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Are PDAs Simply Finished?
angkor writes "After Sony's sudden plan to discontinue the Clie and pull out of the American PDA market, many industry observers have increased their speculation about the demise of the PDA, in general. The Japanese electronics giant was defeated in the American market by increased competition and an industry-wide decline in PDA sales."
...it could be that people in the U.S. are no longer interested in spending $400 on a PDA when they can get a cheap $50 Palm with no frills. Just my two cents.
Most people I know already have a PDA and have no plans to buy a new one since their current one does what they want. Its not that people no longer use PDAs, its that people aren't compelled to upgrade to a newer model since it offers nothing new for them.
The problem is that Mobiles cost money for just about everything you do on them - it can be hard to keep track which options are free and which ones cost 0.17c per click.
They deliberately make it confusing so that the average Joe gets screwed into spending more money than s/he should.
Unless the mobile companies make it completely clear (and permanent) that you can access all your info free - forever, with no hidden catches (including running out of credit / switching providers, etc) - then there will always be a market for PDA's for people who just want access to their data without worrying about paying for the privelage to get it.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
Well, if you're a consultant and need to remember 400+ clients, phone numbers, and emails, it can be rather helpful.
And there are, of course, security concerns associated with having all your personal info on a wireless-connected device.
Me, I don't mind plopping it in the desktop stand to sync it.
resigned
The truth that be. I'm looking forward to the Treo610. Same as the 600 only it has bluetooth and a better screen. I think the ultimate on-the-go setup would be a Treo plus a very small laptop, like the Sony X505. You wouldn't even need an iPod, although they are quite nice. You could stream the audio from your laptop hard drive over bluetooth to the Treo which has headphones plugged into it.
It's the best of every world. You've got a camera, phone, mp3 player, pda and an entire computer. When you're walking about you can check the Treo and when you sit down at the cafe whip out the laptop and get Internet via bluetooth to the Treo. Just gotta increase the bandwith and decrease the latency to make it better and better. It would also be nice if the treo ran linux instead of palmos, but hey, can't complain.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
... but not because PDA's are DEAD. As others have mentioned, it's more that the form of PDA's has changed. Smart phones and so forth... the actual PDA will become integrated, not die. Now, I'm probably in the minority here, but personally I'm one of those people who PREFER carrying a seperate PDA and cellphone. Quite simply it's because while on the phone I often have to write notes, check my calendar and so forth. To-date I've not seen a smart phone that does this quite as well as my old PDA and basic cellphone. Also, another thing to note is that PDA sales are declining because the market is saturated. The people who use PDA's like me have already bought one, and to be honest there are few if any reasons to upgrade a PDA quite as often as a laptop or cellphone. The drive just isn't there... there are no "killer apps". I don't play games on my PDA... I don't keep MP3's on it... it's for my important data and notes. Now, a friend of mine recently bought one of the new state of the art Ipaq's... all the bells and whistles... and when I played with it I noticed a slight increase in response but it provided me nothing over the Ipaq 3855 I've owned for the better part of three years now and still rely on every day. Sure, eventually the battery will die and I'll invariably upgrade... but other than this fact there are no other compelling reasons to upgrade like with a Windows PC (full Windows, not PocketPC). And as for the cost of laptops compared to PDA's... well I find the form factor of my Ipaq much easier to lug around between meetings than my Dell Latitude... and while I like working on my Dell it's a PITA in a meeting that may move around the building at short notice (due to presenting information to vendors and so forth). My PDA is damned handy... hell I even use it when driving if I need to make notes to myself I just whip it out of my belt holster and press the record button. When I get home, I upload and transcribe those notes as necessary. Food for thought?
No, PDA's are not finished, but I hope they will take their proper place as an INEXPENSIVE replacement for a day-timer style notebook and stop trying to be a replacement for a PC. I don't want to spend $200, much less $600 on something that is so easily lost, stolen or dropped. People who do are either gadget freaks, or are spending someone else's money. Of course, if you work for a company so overburdened by cash that they give you a desktop PC AND a laptop AND a $600 PDA you'd be foolish not to take it, but for the rest of us a sub $100 device is more than adequate. I'd really like to have the thing I carry around cost more like $50 or less so that I could be even more careless with it than I already am.
