layout: post title: Apple Rumours created: 1061390880 categories:

• Mac
• VoIP

I've been thinking about what Apple might be up to next. This is, of course, a time honoured tradition. Here are my predictions:

1. iTunes for Windows will ship at the same time as international user support
2. iChat AV will be turned into a soft client for VoIP; .Mac will add mac-to-phone gateways and voicemail

Doing it all in one go will ensure a massive launch. My question is whether Apple's servers are going to be able to hold out on "opening day". Akamai already does a bunch of caching for them...do they help out with music streaming as well?

iChat AV does VoIP

This one might be a little farther out, but it just kind of makes sense to me. Also, this is definitely something that I would pay for a .Mac account for. Any decent geek can get webmail and online storage space going, but a VoIP gateway is orders of magnitude trickier -- and therefore worthwhile. If the service is built well, and people really like it, it can be a massive lock-in. It will ensure that people don't move off the Mac platform, and new converts are likelier to stick around.

Of course, they won't have Canadian area codes available until 2010...

By the way, check Mac OS Rumors for your freshest Apple/Mac related rumours. They seem to think that iChat will at the least go multi-platform (MSN, Yahoo, etc.), and that apparently some ICQ accounts may already be accessible. I tried to add my ICQ account (20554868), but it didn't show up.