Non-Filipino readers might find this post’s title odd, but it’s just Taglish for “I’m mobile”, which for this blogger is a clumsy play on the rumored new name for Apple’s .Mac service (and for the purposes of this blog will be referred to as DotMac, to retain the sanity of my word processor’s autocorrect feature.) It’s also a play on the current and more-than-annoying marketing campaign of local telecom provider Smart Communications called “Me na Me” presently irritating us silly here in Manila for their Smart Buddy service.

Ok. So there I go ruining the whole structure of the post just so I could have my silly title. Let’s just have it out then: According to rumors, Apple seems to be set on renaming their DotMac service, that US$99 one-year thing where you get a paltry amount of online storage and a snotty email address that ends in “mac.com” (and some other stuff), to Mobile Me. Ugh.

Dunno about you, but the fact that you can get everything DotMac is offering for free elsewhere online seems to me a testament to the lengths fanboys will go to for their mothership. (Full disclosure: I used to be suckered into this thing too, and had a DotMac account for three years or so until I wised up and saved my money instead to buy more useful things like food. And beer.) But apparently it may be time to come back to the fold.

According to many archived reports, Apple trademarked the name Mobile Mac on Jan. 5, 2006, and while much was made of it at the time as Apple folk are wont to do, nothing happened and people forgot about it. Now though, people poking through the code of the recently released 10.5.3 update of Leopard have come across considerable evidence that Apple is finally going to use the two-year-old name, presumably after the relaunching announcement to be made at Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote on June 9.

A rose by any other name, blah blah. What’s more important is what new stuff it will offer for the hundred bucks (or however much they’ll be charging for it), and right now all we can do is make educated guesses. Obviously it will tie in with the new 3G iPhone and include stuff like push email, wireless syncing and things Blackberry fans have been enjoying for years. We’ll just have to add Mobile Me to our list of things to wait for during the keynote. If it had really useful features, I wouldn’t be averse to signing back up again and resurrecting my old DotMac address.

Which also means most of us renegade iPhone users will have to formally sign up with Globe Telecom when it finally releases the phone for my country (sometime in September, if rumors are to be believed). Obviously my non-3G first-gen kracked-and-jailbroken iPhone won’t do, so I’ll have to pony up for the new one. Life is hard. Ah, well.

(By the way, is it just me, or does Mobile Me really sound like an embarrasingly jejune name for an Apple service? It even sounds …Microsoftian, like something Gates and Ballmer might’ve thought up. Sheesh.)

[Box art mock-up via TUAW]

Many Mac users have been hoping for safer, faster Solid State Drives in their lappies ever since the Air was launched with the option. In fact, many secretly pray that SSDs become (cheaply) available with all new Macbooks, hopefully to be announced at the WWDC Jobs keynote in a few days, cost, capacity and availability notwithstanding.

But what about us with existing clunky and primitive old Macbooks and Macbook Pros? Will we be doomed to be forever looking from the sidelines, laboring under the slower, power-hungry and easily damaged old-fashioned harddrive?

Never fear, ExperCom is here!

ExperCom is offering a service that does SSD upgrades for both new and old Macbooks or Macbook Pros, at prices ranging from US$550 to US$899. Or you can buy preconfigured units directly from them at US$1649 for a white Macbook with a 60gb SSD or a Macbook Pro with a 120gb SSD at US$2649. No word if they’d do it for your tangerine toilet seat iBook G3, though.

Check out the site here. It even includes charts and explanations why SSDs will cure cancer and bring about world peace. That is, if you’re one of the few still sitting on the fence, mind-fogged by the black propropaganda being spread around by traditional harddrive manufactures that SSDs are fragile, low-capacity, expensive cr@p.

The temptation is great, but think I’ll hold off until they offer higher-capacity and cheaper SSDs - or upgrade to some future Mac altogether.

But it is something to think about, isn’t it?

Apple seems to be softening up on its one-provider-fits-all policy for the iPhone in other parts of the world.

Recent announcements reveal that yes, it is now possible to have different providers sell the iPhone in the same markets, particularly in Europe. For example, Deutsche Telecom has had the exclusive right to distribute the iPhone in Austria, but now Orange is getting in on the action there as well. In Italy, Vodafone and Telecom Italia are now both distributing the iPhone, while in Egypt and Portugal, Vodafone and Orange both have their fingers in the Apple pie.

In the US, the five-year exclusivity contract between Apple and AT&T apparently still stands, but T-Mobile USA has recently started providing wifi service in Starbucks cafes alongside AT&T. Hmm.

In the Doodler’s home country, it was recently announced that Globe, one of the two dominant telecom providers along with Smart, will be releasing the iPhone in the Philippines this year through its partnership with Singapore Telecommunications, which has acquired the rights from Apple for the region.

So it isn’t impossible to see a Smart iPhone in the future as well, after all.

Well, as we say here in my country, the more, the many-er.

Just a heads-up.

This post may not be too much use to our overseas readers, but here in the Philippines, Mac users here who have Metrobank accounts who have been chomping at the bit to do online banking will find this good news.

The Metrobank system has been uncooperative with Macs ever since, forcing Mac users to turn to the dark side for their online banking needs. Well, as of yesterday, all seems to be fine with Macs and MetrobankDirect. I have it on good authority that the bank has been working hard all this time and they’ve finally licked it.

For Metrobank money matters via Macs go here.

If you have a .Mac account using Panther and think you can get by without upgrading to Leopard (like you did with not upgrading to Tiger the last time), this time you’re SOL. You’re going to have to bite the bullet and bump up to OS 10.5, or at least the latest Tiger update, if you hope to continue using the US$99 service.

Starting last Friday, Apple began the process of abandoning full .Mac syncing support for users of OS 10.3. To have “uninterrupted service”, Panther users will have to pony up for at least 10.4.10 or later.

A technical note from Apple states that they are doing this to support .Mac enhancements that will emerge with the release of Leopard today, and will leave users of older versions out in the cold, especially with Calendar syncing.

Apple says

If you use Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier, be aware that in order to accommodate new enhancements, .Mac Sync will no longer support syncing calendars between a Mac OS X 10.3.x-based Mac and a Mac OS X 10.4.x-based Mac. Syncing calendars between two Mac OS X 10.3.x-based Macs is unaffected.”

Thus pushes the inexorable march of progress.