O'Grady's PowerPage : "While most folks are already paying for email and web space through an ISP, Apple is able to sell their .mac service because of the way iDisk, iCal and iPhoto integrate with it. How else could you sell a customer something they already have? Of course the iApps that only run on Jaguar don't hurt new OS sales either."

O'Grady is concerned about how Apple is stepping on the toes of developers. It seems to me that Apple's tools are providing the ability of small developers to create useful apps. Look at how NetNewsWire integrates into weblog flow. iDisk and ftp in the finder allows apps like blosxom easily integrated into OS X.  8:59:43 PM    

The most annoying thing about Apple's new iCal is that the date on the icon in the dock clearly reads July 17. I will be stuck in early summer forever now.  8:39:51 PM    

I finally redid the theme here. I found the Beowolf theme hard to read and kind of cramped when I would look at ODB. I'll need to redo some of the customization I had done, since I liked having the updated Weblogs.com list on every page.  11:49:32 AM    

Mac Net Journal: "For me, iCal joins most of the rest of the iApps as an example of an easy-to-use but not for high end applications that Apple is highlighting in its suite of OS X applications. And for me, the only iApp that has found a solid place in my Dock so far is iTunes. "

Now that I've had a chance to play with iCal and iChat a bit, I'm beginning to see the .Mac strategy take form.

It's an approach that is very consonant with the Unix that serves as the core of OS X. Unix apps are typically small and modular, doing one thing very well. A text editor like vi just edits text. On the surface it is so simple as to be baffling to the uninitiated. However once you learn how you can send email from within vi using a different program and a few key strokes, you see the power of the approach. When you realize how many options lurkk beneath, you see that the tools are flexible and customizable. Linking tools together creates a customized work flow.

I realized the connection when I saw how the apparently useless Address Book app had collected my buddy list from iChat. Each iApp so far has been dead-simple in its user interface. iPhoto and iDisk are tightly integrated. But data is linked between devices and apps to create an environment.

This couldn't be more different from the highly integrated, feature rich world of Windows apps. OS X is clean looking. Windows is cluttered and confusing.

The Unix analogy is just that. There are fundamental differences between the simple, text based world of Unix and the proprietary graphics based world of Apple. The services of the iApps tend to use open standards, but the integration is tied to .Mac, the service.   6:16:34 AM