Reports are emerging that Mac OS X 10.5.3 is laden with hints that Apple will rename its online .Mac service.
Codingrobots.com is reporting that changes to multiple strings in Mac OS X 10.5.3 point towards a new name for Apple's online Mail, web hosting, iDisk, backup and sync services.
iCal’s Localizable.strings file contains the following string:
/* Label of .Mac button in iCal’s General preferences. %@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac) (remove -XX02)
Safari has the following lines in its Localizable.strings:
/* Title of .Mac alert sheet, with .Mac brand name subsituted */
“You need a %@ account that has syncing enabled” = “You need a %@ account that has syncing enabled”;
Mail’s Prefs.strings:
/* Title of button used to open the .Mac system preference pane. */
“AOS_SYNC_BUTTON_FORMAT” = “%@…”;
/* Descriptive text for .Mac Sync. */
“AOS_SYNC_FORMAT” = “Use %@ to synchronize Accounts, Rules, Notes, Signatures, and Smart Mailboxes.”;
It appears that almost every reference of .Mac has been replaced with "%@" which means that the name will be inserted automatically by applications.
It was reported by TUAW in early-May that .Mac would see a complete revamp and see the introduction of over-the-air syncing with Exchange and .Mac syncing with Windows, the blog site noted that this would likely happen at WWDC 2008.