Apple, AJAX and ‘Share with .Mac’ for small business

Posted by Dennis Sellers Feb 10, 2006 at 4:44am

Share: for consumers

In case you missed it, Steve Jobs’ introduced a new Apple consumer theme during his MacWorld San Francisco keynote. A theme simply described as share. A theme that in fact became Apple’s new .Mac logo slogan after the keynote.

During his keynote, Jobs introduced Apple’s fifth application for their iLife suite called iWeb by stating that “We’re introducing a new app that’s going to allow us to share our digital photos. Share our digital movies and video podcasts; to share our tastes in music, and share our blogs…” He continued with “Now, we’ve got these great five applications that are part of the iLife Suite. And, what they’re all about is allowing us to express ourselves creatively – right? Our music choices, our digital photography, our digital movies and we want to share these things. We want to share these things with our friends. We want to share these things with our families. And increasingly we want to share them over the Internet, right? That’s what photocasting is all about which is terrific.”

they’re all about is allowing us to express ourselves creatively – right? Our music choices, our digital photography, our digital movies and we want to share these things. We want to share these things with our friends. We want to share these things with our families. And increasingly we want to share them over the Internet, right? That’s what photocasting is all about which is terrific.”

Now that Macworld is over, Apple’s next wave of innovation for extending this new consumer theme comes by way of sharing iTunes with friends in a whole new way. 

Share your iTunes

An interesting patent of Apple’s surfaced late last week revealing a new way of sharing music and other media items such as podcasts and the like with friends. 

What the patent really boiled down to in my opinion was that Apple was going to incorporate a new form of Apple’s iCards right into iTMS and iTunes.

While the patent provided an overview describing some of the new advanced functionality being considered, the key was found in a new link or button that we’ll see beside an iTunes or media item simply referred to in the patent as “Tell-a-Friend.” Clicking on this button will trigger what the patent describes as a form. The more it described how this would actually function, the easier it was to envision the process resembling how you email iCards to friends today. The graphic that I’ve presented in this report is simply my way of helping you envision what it could look like, being that patent verbiage isn’t always the easiest to decipher. 

Of course Apple is leaving all the cool “marketing stuff” associated with this new feature for a media event in the future. What would have been nice to know however, is whether or not Apple will allow users to send a tune from their your own library to a friend with a more liberal 1-3 day full-play pass, instead of a traditional 30 second iTune music sampler. Could Apple provide new sharing options? Yes, of course.

To get an idea of what kinds of “legal” options are present in the market today, you could take a look at “Interoute’s Share!” program. If you go here and click on the “Product Features” tab, you’ll be able to view the types of options that are available today—such as “forward a copy to someone else for them to play,” or “hold onto a copy, or just listen online,” and so forth. Options that apparently have the blessing from EMI and Warner. Interoute, of course, is a new ally of Apple that began deploying QuickTime 7 on their advanced networks last fall. So it would only stand to reason that Apple is working with them on a future Mac specific program. No doubt Apple’s program will be vastly superior, but for now it’s at least it’s a starting point to seeing what a legal music sharing program could entail. 

The bottom line on this aspect of Apple’s new share program is that you could expect to see this new iTune feature surface some time this year. Hey, who said email had to be boring!

Share: For Pros, with AJAX

What I found most fascinating by Apple’s unveiling of their new consumer share theme for .Mac is that it could easily be officially extended to the enterprise side of the equation at some point in time. Although Apple does have some pro-like tools such as .Mac Groups or software like iWork, it’s still a work in progress. Yet perhaps we were given the faintest of clues at this past MacWorld that their pro side is advancing rapidly—behind the scene. 

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t help but smile when hearing Jobs introduce Apple’s new share theme while dropping his first official mention of AJAX into a keynote with “ …if they have a modern browser … we have this great photo viewer that uses some AJAX technology” (found approx. @ 49:15 – 49:21 time frame).

By itself, it seemed rather incidental didn’t it. By itself - I’d have to agree. However, the fact is that sharing on the consumer side, becomes collaboration on the pro side. Yes … and that’s where the fun really begins to add up.

This was in fact the MacWorld that had Zimbra launch a new collaboration tool for the Mac. What’s more important, is that for months while the PC and Mac press covered AJAX and the buzz surrounding it, no one had bothered pointing out that Apple was listed on Zimbra’s Technology Partners web page. At one point, Apple was only one of three that were listed, and were listed first. That’s quite telling considering Apple’s strict nondisclosure contract[with the likes of PortalPlayer. You won’t find Apple listed anywhere on PortalPlayer’s Technology partner page. So that cool Zimbra brushed metal interface and ease-of-use interface has a little history with Apple—which is finally getting the application-in-a-browser unbelievers to see the light.

