Let’s ignore the editorial prominence of the “Apple to Ship Smaller iPhone” headline for the purposes of this discussion, as this to me, is a no brainer.

Will Apple, Inc. morph its lame pay-to-play set of relatively feeble web crap as a massive new social cloud service with a freemium business model? That IS the question…

Here’s what we know:

1. Apple built its largest “iDataCenter” in Maiden, North Carolina about two years ago. It’s 5x their previous largest space. Here is some aerial surveillance courtesy of a local realtor:

The DataCenterKnowledge.com article states this space is;

“expected to provide the back-end for a larger move into cloud computing, with most speculation focusing on a shift of iTunes user libraries from user desktops to online storage.”

Sounds like a strong lead…Don’t really care so much about the iTunes thing just yet, but let’s not quibble with DataCenterKnowledge.com on the actual purpose…Since the specifics of Apple’s product tactical aren’t in their bailiwick.

2. Apple acquired LaLa. I wrote a post about this acquisition about 9 months ago and in it, I say:

IMHO, this was about the acquisition of talent by Apple, and using that talent to improve their existing products…And perhaps their existing streaming content line…Certainly work to be done…

I agreed with the TechCrunch report, which cited a quote from an unidentified Apple source who claimed this was an engineering acquisition and so the “existing products” may now indeed turn out to be a combination of iTunes functions inside MobileMe. More on this later.

3. Apple acquired Siri and PlaceBase. There isn’t a lot of speculation as to why, the functions of these two companies, namely voice commands and mapping are from an end user perspective pretty obvious. The Siri demo, see the video below, has an interesting twist in its offering of semantic or natural language search capabilities. More on this later.

The Placebase “white label” mapping platform formerly called “pushpin” included layer creation/control, but also allowed for a “stacking of data” or a structured repository including “social, financial, weather” et al. There was also a commercial API, and they were about to launch a free API. VERY interesting. Former CEO Jaron Waldman’s demo is below:

Apple also has a record for creating/acquiring redundancies in services/application offerings so as not place itself in a beholden position for certain technologies. Examples include iWork vs. Office and iLife vs. Adobe/Avid – certainly a voice recognition/mapping combo + data center would be a nice backup plan should Apple move into a more adversarial role say vs. Google? Oh right, that’s happened.

4. Apple filed a patent for “A Cloud Based Safety Deposit Box” in Q3 of 2009. A virtual “Time Machine”? Will Apple offer us a 100GB of storage in the cloud? Jim Dalrymple over at The Loop doesn’t think so. What about making iDisk more like Dropbox with regard to streaming/file sharing? More on this too…

5. Why we may never know, but the The Wall St. Journal and The New York Times may have both burried the headline in reporting this past week that Apple was indeed working on a revision of MobileMe. The Times saying Apple was “actively building a more versatile version of its MobileMe service…” – And the WSJ saying, “Social networking would be another key component.” Certainly bigger news than a smaller/larger/cheaper iPhone in my humble opinion.

6. Apple has a track record of doing away with fading technologies ahead of the industry, optical drives in MacBook Air machines are the latest/best example. Now it would appear hard drive storage is the next target, moving those fairly expensive BOM elements upscale, into the price of iPhone, iPad and MacBook lines while also employing a bit of marketing slight of hand, by using the more expensive SSD technology in lieu of the old, easily damaged and slower head/platton versions. The purpose for this move is clearly to accelerate the death of optical, including Blu-Ray, (a notably absent technology from Apple products) and to drive the adoption of streaming services tied to inexpensive trojan horse products, namely AppleTV, iPad and possibly a new storage free iPhone. The increased cost of SSD is likely in reality fairly minimal by Apple standards, given their stranglehold on the SSD market and volumes they purchase.

Apple could go back to 2000 and offer its web services for free.

Enough of the emperical triangulation, let’s talk analysis.

Cult of Mac has the most specific and detailed analysis by far of some the conjecture, citing an anonymous source who says the update will offer the following as new core servcies:

• A live video-streaming service like Ustream
• A location-based check-in system like Gowalla or Foursquare
• A geo-tagging system codenamed “Tokens” that tags real-world locations, like Facebook Places on steroids.

And a single iGoogle-like web page to configure/view them on…

We can take the Ustream element out of this discussion…I think a bit of a stretch, but as a premium offering, perhaps. Let’s focus on the data storage + location + social + existing MobileMe services (Mail, Address Book, Calenar, Web).

Ok, last things first, as this initial question is the most important to yours truly:

Question: Why, when there is so much engineering expertise on the Apple campus (who we know aren’t using the Mail, iCal and Address Book combo), have Mail, iCal and Address Book desktop and iOS apps sucked for so long?

Possible answer: Could it be improvement of their workings were part of a major revamp to the cloud strategy? Reports are saying that Apple wanted to launch this service a year ago…Let’s hope, because the existing situation is a bit of a nightmare.

Question: Will Apple offer a location/social service in the new MobileMe offering?

Possible answer: Being a Foursquare/Facebook/Twitter et al user for some time now, and believing in the value of sharing location data, it’s frustrating to have to do that every time I show up. Foursquare now has developers building passive add-ons for check in, allowing you to “check-in” w/out having to pull out your device, fire up the app, write something interesting, decide who to share it with, and then check in.

If Apple combines Ping with location, and ties it to your existing iPhone data already managed by iTunes, then ports those conversations/purchases to the cloud service for sharing in a properly secure social setting, it could be VERY big.

Question: Why did Ping first have Facebook integration and then not?

Possible answer: Ping originally allowed you to connect your Facebook account, and then removed that function almost as quickly as it was offered. Why? Certainly Facebook wants to offer best-in-class social to Apple users, and you know those teams are talking…

Will Apple and Facebook (and maybe Google) join forces in the unification of the social layer? Was Zuckerberg taking a page out of the Jobsian playbook and intentionally putting some distance between he and Apple when he said the “iPad isn’t Mobile.”? Were the Twin Towers actually brought down by controlled demolition?

Question: Why, when no company has had any real success with a music subscription service, would Apple decide it had a profitable solution?

Possible answer: They won’t, but they might allow you to stream your purchased files from your own system, they may even allow you to share those with a closed network of friends in say, an address book? How about an everlasting streaming service like Netflix but for MUSIC and video based around a la carte purchases instead of subscription?

Question: Why would Apple decide to offer this service at no charge?

Possible answer: Let’s remember, MobileMe was born from .Mac, which was originally launched as a free service. Instinctively, I believe Apple knows moving to a subscription model was a mistake, but at the time, as a loss leader, they didn’t see any other way to offset the services costs…Now with the iOS device margins, they have that offset.

Question: What about TimeMachine, will this service offer a back up solution as well?

Possible answer: Certainly the cropping up of any number of cloud back up services, say like Mozy, is only fuel for the fire…Will it be a back up solution for your whole system? Probably not, but certainly aspects of your files could be regularly sunk with your MobileMe account.

Question: Will Apple offer a Dropbox like solution for file sharing/streaming?

Possible answer: It would be incredibly stupid of Apple not too…This my friends, like the variety of iPods created after the initial units proved so successful, is also a no brainer. See Gladwell’s TED talk about spaghetti sauce.

The new MobileMe feature set may wow us all…Predicted release, in tandem with the iPhone 5 at the beginning of June…