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The Evolution Of PDAs
rbruels writes: "They first made their appearance as clunky high-tech note pads for Captain Kirk (embedded sound warning) and his crew, but back here in the 21st century, the proliferation of the PDA has become a real phenomenon. This story on Unstrung gives a good insight into the evolution of these portable devices, and the factors that will influence their growth in the years to come. A good read. (As a side note, I have yet to purchase a PDA. /me hangs his head in shame.)" More importantly than where they've been though, is what's next for PDAs. What features would you trade the baby for?
Most of that size probably comes from the cellphone-spec battery. Just eyeballing my phone and PDA, they're the same thickness. But the PDA's built-in MP3 player sucks the battery dry. (11 hours with the screen off, 3 with the screen on. Which makes me wonder why Sony bothered with visualizations. Guess some people are impressed with das blinkenlights.) Imagine what a dual- or tri-band cellphone would do for battery life. It could possibly survive as a digital-only phone, but analog? Fuggedabahtit.
The pdQ/SmartPhone probably sounded like a good idea at the time, but in practice, it comes off as two devices surgicially attached, rather than designed as a single unit. Microsoft's Stinger sounds closer to the ideal, although the Pocket PC part is somewhat watered down.
What I'd like to see is, ironically, a three-part design, but with a different segregation of duties:
- PDA: Any kind would do.
- Cellphone: Here's the tricky part. It would just be the antenna and battery. No buttons. It gets all its marching orders from the PDA. The Address Book's role is pretty obvious. Service providers could provide applets that automate things like voice mail without wading through "Press 1 to
..." menus. This way, the cellphone part can be made as small as possible and left in a pocket or purse.
- Headset: like you said, something small and rugged. Would also be used for audio from/to the PDA, depending on its capabilities (alarm tones, MP3s, text-to-speech, voice annotations, etc).
All three would be connected by the wireless protocol du jour, of course. The failure or loss of the PDA would be an issue for the cellphone (voice-recognition dialing?), but this is just off the top of my head. I haven't written this on the back of an Eat'n'Park placemat yet.We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
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I've owned a Palm organizer for about three years now (first a PalmPilot Personal, then a Professional, and now a III) and I find it incredibly convenient. However, the screen resolution has remained stagnant at 160x160. Other organizers top out at 320x320 or 320x240; while that seems to be the limit of the density we can pack into such a small surface area, I sometimes need more.
:)
My ideal PDA, which won't roll off the assembly line for a long time, would have an expandable display. I could leave it at the current Palm-like size to hold in one hand, fold it out to show wider information (for spreadsheets, week-at-a-glance views, etc) and fold it out again to read information newspaper-style. Given the recent advancements in paper-like display technology, I think that this could be done within the next 5-10 years. The shirt-pocket-sized form factor is still very appealing, even though most people don't carry organizers in their shirt pocket anyway. Still, it would be nice to have the option of display sizes.
Oh, and of course it would have WLAN support. There's no use in a big display if there's no live information for it.
For more information, click here.
The CMU speech folks, Alan Black and Kevin Lenzo, told me last Thursday that they'd have a package for the Linux iPAQ in another week. And it's going to be small enough to include by default.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I totally agree with you here:
;-)
... (you get the idea)
:-)
There are a whole bunch of reasons why a PDA will never replace a laptop. I wouldn't mind replacing my Cellphone with a PDA, actually, assuming that I could just use a headset.
I have an m505, and before that, I had a Palm V. I love both using both of these machines. Because my job requires me to travel a lot, and I am occasionally gone for a couple of weeks at a time, form factor and battery life are the most important thing to me. The IPAQ size is still too big and heavy, and the battery life is still terrible compared to the Palm, so that is what I went with when I upgraded this year.
What I like about the Palm is how simple and intuitive the interface is. I don't need to know the internals, and truth be told, I don't really want to. I have several Linux and OpenBSD boxes for hacking and things of that ilk. I don't need spreadsheets, or presentation software (this is an organizer, after all, not a laptop) but I would like e-mail, and cell phone functionality. In the same form factor, with the same battery life. Somebody else posted bluetooth connectivity to a wireless headset, and I think that's a great idea.
Where the Palm V fell short was memory. The m505 takes care of that. What's missing?
Cell phone/wireless functionality.
Ogg Vorbis Player
About 1GB of memory for the Ogg Vorbis player
Thinking back, I used to be terribly disorganized. I would have sticky notes and multiple 8x11 notebooks, filled with stuff that I could never find, and couldn't index. My boss and coworkers urged me to take an organizational class, and man, it was good advice. What I did differently, however, was I bought my first PDA (the Palm V) two weeks before the class, learned how to write well with it, and then used it as the basis of my organizational system. I took the class, but used the Palm instead of their materials. It worked out great! Now I have notes from every project I have worked on since 1999, all searchable, and always at my fingertips. Need to know about tuning Solaris kernel internals? No problem, did that in
Sorry if this ended up sounding like an advertisment for Palm, but I really love my PDA.