Sony is wise to exit a market that is oversaturated as is. Let Microsoft and Palm fight over what is left. My guess is that eventually most people will be carrying around something from Casio because the price is right and the functionality is good enough. Palm and Microsoft will lose money fighting over the "road-warriors" which will ultimately lead to Palm going under followed by Microsoft losing interest. A fitting end to the insanity.
The apparent decline in PDA sales is due to popular PDAs like the Treo being classified as "smart phones", and not being counted in PDA sales.
I'm not the GP poster, but you can do this on at least all 3rd gen iPods (not sure about the earlier ones). There's a calendar view that works off the iCalendar format (and if you use Outlook, there are programs that will synch the Outlook pst format to iCalendar style and place it on your iPod), there's a Notes viewer so you can view things like Mail (again, there are conduits etc on Windows, not sure how easy it is to synch mail on Mac OS X), and there's a Contacts feature where you can see name, phone, addresses, etc. The only limitation to all this (and I think this is what the GGP was talking about) is that its read-only, and you can only input when you're back on your main computer, which isn't too practical in terms of writing addresses you've just received in a meeting or such.
Because of Moore's law, the gap between PDA and phone has narrowed to the extent that there really isn't one in terms of computing power.
What then, is the difference between a phone and a PDA? Apart from the telephony aspect, the only significant difference is one that will endure - the screen size. When is that significant?
Phones have a maximum screen size of 2 inches. This isn't likely to expand because that's the limit of most peoples pockets, and phones will always have to fit in pockets. PDA's like iPAQ have a screen size of 3.5 inches. When it comes to document and map viewing, that's a lot more than a phone.
PDAs will continue to exist to the extent that map and document viewing proliferates - at least, to the extent that mobile mapping and document viewing applications proliferate that require 3.5 inch displays.
I think the major reason "PDAs" are dying is because virtually every cellphone on sale these days has most of the functionality PDAs are generally used for, with the exception of efficient note taking (a feature I rarely see my PDA-owning friends using in practice)
I quoted "PDAs" in the above because in a sense, that means that cellphones are the next generation PDAs, a device you keep in your pocket, that stores your contacts, calendar, and general notes, can perform calculations, let you play games when you're bored, etc - that happens to incorporate an additional function PDAs never had, the ability to contact anyone in the world - by message or voice - in seconds.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yeah, though I'd hardly call that a decline. The markets have simply merged and become more popular than ever.
It's tragic. Laugh.
I've never had a reason to get a new PDA because my Newton MP2100 still does everything that I need it to do. Keeps my addresses, passwords and it's my alarm clock. I've even bought a house with it as I used it as a fax machine. Still no need to get a new PDA and when I use it people ask me where they can get one. They think it's brand new since many of them have never seen one before. Hands down, still the best PDA ever made.
Palm is so fucked up right now they don't know the time of day. It kinda reminds me of Apple just when Jobs came back. They have seven models with overlapping features and limit flexability. They need to cut back to three models:
The Tungsten E, priced at $150 and has comes with a universal connecter and has the ability to add in a bluetooth SD card and thumb board. Think of it as the iBook of PDAs. Make it durable and market it to students and first time PDA buyers. Right now Palm's entry level PDA, the Zire 21, is the biggest piece of shit ever dreamed of. It doesn't even have a backlit screen, something they fail to mention anywhere on their website or packaging. Way to piss off the buyer. In contrast the Tungsten E is a very nice little machine (flawed but nice).
The Tungsten C but with the sliding screen of the T3, snap in bluetooth or 802.11x. Think of it as the PowerBook of PDAs
The Treo 600. One crossover phone/pda model.
Palm needs to develope something like Hypercard (the orignal where everyone could build stacks) or buy hypercard from Apple and give it away with every unit they sell. A lot of HC stacks sucked but it created a lot of buzz for the Mac. I make a lot of references to Apple because Jobs (who is a miserable human being) took Apple off it's death bed and turned it into a cash cow. Do they control the PC world? No way. Do they need to? No way. Palm needs to think different.
As for the PocketPC, if they win the PDA wars it will be by default. Palm has the potential of being much better if they can "unfuck" themselves. Don't blame declining PDA sales on the concept of the PDA when the management of these companies are to blame.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
That's why you keep the data on the computer and sync it to the PDA, why trod around a computer all the time? Can't fit a laptop in your pocket.
My Palm Tungsten T3 has been invaluable to me. Quick note taking, music playing, the odd game here or there, ebooks, internet through bluetooth, etc. All on one device I can fit in my pocket and has 0 startup time.
