Dot Mac changes coming?

I love the weeks before an Apple conference as the rumors are plentiful and anything is possible. The 3G iPhone, a tablet, Apple branded cookware -- anything is possible.

One of the rumors you're seeing a lot of these days is that changes are coming to .mac. Even Gruber has gotten into the act in his post about me.com. I don't like the sound of it... "me dot com" but then again I hated the name "wii" when it was first introduced and now I think it's pretty much perfect.

What I love about sites like Macrumors.com is that they put a whole lot of little things together in a way that makes it seem obvious. In their article about me.com they build an argument that starts with the name of the DNS admin.

I've got a whole bunch less evidence, but Apple is doing something different with .mac. Today, for the first time in my experience with the service, uploading got a whole lot better.

In the past, when I uploaded a large file to .mac the progress would seem surprisingly quick. "Whoah, I didn't know my connection was that fast. Look at that baby upload."

Then the progress bar would register that it was done uploading and I'd get a little spinny thing and the message would tell me "hey, don't worry about it, we're just closing up the upload stream and tidying things up. We'll have you out of here in no time."

But it wouldn't be no time. It would take forever and there would be no useful information in the mean time. "What is happening to my file? Where is it? Can I close my laptop now and go grab another cup of coffee?"

Today my experience changed and it was what it should have been all along. The progress bar moved much slower but it actually reflected the -- (hmm, what's the word for it ... oh yeah ) -- progress. This time I got an indication of how much had been sent and how much time remained. When the progress bar filled up, my upload was complete.

It seems to me that changes are coming to dot mac and we're seeing some of them now.