Given the fact that most PDAs on the market are mere toys which ran the
technogeek fad of the month, I can think of lots of improvements apple could
make on a current day PDA:
1. Storage space - 5 GB could really help in storing records, books, pics,
yes even music, even a scaled down OS with real programs. Compare the
limitations of an 8MB palm to the potential of a 5GB drive which doesn't
erase when the power runs out and 128 MB of ram.
2. Programs that really work and are useful: Have you ever run Windows CE
Word. Yikes, I can type a letter in the time it takes to load up a document
longer than one page. Potentially you could get appleworks to run on a small
device. Motorola must have a billion G3 chips laying around, say 300 or so
MHZ
3. More screen real estate - the palm is just too small for anything with
any significance, especially pdf documents which never show up correctly on
the screen
4. Fast, easy sync - Palm sync is slow and cumbersome, USB is slow, firewire
is fantastic. Look at the comments on this forum about ports and cables and
Newton sync. The ipod can download files in minutes not hours.
5. Wireless communications. Not like the palm VII which was a commercial
flop but the ability to link to a base station with little effort for
surfing the web, transferring files and schedules. And the ability to
connect to a digital phone for those times away from home.
6. Multimedia - yes viewing pictures in better than fuzzy grayscale or 16
bit color. And listening to MP3s. Quicktime and itunes technologies already
in place.
7. Decent handwriting recognition - we all admit apple holds the patent on
this one. No grafitti necessary.
8. Ability to share documents - won't have to wait for adobe. OS X already
allows opening of pdf documents. Just need a scaled down document viewer.
Steve Jobs wants a piece of hardware that everyone "just has to have." An
ordinary PDA will rot on the shelf. How many of your friends have Palms
sitting in their desk with all their programs since lost to battery wear
down. I used to see them at meetings all the time and now only occasionally.
A multipurpose device which will do all kinds of things fast and well would
catch the attention of lots of people disappointed with their palm's
limitations. Why bother for a 10% market share. Well look at the Windows
users who drool all over their forums over the ipod.
OK so I'm talking about a small laptop I guess. That's why I have two
(laptops). One for work and one for play. But wouldn't a device like that
blow the windows community away for a few years? Until then my palm rots in
a desk drawer and I imagine a world where the newton was not discontinued.
Dream on...
Chet Johns
On 1/4/02 2:28 PM, "Jim Anderson" <jiman_at_microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> I dunno. There's a big assumption there that even if the iWalk
> is real it will be better than the Newton. ...
> And still we keep using our Newtons because they do what we
> need them to do better than anything else out there. Why should a new
> Apple PDA be any different?
>
> Jim Anderson
>
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