Why people think laptops are a replacement for this is way beyond me. You want to take a quick note, ok, so you're going to grab your huge laptop, wait for it to boot up, open an application and type it?
I've always tried my best to keep personal treasures under a certain price if the following could be applied to them:
:)
A) I could break it by sitting on it with my massive ass
B) Lose it
C) Someone would be willing to steal it off my person due to it's value.
So I never wanted to risk spending betweeen $200-800 on a PDA in fear that one of the above would happen.
Well eventually a few models would drop down to 129$, and I bought a discontinued Sony Clie. Really cool little gadget. It was cheap, but had practical features. Built-in lithium ion battery with 60+ hours of charge, a simple black and white screen with a indiglo backlight, scroll wheel. I got a lot of use out of the little creature.
Eventually B) happened, I lost it. Was not the end of the world cause it was at a price point I was willing to deal with A, B or C happening to.
So I go out to find me a replacement, at the time, everything had color screens, cameras, mp3 players, etc. All really cool stuff, but it jacked the price up out of my reach.
Then you had the Palm Zire series, certainly cheap. But it had none of the practical features I relied on.
I think we're all attracted to cool, but I'm willing to bet that most people crave cool but buy what they can get by with and afford.
I know Ford sells more cars than Porsche partly cause of this
I think partly this is why the PDA market is drying up, for me, I feel they are pricing themselves out of reach. For people that feel the same as myself, that they're too expensive to risk losing/breaking/having stolen, rather do without than the risk.
Unfortunate, I really liked Monopoly for Palm.
I started with a Palm III. Nice machine in many ways but really limited by an over-small screen and Graffiti. I never got more than 30wpm on it and tended to have very poor accuracy even with training - it's just too sensitive to small changes and I found by playing with giraffe that there were some basic errors in its topography software.
;-) but in all other respects it's just great.
Nearly 4 years later, I _love_ my PDA and can't imagine doing without it. It's a Psion 5mx.
The upright machines have screens small enough that you can't read any colume of data on them and a data entry system that gets fiddly if you're writing anything longer than a shopping list. A keyboard can be fitted, yes, but you have to take it out of your pocket, build the thing and then find a table. In a few hours I'll be at my church with my Psion, taking sermon notes with the Psion resting on my knees.
An upright looks better in the shops because it's cheaper, smaller and appears easier to use on the move - but long-term use shows you've got to be really keen to make it worthwhile, they don't actually fit particularly comfortably in your shirt pocket and that they're far from ideal as anything other than readers. A colour-screened keyboard machine like most of the WinCE machines equally looks better in the shops but is too expensive and eats batteries. WinCE in general tends to look better because they've got more memory and faster processors - but, just like old Windows v anything else battles, poorer design means it _needs_ those higher spec components to be usable - and the trade-off is in lower battery life.
The Psion, when you actually give it a try, has a keyboard I can touchtype on at little less speed than a desktop keyboard, battery life of 2-3 weeks normal use on 2 AAs and a screen I can really read sensible amounts of data on. I've regularly typed notes in meetings and so on on it with no difficulties. It still fits in a jacket pocket, it's cheaper and it's got a pretty good default software bundle. OK, the synchronisation software was, erm, sub-optimal
And it died because the marketers consistently tried to sell machines that look better in the shops but don't actually work as well day-to-day, and the sector's now dying because people are stuck with these poor machines and realising they're poor.
Someone, please, buy up Psion's keyboard patent and build a modern 5 that can sync. It won't be too expensive and it'll just be a lovely machine that will make PDAs worthwhile again.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Wouldn't that information be better contained in a good PIM on a laptop system?
...I can't easily remove the hard drive and recover the data with another system.
Yes, if you can A) carry the laptop in your shirt pocket; and B) get the information within 5 seconds (and that *includes* getting the device out of your pocket.
I wouldn't trust any important data to a PDA. Too fragile...
That's what syncing to your computer is for. Also, backing up to the removable memory in your PDA. I have a complete backup on my laptop (files copied to another workstation) and I have another on a memory stick.
What's your point? If the hard drive in your computer dies, "easy" recovery isn't possible there, either. In the case either of a PDA or a computer, you have to think about what might go wrong and take appropriate measures; backups should be part of your strategy if the information is important.
As for "fragile", don't get me started. Thanks to certain brain-dead policies at work, I've gone through 7 different laptops in the last year. In seven years, I've used three PDAs, and only one actually died.