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
PDAs... You kids these days have it EASY! Why, in my day we had to scratch our notes onto pieces of SLATE and carry that around! None of this mamby-pamby "put it in your pocket" stuff. If you wanted to carry 20 names you had to lug 400lbs of stone. But did we complain? NO!
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
At the moment PDAs have small screen. But that may change. You don't need a big device to make a big hologram (that the future I think). PDAs DO have keyboards. You obviously haven't only seen a couple of PDAs. Also, you can get ad-on keyboards.
You can't talk to your voice-enabled PDA during a meeting or on a busy bus so don't expect the interface to ever improve.
Why? What makes you say that? Never heard of filters and directional microphones? I have a 20 year old dictaphone that can do this.
PDAs appeal to techno-geeks and power-hungry professionals, but they don't appeal to the average Joe who still prefers pen and paper.
Do a survey on that? Cellphones where only for yuppies, business men a few years ago. Now everyone has them.
PDAs aren't powerful enough to do what a PC does.
Sure, that the moment, a PDA can't do 3D modeling and video editing. But It can easily do the the more common tasks, like word processing, MP3s, PIM, surfing the web etc...
PDAs aren't expandable.
Yes they are. Go to palm.com, and handspring.com and se for yourself.
Portable computers break down more and are more expensive to fix when it happens.
My Vx has never had a hardware failure, and has only needed a hard reset once, when I installed a doggy program. I has been more reliable that ANY desktop OS i have ever used or any desktop computer/laptop.
Most home users who want a low-cost entry point to the web will opt for the much-more-powerful console gaming system.
Not everyone will want a gaming console. Not everyone is a young male.
Dropping PC prices will continue to put pressure on the bottom end of the market, making the PC an attractive purchase.
Not sure how that fits in here
The evolution of the PDA really has no limits.
One of the first things I learned about purchasing a computer was that no matter how large the hard drive space, no matter how fast the processor, no matter how much bandwidth you have on your connection, you will always find a way to use the power. The software knows no bounds.
I found the same true when I got a Palm IIIxe last Christmas. At first, I only dabbled with it -- I took some notes, I downloaded a couple of simple games. But now, my entire life is organized on it. I have novels from Project Gutenberg and AvantGo web pages for reading material on long flights. Addresses and phone numbers. And recently, I discovered LispMe -- a Lisp/Scheme interpreter -- so now I can code, too! The calendar has every material appointment, and the Todo list has things to remember months in advance.
I look at the iPaq and think, "What would you possibly use all that for?" But I also know that if I owned one, I'd think of something to use it for. I'd make it work the way I work.
There really is no end to how far the PDA will evolve.
Again, the mainstream press is trying to inflate PDAs into something they're not. Let me say this very clearly so it's not missed:
PDAs will never replace a desktop PC.
Here are some reasons this will never happen:
- PDAs have tiny screens and no keyboards -- the interface is too cumbersome.
- You can't talk to your voice-enabled PDA during a meeting or on a busy bus so don't expect the interface to ever improve.
- PDAs appeal to techno-geeks and power-hungry professionals, but they don't appeal to the average Joe who still prefers pen and paper.
- PDAs aren't powerful enough to do what a PC does.
- PDAs aren't expandable.
- Portable computers break down more and are more expensive to fix when it happens.
- Most home users who want a low-cost entrypoint to the web will opt for the much-more-powerful console gaming system.
- Dropping PC prices will continue to put pressure on the bottom end of the market, making the PC an attractive purchase.
I could go on with dozens more points and I'm sure I'll be attacked by all the technology messiah's out there, but the fact is that they don't nor will they ever be able to give an ideal mix of low cost, low footprint, and high power. Because of this they will remain as fancy personal organizers for the forseeable future.
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Along with the inevitable increases in speed and battery life, I think that we can probably expect the following advances in PDA technology over the next few years:
- More non-volatile storage space so that video becomes viable. Reasearch into minimizing non-disk based storage will be directly funded by a coalition of 'adult entertainment companies' headed by Christie Hefner and Robert Guccione.
- Vibrating batteries, as used in cell phones and pagers, will be modified for use with PDA's for those... long, lonely trips.
- Javascript-enabled web browsers will be ported to PalmOS so that we can be etertained by browser windows that reopen themselves, or their affiliates pages, no matter how many times you try to close them.
- New games will be written, targeted for PDA's that have touchpads or stylus interfaces. Players will be required to interact with in-game 'characters', either with thier hands... or their toungues.
