I mean, if the best Moltz could do is a comment about people’s Steve Jobs watching, then what do you really expect from a hack like me? WWDC conference was boring. ”Blah blah blah, we’re changing the world, bloo de bloo, iPhones are cheaper, MobileMe blah blah blah.” Come on! Where’s the news? Where’s the world-shaping vision, like, say, a new mobile computing API, or new OS? I just don’t have anything to say.
No, now, don’t cry honey. Daddy’s just tired, and, oh, alright, alright, dry your eyes. I’ll pull something together, if you can stop crying. There now, all better? That’s my soldier! Okay, here goes.
Windows ME and Mobile Me: The Untold Story
Apple’s announcement of Mobile Me on Monday was seen by many as a step towards the future, but for Mobile Me itself, it was a return to the past.
“I had to change my name,” Mobile Me told us in an interview today. “He said we had to be different, he didn’t want anything to do with me. He was the richer one, so he stayed a ME and I changed my name to iTools.”
The Me advertising family has roots in MTV’s famous “Sex me, MTV“ campaign. So successful was this form of advertising that the 80’s, often called the MTV decade, was also known as the “Me decade”.
“I was on top of the world,” said Sex Me, now living in a seaside condo in Maui and calling himself Love Me, “The whole decade belonged to Me, and the 90’s were good, too. My childeren were selling cars, investments, drinks, and I had high hopes for my two little guys, Windows and Mobile. They seemed to get along well at first, but when they got a little older things got bad.
“You all know what happened to Windows. He fell in with a hard crowd. The things he did for them made me ashamed to be a Me. And the things he did to his brother Mobile… well, that was just unforgivable.”
The year was 1999, and Windows ME was preparing a huge launch with his new “friends” at Microsoft. Meanwhile, Mobile Me was working on a collection of technologies that were meant to make the internet more useful for people around the world. His time hadn’t yet come, but soon Mobile Me would be the one on everyone’s minds.
“Windows saw Mobile as a threat to his newfound position at Microsoft, and had him sued for the use of his–our–family name,” said Love Me. “What could Mobile do? Windows had all the Microsoft Money™ and lawyers on his side, and all Mobile had was a dream. He changed his name.”
For years, Mobile Me — now calling himself iTools– wandered, lost and alone, until a kindly Steve Jobs saw him and offered him a job.
“iTools was in a bad way,” Jobs recounts. “He was down on his luck, had just been hurt by his closest relative, and didn’t have any faith in himself. But I, I could see his potential.”
Jobs was good to iTools, who eventually changed his name to .Mac to cut any connections to the lost, forlorn service he had been. Slowly he rebuilt himself as something better than he had been. Then, recently, bittersweet news came.
“Windows ME had died a few years ago, driven to the edge by bad code merges and being left in the cold by Microsoft after they found XP,” sighed Love Me. “He took too many upgrades, mixed ‘em with some bootleg MP3’s and drove his device drivers off a cliff.”
Tragedy, however, cleared the way for .Mac to get his respect back. Apple’s lawyers sought to annul the ruling that forced him to change his name in the first place. And this Monday, .Mac was as surprised as anyone when Mr. Jobs gave him back his name.
“I can’t tell you how good it feels to be Me again,” said the newly-renamed service, smiling quietly in his Cupertino office. “There’s still some paperwork to do, but on July 11th I’ll be back to my old self again, and better than ever. I wish… in a strange way I wish Windows ME was still here to see it. I don’t know if I can forgive him for what he put me through, but I do miss him.”
“It’s good to see my son get his dignity back,” says Love Me. ”He’s like a brand-new service, and, as his name says, he’s really going places.”