How much do these smartphones cost?
How much does a basic PDA cost?
In that case, I'll stick with a basic PDA. Expensive PDAs might be in trouble, but cheap ones should survive for a long time.
As it has already been suggested in this thread (albeit somewhat sarcastically), this is the time to let Sharp know now there are markets in the West virtually without competition for quite a while, and a geek population eager to spend some money on what should be their next incarnation of the Zaurus (i.e. in reasonable amounts on reasonably-equipped devices: Who wouldn't want a clamshell version of this Linux machine if it was more easily procurable, and finally came with 802.11g & Bluetooth...). ;-) should just do the trick and get the subject some management attention...
A Slashdot effect from a few hundred thousand potential buyers' eMail (form) requests
To appeal to me a PDA has to have support for at least VGA width, and a keyboard. I just don't want to have to write in calligraphy on the screen.
Only the Psions - now deceased as a range - and the expensive HP Jornadas have this sort of design. IMO we need more. Preferably with modems built in and an ability to sync with a Mac!
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
And with hires screens (640*480, yummy), you can actually see what you are editing.
But Microsoft and Palm are moving much too slowly. New features in PalmOS 5? It's ARM-compatible. New features in Windows Mobile 2003 SE? Landscape support. That's all! They should get off their a**es and improve the devices. What about putting more of the Windows API in Pocket PCs so that apps actually _get_ ported to Pocket PCs? What about speech recognition and dictation? What about making data replication work instead of relying on ActiveSync? etc. etc.
Make PDAs more useful and customers will buy them.
Is it lack of manpower or of imagination?
-mk
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
- Advantages:
- Costs 500-900 times less than a PDA
- Unlimited battery power
- Small, and actually flexible so it's more comfortable in your pocket
- Much easier to write in and read out of than a PDA
- Unique "page" system can contain any kind of information, stored in a particualr 3-dimensional space so you can easily remember where you wrote any particular thing.
- Easily replaced at minimal cost
I am at pains to think of any way in which this rather pedestrian thing has any serious disadvantages over a real PDA. Anything of unlosable importance I copy into my personal wiki or addressbook.yahoo.com. Sure, I've thought about buying a real PDA! I settled on this because I didn't want to get some $300 device lost or stolen on a trip I was taking across Europe (that's what my iPod is for). Some people seem to have etched into their brains that (newer + more expensive + more "advanced") must always == better. Well, I'm here to tell you it's not always the case. Maybe having a PDA just encourages you to keep good habits, and you were drawn into it because you thought it was cool, but you could actually do the same thing more efficiently using something rather old and traditional and inexpensive.The problem with the market right now is that it's shifting. Standard PDA models are actually falling out of favor, as the current future is really in the convergence market. PDAs and cell phones are increasingly finding themselves in overlapping regions, and consumers are looking to cut down on the number of devices they carry. As it is right now, I personally carry a Palm Vx and my cell phone with me quite often, and it would be amazing if I could only carry one item.
/. reader it sucks. But if you're a soccer mom, it might be just right. The fact that it's priced at $99 and is one of the best selling PDAs of all time probably shows how untapped this market remains to be.
Handspring realized this quite a while ago, and now the fruits of their efforts can be realized in the Treo 600. While not a perfect product, it is probably the best convergence device out there. It runs Palm OS5, but has incredibly strong telephony functions. A lot of people simply love theirs (I'm looking to get one when Verizon certifies it for use on the network, and when my contract expires).
Handspring is now a unit of PalmOne, which does mean that even if the market moves out from under PalmOne, they'll be able to react as necessary. PalmSource also renamed OS5 to Garnet (targeted for less powerhungry cell phones) and OS6 is Cobalt (for the power PDA users).
Symbian enjoys a nice presence with Nokia and S/E phones as well. It might be worth noting with the availability of Palm Garnet and Sony's exit from the PDA space, there remains an unlikely possibility for Sony to continue working with Palm.
The PDA space isn't completely done yet though. Just like any other market, it's probably waiting for its next "killer app." Some other poster mentioned how much the Zire21 sucks. Well yeah, if you're a
Personally, I think PDAs would be able to last a lot longer if Bluetooth was deployed more widely. Think of it: the integration of a PDAphone but the power of having two separate devices. It's quite promising, but the cell phone makers and network providers probably aren't going for it, as it means slightly lower profits. With convergence devices, you have to get them from your provider and instead of buying a $50 phone w/BT you're buying a $200-300 PDAphone with a gimmicky camera and other things. More money for them. Of course there remains the two devices issue, but it would just offer different markets.