- The X-10 mini-camera will become ubiquitous in most PDA designs, but for 'recreational' purposes only. The forementioned industry group will take no responsibilty for sexual harassment suits centering around misuse of X-10 technology.
- The popularity of Ascii Porn will skyrocket, creating a new market for fixed-width fonts.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I dono if I agree with the conclusions of the article. Especially when they mentioned that the iPAQ has Pocket Excel and then said that there isn't any good spreadsheet packages.
There are a whole bunch of reasons why a PDA will never replace a laptop. I wouldn't mind replacing my Cellphone with a PDA, actually, assuming that I could just use a headset.
But a PDA, by nature, has to fit in your pocket. How often do you use a non-electronic information source that doesn't fit in your pocket? Most everybody does a large chunk of their actual work on a 8.5x11 pad, not a notepad.
By my opinion, we won't be seeing truly useful personal computing devices until they make them for $20-30/item (So that you can buy several, spread them out over a desk, and not be too worried if you loose them/somebody accidentally borrows them/break them/etc.) And you won't see a single one-size-fits-all device unless you have a completely different and probably currently unatainable wearable computer.
The reason why the palmtop market is a growth industry right now is because everybody is cashing in their franklin planner or other non-computing orginizational device and getting a palm. They are easy to use. The iPAQ is nice because it's flashy. Both the iPAQ and Palm have finally reached the required usability qualities, form factor, cost, and sophistication necessary to become useful. There's not much bang-for-the-buck left in buying a new PC or even a laptop; everybody who has one wants one and likes it.
And, yes, Palm is in trouble. The framework that PalmOS was constructed on is getting limited. WinCE's problem has always been that it was more like Windows. Now that we are putting more powerful capabilities, the comprimizes and simplifications made with the Palm will result in some necessity for design changes.
Now, I agree with the assertion that wireless LAN/Internet access is important. It still won't replace your desktop or even your laptop for most of the things you use your laptop for.
But if you are talking about replacing your desktop, remember that laptops haven't even replaced desktops yet. The best bet for a true desktop replacements is a stack of PDA-like machines in the same form factor as a sheet of paper with good battery life, wireless, etc. Like I said above, it should be very cheap so you can have several. You still will have something that fits in your pocket, just like a palm or iPAQ. These are two different markets, it's just that nobody's made a non-laptop computer in a full-page form factor that people have latched onto.
Pretty much, people have known this concept since the late 80s, at Xerox PARC of all places. But the technology is just not there yet. Trying to replace your PC with a palmtop is just a dead end that is distracting people from developing a PC replacement in the right form factor.
Gentoo Sucks
Shut up already and let me alone! If it can't talk back, you shouldn't talk to it. If it does talk back, then talk to it in private.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
So what I'm reading hereis that aside from putting aside $$ for my young daughter's college, I'm also going to have to allocate some funds so she'll be the geekiest kid in the class when she enters kindergarden. Great, anyone know where I can find some Veggie Tale skins ?
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
I'd buy a PDA; I'd love to have one. But I already carry a cellular phone and refuse to lug two devices around. Include the following features in a PDA & I'll bite:
- Built in cellphone. I'm not talking about a bulky add-on module, and if I have to hold the whole PDA up to my head, you can forget it. Unless, of course, the PDA is the same size as a typical cellphone.
- Bluetooth support for wireless earpiece. That way I can leave the damn PDA in my pocket and receive a call with a small earpiece. Not a full headset, just a little thing that sits in my ear.
- Size. Keep 'em small. They're doing a pretty good job at this already.
- Power. Give me enough power to run the thing for hours. Power for the cellular feature alone should be at least 8 days standby/4 hours talk, on par with current phones. And give me a nice way to quickly recharge my wireless headset. Maybe a small port on the PDA itself that can recharge the headset in a matter of minutes from the PDA's battery.
While you're at it, make the headset strong. I want to be able to shove it in my pocket along with my keys and who knows what else without worrying about it getting torn up.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
From the article: "However, no PDA, according to my research, comes complete with a spreadsheet or presentation application."
:-)
My Diamond Mako (a psion revo+ clone, for those not in the know) has a built-in spreadsheet program, Sheet. It's fully compatible with Excel, very user-friendly, and I like it very much. How dare the author of this article claim that one of my favorite Mako programs doesn't exist?
USA Intellectual Property Laws: 5 monkeys, 1 hour.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Input should be done with voice commmands
...
O-pen cal-en-der ...
Ohhhh-pennn cal-en-derrr ...
Motherfcker! Open the goddamn calendar, you POS!
People already complain about chatty cellphone users...imagine the flack chatty PDA users would get.
Open calendar
Hehe...granted, the voice recognition would probably be better, but still...
--
"I strongly urge both the faint of heart and the faint of butt to leave the room at this time."
- Strong Bad