Apple's Shift Towards Web-based Apps

Last week's announcement regarding MobileMe was quite interesting to me for several reasons.

For one, I feel it was vastly overdue. Apple should have overhauled .Mac no less than a year ago when the iPhone was released. For example, I was embarrassed, especially, a few weeks ago while on a roadtrip with my wife, who was accessing her .Mac account via MobileSafari on my iPhone: "um, it's not displaying right."

I knew exactly what she was talking about: .Mac webmail basically does not work on the iPhone. Period. "Yeah, the webmail for .Mac doesn't work too well on the iPhone..."

Let me share something really quickly about my wife: she's a technophobe. Hates technology, for the most part. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony). She's a smart cookie, though, and knows what to expect from technology surprisingly well, actually.

That said, you can probably guess what her reaction to my informing her about .Mac webmail on iPhone. "What?!," she immediately shot back. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know..." I was embarrassed for Apple.

I should not have to defend Apple on something like this. They're above this. Their prize-winning $500 revolutionary communications device can't render their own Safari-tailored webapps? Yes, it's true, and very very sad. But Google (of whom some of your are very aware that I share another unhealty infatuation with, besides Apple) has a suite of web-based apps that kick the crap out of what Apple puts out there themselves. Use Google search, Notebook, Docs, Picasa Web, or especially Reader (even more-so the beta version!) and gmail, and you'll see what I'm talking about. They are beautiful on the iPhone.

So, you can imagine my excitement (and small twinge of regret*) when Apple announced MobileMe. Where the hell was this a year ago?! I have actually been seriously contemplating ditching my mac.com account, since I can do everything I use it for for free using Google's services (I really don't use my iDisk [thank you Docs!] much), but MobileMe might make me stick around for another year or so. We'll see... I'm not going to un-redirect my .Mac email to my gmail account any time soon. ;)

What I am excited about, though, is that Apple seems to be coming to their senses about web-based apps. I think the time really has come, in which users are no longer going to have to pay for the basic functionality we've come to expect out of every computer in the form of Microsoft Office. And other everyday functionality apps are soon to follow (in fact, beat) that movement. Heck, even Photoshop is going to the web. In fact, I think it's entirely possible that the MobileMe version of Apple Mail could surpass the OS-supplied version of the application, which raises some interesting questions. Apple could update the hosted version every day, week, month, etc. if they choose. The on-disk version would require software compiling, download, and installation, which is becoming more and more old-fashioned every day. I think the on-disk versions of key Apple iLife apps are going to become a mere conduit to Apple's online MobileMe apps (and for the Windows users, possibly plug-ins for key MS apps?).

And, of course, Google will be back there playing nicely with every other kid in the sandbox.