I could tell you, but then I'd get probably get sued for patent infringement.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
People want either highly specialized mini computers (ie audio players), or they want the full power of a computer.
I think this is how the PDA lost its edge. It *used* to be an inexpensive, specialized satellite device. Then feature creep came in and everyone wanted more memory, bigger screens, full color support, sound, graphics, wireless, etc., etc. If Palm started selling something akin to the original device, but at a much lower cost (say $25-$50), they would probably see sales pick up.
The problem is that such a device would invalidate the tremendous library of existing software. Thus they need less of a true Palm Pilot and more of a new "mini-Palm" platform for the "cost-conscious". I myself love my Sony CLIE and am sad to hear of their demise, but I also bought mine on sale for $130. There's no way I'm going to spend $300-$500 on something I might lose. Not to mention the fact that my occasional (albeit useful) usage doesn't justify a high price tag.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
They are not finished, they are evolving. There is that much gizmoz you can carry on you. I have PDA, phone and iPod (plus walled, bluetooth headset). I have to carry all this stiff on my and charge it.
This calls for combining functions to decrease number of devices. Ideally all 3 (PDA, iPod and Phone) should be the same device.
It is going in this direction, but not quite there yet. My Clie could play MP3, but battery life and storage size is too small. My iPod could work as address book, but there is no way to edit data on it - only view. My cell phone have some PDA functions, but due to small screen and most importantly poor keyboard they are not really useful.
You can, on the other hand, read the e-book you were
reading yesterday night, or even write down
a memo or an e-mail.
Zed: Nothing is ever easy
PDAs have saturated the market for users willing to dedicate a substantial amount of effort to overcoming their usability issues. This is a market ripe for Apple to pick up, because the market of casual users is still untapped.
Someone else already related how when the battery goes, today's PDAs reset themselves. Glaring usability issue for casual users. I've heard this same complaint from my non-technical friends who tried a PDA, then ditched them in favor of paper and pen. When you are trying to woo people away from an intimate routine in their daily life, at first it is sufficient to offer something that addresses the needs of people trying to solve scalability problems with their routines, like the consultant in this thread who has hundreds of contacts they have to keep up with on a monthly basis, or the poster in the healthcare field who needs to tote around a small cart of books in their hands. The PDA companies have been selling into business users for the most part, and to continue their growth they have to crack the casual user market.
Business users tend to be willing to put up with a lot that casual users will not. If a business user perceives that they obtain an edge with a particular product or service, they will invest the effort necessary to overcome the idiosyncracies to achieve that edge. Casual users will not, because the product or service is less integral to the happiness of their lives.
That you have to purchase third party applications before you can obtain seamless linking between your day timer and address book drives up the barrier to adoption by casual users. This is what leads to the perception that PDAs are nothing more than DayTimers for gadget freaks. In their default, out of the box configuration, they merely transfer the manual activities of a DayTimer onto an electronic system. That's like asking a company to adopt a computerized accounting system, only to have an army of clerks still manually reconcile accounts instead of hooking into an OFX interface.
Just shrinking the form factor and the price misses the entire point of trying to capture the casual user market.
More than ten years on after the introduction of the original Apple Newton MessagePad, I'm still surprised that neither Palm nor Microsoft have adopted the soups and slots style architecture of the NewtonOS. Today, RDF and XML could be used to implement a similar data presentation architecture, making it more useful outside of the PDA as well. More important than the technical contributions of the Newton however, were some of the marketing insights that were associated with the technical implementation.
The realization by the Newton team that most PDA applications would be relatively Unix-like (small, purpose-built applications) was spot on. The key marketing insight was that for a thriving user base and developer base to grow up around the platform, it had to be technically feasible to organically mold the user experience. It had to be easy and seamless to add functionality for example, to the out of the box address book. Or if you had to replace the address book with a more powerful address book implemented in a completely different way, it had to be easy for other developers to access the new data fields the new address book supports.
Today on PalmOS, there is one-way sharing of data fields. Address and date book replacements (the only way to extend functionality of the built-in applications is to replace them wholesale) can manipulate the built-in data fields, but it requires a separate contract negotiation with the individual developer of the new application (or reverse engineering) to obtain the formats for the additional data fields so that you could use it in yet another application.
