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A Palm for Every Purpose
fm6 writes "We can look forward to a round of niche devices running PalmOS. According to the Forbes article, we're looking at PalmOS in: a game device called Helix , a platform for developing 'customized handheld instruments' called the Meazura, and of course, the usual round of PalmOS cell phones. On the other hand, fewer manufacturers seem to show any interest in making general-purpose PalmOS PDAs. Food for thought."
Were not all these concepts intended for the Palm platform originally? Mobile computing has come a long way in the past 5 years, with more and more powerful processors leading to smaller and better things. Where is the PalmOS headed? The place it's always been going- to provide a comprehensive interface to perform certain computing functions on an ultra-portable level. The introduction of more/enhanced features/functions/uses is only following the initial path set by mobile computing.
where have you been? palm OS supports transflective color screens now. and palmOS 6 will be BeIA reincarnate.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I just bought a Nokia 3650 which has enough average person pda functionality to satisfy me: calendar, todo, phonebook...christ. it runs symbian and java midlets so there are a whole lot of apps out for it, including doom ;)
point is...ive always been interested in a pda to use as an organizer, but theres no way in hell im carrying that bulk in addition to my phone.
now that problem is solved. I'm usually against multipurpose devices ie : vhs/dvd players...but space is a concern with things you carry.
Basically my phone is a phone, a digital camera (640x480),a gameboy(has emulator), a pda...and more (mp3...) and of course it has internet connectivity.
The $99 Zire is an example of the non-general purpose PDA concept. Zire is only for scheduling, to-do lists, and an address book. It seems many were buying loaded PDAs and ended up using it as an organiser...
(warning, slightly OT)
I don't know, but it seems like the industry is also missing out on some of the most sensible types of integrations.
For example, I haven't seen much with integrating pagers, but I sure know that if I had both cell phone and pager service, I'd much rather have an integrated cell phone and pager than I would an integrated cell phone and PDA or cell phone and digital camera. (Heck, I'd rather have a pager/PDA than a cell phone/pda, too.)
I think the issue is not everyone needs a PDA. It got to the point where everyone was buying them and then discovering that they didn't really need them. I'm just a programmer, for the most part I sit in a cubical all day tapping on a keyboard. I may have a few meetings every week but I certainly don't need a PDA to keep track of things. My wife owns her own business and has to deal with distributors, customers, employees etc all day. She uses her PDA and her cell phone to the hilt and they do actually make her life more effecient and easier. A few people do actually benefit from these things and use them for what they were intended. For the general public things like wireless networking, games, music playback, cameras are far more interesting and specific applications like data entry and hardened versions for field work and factory environments are going to be far more imortant in the long run for corporations than just having PDAs for all their execs. Trying to build a super PDA that can do everything is not going to be very usefull for anyone. I think it's good that Palm Source is getting a very diverse group of customers purchasing PalmOS for a wide range of devices. It's better than the one size fits all attitude that a certain other PDA/Smart Phone OS vendor has.
In my experience, the folks in favor of integration are the engineers, while the folks in favor of segregation are usability specialists.
Maybe it *is* possible to get a phone, PDA, camera, pager, gameboy, audio player, etc. in a single small device, but how the hell are you going to get a decent UI on it? Perhaps the problem is more that there are too many single-function buttons on current devices, and that a multifunction device would just have a bunch of multifunction buttons that the software would use differently for each feature, sorta like the PS2 does.
You'd lose the dedicated "zoom in"/"zoom out" buttons but on the gadgets I have, those are so small that the icons for them are inscrutable anyway (so they might as well be unlabeled).
It's probably possible to come up with a good UI for such a thing, but since gadget buyers still buy based on features instead of usability, it'll probably be a reeeeeal long time before we see it.