From: Steven Frank (stevenf_at_panic.com)
Date: Sat Aug 30 2003 - 11:07:46 PDT
It's been really interesting to read everyone's responses on this
thread. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, as I've gone
through a lot of PDAs (Palms, Pocket PCs, Sharp Zaurus..) trying to
find something, anything, that's as usable as the Newt is. Of course,
there isn't anything.
As much as I love my Newt, I'm increasingly unable to use it in a
practical way, because up-to-date software is just no longer coming
fast enough. This is certainly not an attack on the remaining Newton
developers -- you guys are amazing, and to be applauded. But I wish
there were more of you. :)
Here's an example. One of the main things I like to do on a PDA is
keep an email archive of 1,000 to 2,000 messages from the last few
months, so that I can search it, etc, when I can't remember the details
of something. Our mail server is IMAP-SSL based, so there's nothing on
the Newton that can touch it directly. To use it with the Newton, I've
gone so far as to have procmail forward a copy of every email to an
external POP server, so I can collect it with SimpleMail, but having
extra copies of my emails floating around on other people's servers
makes me uncomfortable, so it's not a "real" solution that I can use
for the long-term.
And then, every once in a while, someone emails me a huge attachment...
If I don't know about it, and I go to check my email with SimpleMail,
I find myself holding my breath while it tries to pull this big thing
down with only 300 K of free heap. Sometimes it works... Sometimes
it's reset time.
And then there's the matter of wireless access draining my Newt's
battery in 10 minutes... That's not so easy to solve with software.
Another example is syncing. As ugly as Palm OS is, it does sync to my
iCal and Address Book, quickly and easily. NewtSync is a commendable
effort, but I've never gotten it to work 100% right, and it has done
some damage to my Address Book a couple of times, which makes me
nervous about using it again.
NOW, all that said, my experience with Sony Clie PDAs is far worse.
Their bundled email client supports only POP -- it's actually LESS
capable than SimpleMail on the Newton. So, already I'd be off to spend
$30-40 on VersaMail to get my needed IMAP-SSL support. In addition,
Sony Clies, for whatever reason, don't sync out of the box to Macs.
Every other Palm in the world does, just not Sony's. So, it's off to
Mark/Space to spend another $30 on Missing Sync, which provides the
necessary bridging. Finally, Sony does not give two seconds of thought
to appropriate integration of software for the hardware. An example:
I owned an Clie NX-70V (actually, it's currently about to sell on eBay
:)) because I thought, hey, cool! Nice big color screen and wireless
web browser! On the spec list, it looked pretty good. In reality,
however, the device does not have remotely enough "heap" RAM to
adequately run the browser. Every other page, a dialog would pop up
"Page too large!" and the web page would be cut off halfway down. It's
bordering on false advertising that they were promoting this PDA as
being able to browse the web. What it was able to download, it
rendered beautifully. But not being able to get the whole page makes
it nearly worthless for all practical purposes.
Finally, as I've written about on my weblog frequently, the user
interface on Clies is a beautiful mess. Palm OS itself was designed
for PDAs that shipped around the same time-frame as the Newton and
hasn't really been improved in any noticeable way since. Sony takes
that OS and slaps on an additional amalgamation of "improvements" that,
while they look nice, completely fail to be consistent with the
precedents of Palm OS, changing GUI paradigms every other screen, and
labeling everything with broken English. (My Clie came with a "Remoto
Control" application, and a variety of bizarrely phrased and misleading
error messages.) So, did they improve this in the UX-50? No, they
spent all their time putting the launcher icons onto a "rotating
cylinder" with a "3D cube" that you move around to select things.
Nice. Yeah, that's really going to save me time.
So, the moral of the story is: the spec list on the side of the box
does not tell you the full story. "Check your email wirelessly!"
(sure, as long as you use POP, and not on a secure server). "Browse
the web wirelessly on the go!" (as long as you only need the info on
the top half of the page). "Synchronize with your desktop computer!"
(as long as you use Windows). "Take pictures of your friends!" (as
long as you're OK with super-grainy 640x480 pics). "Listen to music!"
(you've got room for about 10-20 MP3s if you're lucky)
Ultimately, there's this vicious circle. Everyone understands that a
PDA should be able to do a certain few things -- get email, view web
pages, PIM syncing -- but no device, be it Newton or Clie, currently
has the right combo of up-to-date software and usability.
At the moment I'm using a T-Mobile SideKick for go-anywhere internet
access, but I'm also carrying a Tungsten T2 because the Sidekick's PIM
doesn't have any desktop syncing support. It's kind of ridiculous.
There is simply no single device that adequately does everything yet,
and I can't begin to understand why not. It's not like the technology
doesn't exist! I just don't think anyone currently designing PDAs
actually USES them.
About every 30-90 days, I end up selling whichever PDA I have on eBay
and buying something else, hoping that maybe this will be the one that
gets it right. And every few days, I pick up my Newton and think -- if
this was just a little bit faster, or just a little bit easier to use
with wireless networking, or had just a little better support for
such-and-such.... It would be exactly perfect.
If you do get the Clie, hang on to your Newton. You'll see what I mean
in about 2-4 weeks after purchasing the Clie.
Steven
http://stevenf.com/
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