The network effects of applications and more importantly
One reason I like my PDA (and as I'm sure others will point out) is that I can use it as a portable library of e-books. Plus, being able to play a game of solitaire while sitting on the crapper is a big plus (just don't tell anyone you're going to the toilet for some solitaire!)
But the main reason I have for keeping it seperate from my phone (besides screen size) is this: I DON'T HAVE TO PAY A MONTHLY FEE TO USE MY PDA!
Why does it seem that more devices like this which can be purchased once and used without a monthly charge are being edged out by cheap, tatty phones and the like that require service agreements? Who the hell NEEDS a phone with a million features (PDA, camera, video mail, etc) when all one really needs is a phone that lets you place and receive calls?
Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire
-- Cicero
OK, call me crazy, but maybe an application designed for a computer with a big keyboard, mouse, and monitor won't work quite so well on a computer with a teeny keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
If the UI isn't fast and easy to use, it's useless. And if I have to boot a PC in order to get a phone number, it's useless.
Thanks, I'll keep my Palm III.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
when my 4-year-old Handspring Edge does everything I need a PDA for so well. Plus, if I need to replace it I just go to Ebay and buy another one for $50. The Achille's Heel of the high tech industry is the "upgrade" cycle because if people fail to upgrade then those products will fail. Unfortunately for the PDA industry there is not much need to upgrade because the basic niche the early units filled is still the same niche. And anyway... what is so bad about sellling only a billion dollars of PDAs a year?
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Year ago I got a second hand iPaq 3970 for 1/3 of retail price just for the fun to put linux onto it. I would never pay a full price for it, no matter how cute device it is.
So, I guess when PDA maker will price them 3-5 times less, they would have no problems to penetrate the market.
Yes, of course, WinCE sucks, too. It's clear people have no use for PDA without any usefull software. That's a moment where platform portability of F/OSS really does count.
With linux I can run almost anything what exists on big machines. I have even a tiny web server and SQL engine running on my iPaq for demonstration. Perfect linux propaganda to impress corporate nuts who are only able to sync their outlook calendar with the same model but running PocketPC.
There you are, staring at me again.
They do. The Palm Zire 21 is sold at Wal-Mart in a blister pack for $80 It has all the functionality of a old Palm 5. But that also brings up another point. I know alot of people at work that still use Palm 5 & 7s. They were built to last and so the market for replacements is slow. Alot of people are happy with older devices. I sold a friend my old Palm 3x because my son no longer wanted it after I gave him my old Paml M105. My current Palm is the Tungsten E ($180) and it does everything I need it to. I do also have a new Dell Inspiron 5150 gaming laptop, at 9Lbs it does not fit in my pocket the way a Palm does 8^)
Science is the Real TRUTH!
nope... not the answer...
My origional PAlm Pilot. was in heavy use until I replaced it with a Sharp Zaurus.. most peopl that use palm devices are very happy with their unit for years, which is a Deathwish for any electronics manufacturer.. the PAlm PDA was too good. it worked, the apps did not take 90Meg of space and a 4 meg palm pilot could be used quite well by even a power user and have room for gobs of data plus books in it.
The same can NOT be said about any other PDA.
I am sitting here with a almost worn out sharp SL5500 looking to replace it with the new 6000 upgrade... but yet my palm III from over 4 years ago is still doing it's job nicely, works great, the battery pack does not fade (AAA batteries are cheap and better than any LiIon battery made.) and it's doing things my GF thoughh you needed to buy a new PDA for.
PalmOS is the killer Pocket OS... it doesn't obsolete the hardware at every version... and that is the problem.
Thre last Clie from SONY is the ultimate Palm Pilot, and people that buy them dont go upgrading every year as they dont need to.
and that is the problem.... if your product doesnt hook the customer into the "upgrade" cycle then you are doomed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But honestly, why would anyone carry two devices (mobile phone, organizer) when the Sidekick (or another similar device) offers the functionality of both?
I can tell you why I carry two devices rather than one: I'm terrified of losing my contact and calendar information. I live and breathe, during the working week, with my palm nearby. I've had my PDA break on me in the past, and it's a near disaster until I can get it replaced.
