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A number of files in the 10.5.3 update concealed the first clue. iCal's Localizable.strings file, for instance: "/* Label of .Mac button in iCal's General preferences. %@ is the new name of Apple's online service (was .Mac) (remove -XX02); and in the Safari equivalent, several references to "%@" as a requirement for syncing.

No clue there what the new name might be - "percent at" seems unlikely - but the iPhone SDK does give a hint. The Coding Robots blog uncovered a reference to the "MOBILE_ME_SERVICE_NAME" buried deep in the developers' documentation.

Investigators then turned their attention to domain names, specifically those registered following the recent opening up of Montenegro's .me domain. And yes, Apple has registered itunes.me, ipod.me and apple.me, while me.com is parked at

So what does that all point to? A new service, possibly called dotMe or Mobile Me, offering syncing between Apple computers, as .Mac does at the moment, but also between its mobile devices.

Over to Gruber, no fan of the ".bad" .Mac.

"Why expand .Mac to include iPhone synching [sic]?," he asks. "Consider the new over-the-air push synching of email, contacts, and calendars Apple has already revealed for the scheduled-for-release-next-month iPhone OS 2.0. As it stands now, these features will only be available for users of Microsoft Exchange. Awkward. Assuming Apple wants to bring similar features to non-Exchange users, too, what we now call .Mac seems the mostly likely route."

Gruber then points at four Apple trademarks for Mobile Me - filed in January 20076, a full year before the iPhone was unveiled. Looks like Apple may have been planning it all along, which won't come as a surprise to anyone who's spotted the forward thinking evident in its music business.

So we have an enhanced .Mac, renamed Mobile Me, that syncs across all Apple devices. Sounds possible, highly likely too given the value it would add to Apple's ecosystem, but what's the betting that copying to iDisk is still the Finder on Valium?