

Exhibit B: Enhancements to iLife

I love Apple's digital hub concept, as that's precisely what my computers are. I used them to work with my photos, create movies...you know the drill. As an added incentive, why not let .Mac subscribers do some cool stuff with the iLife apps? For example, Snipshot lets you edit photos online. Imagine doing the same with your iPhoto snaps. Did you upload that photo before you remembered to crop it or remove the red eye? No problem, do it in your browser.

Or, say you subscribe to your cousin's photocast. You decide to be a wise guy and add a mustache and funny hat to his face in each picture. You then bing his copy of iPhoto and update the same photos in his photocast.

Or, perhaps a "share" link could appear next to your .Mac-hosted movies, YouTube-style. Of course, the idea of subscriber-exclusive iDVD templates and the like spring to mind.

So there's a brief look at just a few of the things we think would be cool as a part of the next major update to .Mac. Whenever that may be. Or not.