Cellphones and multifunction devices are generally pretty fragile and given the amount of use they get, don't have great life spands. For me, if I had a combo device and got bumped on the subway or what have you, leading to a broken device, I'd not just be without my phone as without my appointment book, address book, essential files etc.
I carry two devices in order to make sure I only lose either the phone or the contact list, but not both.
Talk about a blinding glimpse of the perfectly obvious
Almost.. but not quite.
A mostly-proprietary OS, with no documentation, no public APIs, and everything we've done to make it work with Linux, Unix, and OSX machines, has been reverse-engineered on the wire, byte-for-byte. We've even uncovered some really stupid PalmOS bugs before their own engineers caught them, by using this same methodology. We're already better at compensating for their own bugs and bad data structures in-code, than their own commercial Palm Desktop/HotSync Manager products).
Open standards are nice, but only if you embrace them fully. Palmsource does not.
I'd like to see you try your solution in a server room or in the middle of a crowd.
I want to use these Mod points but I can't find anything Interesting, Informative or Insightful on Slashdot.
Who the fuck want to carry around the huge bricks called pocketpc?
You are completely failign to get the point of a PDA.
That said, I doubt PDAs are a very big market anyway, and many who are in the market got carried away by the idea of making a pocket size computer.
A PDA must be a very convinient, EXTREMELY LIGHT, easy to use agenda, address book, and optionally a way to take notes, that also keeps working even if you forget to charge it for a week or 2.
The battery live issue excludes most phones (tho.. my phoen on a larger battery will easily last that long) and most phones lack a decent sized screen.
Weight, battery live, and over complicatedness makes pocketPC an even worse alternative then the PDA features of the average phone.
Don't get me wrogn btw, if you NEED or want a pocket sized computer, then a pocketpc may be for you, but it is simply not the same as a pda, and it doesn't fucntion very well as pda.
So as such, if sales are down, maybe it's not consumer apathy, but more likely that the consumer doesn't have the need to just replace their external brain arbitrarily?
This sig no verb.
Here is why:
I keep my PDA and phone synced to my pc and to eachother using bluetooth, so I take my notes and appointments once, and have them everywhere even if I only carry my phone around.. I do end up taking my PDA with me as well tho most of the time.. its small and light enough to just fit in the pocket of a shirt.
Since my phone doesn't have to have a as big as possible screen or even color, it can me sxtremely small and have a very low energy usage, resulting in being able to carry it around for a logn time without charging.
So well, by not wanting phone functionality from my pda, and only wanting very limited pda functionality from my phone, I end up with 2 small and light devices. I can always carry my appointments and such with me in a small and light phone, and it is little bother to take a pda with me as well since it is also light and small. Since they have a wireless link I can still browse the internet and do mail on my pda, and do so with a nice well readable screen and something more comfortable then a phone keyboard.
It's kindof funny, neither my pda or phone is new, both are over 2 years old actually, but the combination ends up being very usable, and as it is, I often end up reading slashdot during my regular 5 hours long trips to Berlin by train, only depending on the availability of the cellular network, but with a repeater in the train itself that is not a problem.. and knowign that by the tiem I get there the batteries of my PDA will be somewhat drained, but my phoen will have enough power to last another week :)
...voice. The telephone.
That's a quote of Jeff Hawkins', and I've got to believe that it's borne out by the numbers.
Hundreds of millions of cellphones are sold every year, and only in the neighborhood of 100 million PDAs have been sold in total to date.
Then by inference it follows that a killer PDA, one that most people will want to use, should have a phone built into it. And it also appears that the market for devices without a phone has flattened, and manufacturers are turning to PDAs with phones in them, and away from PDAs without phones in them.
People are willing to carry one device.
People want a phone first; an email or computer or music player second; and a camera last.
Whether the name of the rose is "phone that does PDA tasks" or "PDA that does phone tasks", the rose will smell as sweet.
(The real difference being that if the device must have phone service, then a PDA maker becomes nothing more than one more phone manufacturer for the cellular service companies.)
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I've forgotten who said it originally, but if cell phones really were dangerous on planes, why don't terrorists use them to blow up the plane, and why do airports x-ray your shoes before you get on the plane, but still allow you to carry you cell phone with you.
I'm an unusual geek. I don't want a PDA or palmtop computer. If I had one I could use the time on the train I spend travelling to get to work. Fuck that - I write software for eight hours a day and I enjoy an hour reading a book and listening to music travelling each way. So no, they can shove devices that make me work more. :)