On 1/5/02 9:38 AM, "BK" <bk_newtontalk_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, January 6, 2002, at 12:01 , Michael Whitten wrote:
>
>> I never believed the iWalk for a sec either, it just was not something
>> Apple
>> would design or put on the market. I think if Apple were to get back
>> into
>> the PDA market they would buy Palm, and reingineer that. Not create
>> another
>> platform.
>
> It may well be that Apple will at some point in time get back into the
> PDA business but I doubt that this will be now. Sure if they bought
> Palm, now would be the best time to do so as Palm's share prize is
> almost near junk value but would the Palm technology be something for
> Apple worth to build upon ? Unlikely! The Palm is light years behind
> what the Newton was and everybody would certainly expect a lot more from
> an Apple PDA than what you could get out of the Palm as a basis. Apple
> would basically have to dump the whole thing and start from scratch. The
> Newton technology is far better suited to build upon than anything else
> there is and Apple still owns that anyway. They would probably use the
> Newton core and perhaps port the most important pieces to the PowerPC
> and build upon that.
>
> But as I said, I doubt that this is on the agenda.
The reason they should build upon Palm is one very simple thing. The Palm
brand. Palm has a reputation as THE PDA. This is why their market share is
so great.
>> As for the Wireless Data/VoIP thing: This would actually be quite
>> interesting to see, however, it would only work in the larger cities and
>> centralized areas. Why? Range.
>
> Sure, but the point is to have cheap but relatively high bandwidth in
> highly frequented places. So even in the country side, a local coffe
> shop or restaurant or whatever other kind of venue where people meet and
> sit for a while.
>
Of course. However, you need an authentication scheme that actually works.
802.11b is inherently insecure.
>> I live in the Outskirts of a suburb of
>> Nashville. If I go farther south of here, I lose most if not all of my
>> digital cell coverage.
>
> I wasn't talking about cellular communications though.
>
I was just making a point about range.
>> I could see this working in a centralized building or
>> a tightly packed city such as NY. But this brings up another thing that
>> plagues WiFi now. Cross-contamination and improper use. A person could
>> take
>> a laptop sit in a park next to a Wireless building and use their
>> connection.
>> Possibly their internal net too. Now imagine if the phone system was on
>> this
>> connection as well. Free international calls too! Unique Ids won't help
>> either. Airsnort will find those Ids. Unless Apple comes up with a new
>> technology that can integrate 802.11(x) With VoIP and is 100% secure, we
>> will never see this.
>
> This is not a problem to be handled at the WiFi level though. If you
> have a VoIP portal on a public network you need to authenticate your
> customers in any event. This can be done using SSL/SSH or the way
> cellular networks authenticate mobiles. Services such as telephony could
> require the use of a SIM card which is authenticated by the issuer of
> the card or one could use RF fingerprints (no two radios have the same
> RF signature, Corsair have a technology based on this to identify
> cellphones).
>
This would work, however, there actually needs to be some kind of
cross-platform protocol to do this. Or in the case of a SIM card, you would
need a reader. How would you connect this reader to, say, and iBook? The RF
sig would actually work if it is incorporated in to a protocol of some kind.
Currently there is no such protocol that actually does this.
>> Now there could be something of a PalmOS device with wireless capability
>> unveiled with Rosetta instead of Grafitti for HWR. THAT would be
>> interesting!
>
> But it doesn't sound like StarTrek.
>
> I'd say it is certain that Apple won't come up with a beam-me-up-scotty
> device, time warp or any of the fancy medical technology shown on
> StarTrek, so what's left is a very sophisticated voice recognition based
> OS, which may be possible but unlikely; a communicator through which you
> are always in contact with the base or perhaps a pen computer which
> wouldn't be anything novel.
>
> rgds
> bk
>
>
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