Everybody loves iCards, right? Arguably, it's the most engaging aspect of Apple's whole Internet strategy; iTools is a bit useful, but it's not exactly "gee-whiz" quite yet, and iReview-- well, let's just say it's still got room for improvement. (Reviewing AtAT might be a big step in the right direction, hint hint.) But iCards is pretty nifty; Apple could easily have fallen into the "just another e-cards service" trap, but didn't. It's a lot of fun to pick a classy picture, add your own text, and mail it off, secure in the knowledge that your correspondent will receive a custom-made JPEG file instead of a just a gibberishy URL pointing them to a garish GIF animation and a cheesy MIDI version of the Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb On Me."

The only real drawback to Apple's approach is that some would consider it a waste of bandwidth; whereas a URL is only a few dozen bytes long and lets the recipient choose if and when to view the "card," Apple's iCards are generally about 30 KB that streams right into your inbox, whether you were expecting it or not. Granted, 30 KB isn't exactly gargantuan, even over the slowest dialup connections, but still, for some people it's the principle of the thing. And if AppleInsider is right about where Uncle Steve plans to take iCards next, well, soon it may be a problem in practice, too.

See, the neatest thing about iCards is that if you're an iTools user, you can drag your own JPEG files to the "Pictures" folder on your iDisk and those pictures become available for you when you make iCards. Our custom Stalin-in-a-party-hat birthday iCard is a work of art, for example. Now, if you've used your iDisk at all, you've probably noticed that there's also a folder there for movies-- which means you can see where this is going. Apparently Steve's planning to integrate iCards with iMovie, so that someday you'll be able to send iCard birth announcements to all your friends featuring full-color video of your blessed child waving his little pink arms (or of the birth itself, if that's your bag). And while that's a natural progression, we can't help but wonder whether Steve's planning some kind of file size limit to iMovieCards, or whether he just figures everyone's got a T3 piped right into the living room. Personally, even with a cable modem connection, we're not thrilled at the idea of receiving a 12.6 MB iCard celebrating the completion of cousin Johnny's toilet training in graphic detail-- and not just because of file size reasons.