Yes … and then we have collaborative real-time Dashboards like the one from NetSuite that provide users with business intelligence across all areas of their company, from accounting and sales, to fulfillment and support. NetSuite’s Dashboard is AJAX-powered. In 2004, NetSuite, Inc. became the first application service provider to offer native Apple Safari Web browser support. Yes, real-time dashboards can run a lot more than just little widgets that we’re seeing today.

Lastly on the collaboration software front is the news from IBM that later this year that Lotus Sametime 7.5 client will support Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger). IBM is also working with the likes of Zimbra and Mozilla Foundation on Browser-Boosting Ajax Technologies. Once again that’s interesting because Opera, which is a member of the browser alliance along with Apple, Mozilla and Sun, announced that by mid year they’ll be adding widgets to their browser. Nice heads-up to what Apple will be doing in the next year. Yes, of course.

Things are adding up. Did you notice Steve Jobs begin a new kind of count at MacWorld. For a couple of years now, Jobs and/or Casanova provided us with QuickTime adoption counts and this time around he introduced the Widget count, which Jobs now says stands at over 1500. In and around that same time, Jobs introduced a new round of Apple based widgets - with the very first one being for … who? Yes, a Google Widget. Not exactly something Jobs would do if there was any real tension between these companies—wouldn’t you agree?

And going full circle, we see that it was Sun who kick-started the whole share theme last year. A theme that really took flight at the Sun/Google press conference which began the hail storm of buzz surrounding AJAX throughout the industry. So it’s nice to know that Zimbra, an Apple partner, is the AJAX poster child of how to excite the market. Hmm, and you have to wonder if yesterday’s patent from Apple is about a new mechanism for Safari using an AJAX approach. It states that the patent is about “a method and apparatus for integrating applets running on a client with the application logic for applications running on a server. The patent states that “A problem with the Internet is that the whole page needs to be resent from the server to the client with the changed or new data. This is slow and cumbersome.” Sounds exactly like the problem that AJAX is to solve. Yes, of course.

It’s very interesting to note that Apple and Sun both have a major program for share. Both have a program for iWork. Both seem to share a common-style Atom logo (see below) with Apple’s being a part of their Genius Bar logo. Sun’s iWork program involves worldwide drop in business centers. Apple’s Genius Bar is likewise a drop in center for small business. So are these companies on the same wave length? Well, there certainly is an awful lot of symmetry here, don’t you agree. Heck, Sun was the one of the first along with IBM to introduce podcasts for business.  Yet time will tell. For now however, it’s clear that Apple is working on a .mac program for small business and it will definitely involve AJAX technologies for real-time collaboration. 

Okay, now it’s time for a bit of fun and intrigue.

The .Mac logo is In-Genius

There was one last interesting development out of Macworld that was, in my opinion, simply brilliant. Some will see this as esoteric, and that’s fine. Perhaps you’d have to be in marketing to appreciate this one.

It involves Apple’s new .Mac logo itself. If you pay close attention, you’ll actually notice that there are now three rings around the .Mac Core. At the moment these rings are positioned in one direction. However, once Apple releases the other parts of their “share over the Internet” program, we’ll see these rings tilt into the very same configuration that are present in their current Genius Bar logo. That was their intention all along, in my opinion, and here’s why.

Apple’s Genius Bar logo represents the Atom. Yes…this goes right back to Steve Jobs first introducing Apple’s original theme of evolution, which began with “Carbon” and “Darwin.” It’s a known fact that ”carbon is a very special element because it plays a dominant role in the chemistry of life.” Yes, and in Apple’s case, that’s iLife, and a part of Share with .Mac.

We now have Apple’s “Share with .Mac” for consumers—thanks to iWeb. At some point in the future we’ll see “Collaborate with .Mac—for the enterprise. And then we’ll finally have lift-off once Apple introduces true wireless WiMax or cellular capabilities throughout their mobile hardware like the iPod, MacBook or “other” devices that are now in the wings. Yes, it’s all about real-time collaboration anytime, anywhere. Yes, and it’s all revolving around Apple’s Digital Hub … and Genius Bar.

Once Apple’s full game plan rolls out, we’ll finally see that Apple’s two logos (Genius Bar and .mac) are really one and the same and that they were always a part of Apple’s Next Wave of the Internet strategy since its very creation. So whether you share as a consumer or collaborate as a business, in the end, Apple’s “Share” is now and has always been—simply in-Genius.
Have an opinion on this? Email me at neo@macsimumnews.com

  Advanced Search

Article Information

Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This

Contributor

Recent Articles

Hotel München