Oh, MacDailyNews--where were you when I was renewing my MobileMe subscription last month? According to one of the website's tiptsers, Apple is planning to hack the cost of an annual subscription to the cloud-based service off at the knees. Currently, access to MobileMe's services will set you back somewhere in the neighborhood of $100, although prices do vary. For those of our readers unfamiliar with what that hundred yards'll buy you, it's a pretty impressive list: push enabled contact, calendar, and email notifications, photo, video sharing, a place to park your website, online file sharing, 20 GBs of webspace (with free iDisk App access, no less) and features that allow you to locate and wipe a lost or stolen iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Even better, the service's laundry list of features are fully integrated with the bulk of the Apple software that came bundled with your Mac.

If MacDailyNews' source is correct, the service could move from a paid to a free model "sooner than later." Why would Cupertino make such a move?

Only The Shadow knows. And Steve Jobs. Now don't jump to conclusions -- Mr. Jobs is not The Shadow.

Most likely.

All the same, you can be sure that it's safe to speculate that if MobileMe becomes a free-for-all, we'll still be paying in one form or another. How? Well, Apple will be offering up iAd as a service to eager advertisers in the very near future. It'd be a safe bet that in exchange for the sheer number of services offered by MobileMe, users could be persuaded to willing to suffer a few ads. There's also a possibility that there could be two levels of membership: After all, current MobileMe users can already pay for additional storage.

Try not to hurt yourself mulling this one over folks, it's all just whispers and conjecture at this point. Only time will tell.