But what about the disadvantages of owning a wireless provider?  First, they would have to fix the horrible customer service issues many complain about the not only AT&T, but every other wireless provider.  Consensus is, there are no good carriers, just varying degrees of poor.  Could Apple resolve such a tough issue? What about all the other phones carried by AT&T? Motorola, Palm, Samsung, etc.  Would Apple just drop them?  Of course it would be nice to have a nationwide network of “iPhone Stores” to augment it network of Apple Stores. Maybe by the time such a deal does transpire, Apple will have a suite of iPhones to complete its product line.  The iPhone 3G, the iPhone Nano, the iPhone this and iPhone that.

This idea is a stretch, but think about the possibilities if they could figure out how to resolve the customer service issues. Isn’t Skype up for sale? What would this do to the Apple TV? Would I be able to download music, the second part of the triangle, from anywhere. 

This gives MobileMe a whole new meaning.

With Apple actually delivering these applications and Microsoft just talking about it, can developers afford to wait for Redmond to ship IE 8?  Will there applications be cross browser capatible? Apple says theirs will be. Of course, Safari will run them faster, but they will be open standard compliant, so any browser should run them exactly the same.

We will see if Apple delivers on it’s promise by the end of July.  Let’s hope that MobileMe doesn’t turn into another Vista.  It needs to be stable, fast and reliable when it hits the street.  Apple seems to be trying to create an image of fast, lightweight and reliable and a black eye called MobileMe would be a serious setback.

Outlook Web Access basically gives the PC user web based email, calendaring, address book and file access from any web browser, all linked to the company Exchange Server.

Sound like MobileMe to the rescue.  Outlook Web Access, except better, newer, more features, easier to use and open standards based.

Now its getting interesting…

Well, if MobileMe is Exchange for the rest of us, then Snow Leopard and MobileMe together must be the beginnings of a version Exchange built by Apple to compete directly with Microsoft’s Exchange.

Just read the features list of the OSX Snow Leopard Server.

• Calendar Server
• Address Book Server
• Email Server
• etc…

Sure, the current version of Leopard Server has a calendar server and an email server, but NOT an address book server.  Want to bet it will be a “push” server. Sound familar?

How about the “new” email server.  What new email server? Up to now Apple has used a collection of open source products, like Postfix for email.

Look at the actual text from the Snow Leopard Server page…

Mac OS X Server’s open standards-based mail service is the ideal server for small businesses or companies looking to bring email in-house. Snow Leopard Server dramatically increases its performance and scalability with an overhauled engine designed to handle thousands of simultaneous connections. Mail services have been enhanced to include server-side email rules and vacation messages.

How is Apple going to “dramatically increase performance and scalability” of this “overhauled engine”?  Perhaps by using the existing open source products as a jumping off point to build their own version of Exchange. Modular perhaps, but Exchange none the less. I might be wrong, but I don’t think Postfix currently supports server-side email rules or vacation messages. 

Just a hunch, but most small businesses don’t need “thousands of simultaneous connections”.  Sounds like an move to the enterprise to me. Lots of Macs, iPhones, iPod Touch and other upcoming products, all synchronized and available from the users Outlook Web Access MobileMe account, anywhere.

Well see in… “about a year”.