RUMOR: Apple to overhaul and rename its .Mac service

“Rumors are flying about major changes coming to Apple’s .Mac online service. Perhaps most interesting is this post from Dmitry Chestnykh, the CEO at Coding Robots. He went through the iCal Localizable.strings file in the recently released 10.5.3 update and found a number of changes. In particular, he found a lot of evidence that the .Mac brand name is going to be replaced. Apple is apparently using a placeholder %@ which will be dynamically replaced by the new name, whatever that is, when it’s release,” Mat Lu reports for TUAW.

Full article here.

Thomas Ricker reports for Engadget, ” If that’s not enough of a hint then there’s always the text, ‘the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac).’ This code change has also been found in the newly updated Safari and Mail apps and did not exist prior to the 10.5.3 update. So now the question: will the name change, presumably coming next week at WWDC, usher in Jobs’ promise to ‘make up for lost time‘ with the bealeugered service, or will it simply reflect the new semantics related to Apple’s Computer’s increased emphasis on iPhones, iPods, and other consumer level products?”

Full article, with screenshots of the code, here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “TowerTone” for the heads up.]