Why Have PDAs Failed In The iPod Era?

mikejz84 writes "As the owner of a PocketPC PDA I am a very happy camper, with wifi internet access, Skype Voip, video playback, and of course the ubiquitous mp3 playback. In an era were everyone seems to talk about the Video iPod, and the next generation of mobile devices, it leaves me wondering - I already have all those abilities in a PDA that costs about as much as an iPod. My question for Slashdot: Given that modern PDAs have almost all the functionality of these separate devices, how has Palm and Microsoft/PocketPC developers failed in making PDAs a force in this new era of portable media devices? It is the poor marketing, bad media apps, public perception, or do people simply not want an all-in-one for mobile media?"

Comments

I think you nailed it.

[kensai]

the poor marketing ... BINGO.
bad media apps ... BINGO.
public perception ... BINGO.
do people simply not want an all-in-one for mobile media ... BINGO.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[jtwJGuevara]

do people simply not want an all-in-one for mobile media ... BINGO.

This might comparing be apples to oranges, but if this were true, then why does virtually everyone cell phone on the market come with so much more functionality than what a phone should ever be used for: pictures, video games, music, text messaging, etc. etc.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[lewp]

Add to this that they're pretty much universally ugly (note that the iPod sells millions while Rios rot on the shelves), and that I have yet to see one with decent capacity (outside of carrying around a pocket full of CF cards).

Dell has deals on their Axims that put them down into the same price range as the iPods, and the WIFI and GPS features (on top of intrinsic hackability of the systems themselves) appeal to me greatly. I still don't own one, though, and I have 3 iPods (regular, mini, nano).

Re:I think you nailed it.

[ciroknight]

Device Flexibility: bingo.

PDAs might be cool toys, they do a lot that a PC can do, and you can carry it in your pocket. Pretty cool eh? But when it comes down to it, what does the device actually do? Hard to define; it can do calendars, it can do media playback, it can do telephony, it can do internet-related tasks. But on the overall, it's a very obscure device.

With the iPod, it's pretty clear what it does. It plays music. Now, it does do other things; it can watch movies, it can view pictures, it can broadcast music on an FM frequency, it can offload pictures from your digital camera, it can record class notes, it can keep your address book, notes, song lyrics. But these things are bonuses; the iPod's intention is to be the best damned music player on the market, and it nails that motive.

Now, don't think I hate PDAs; I love palm, I own a Treo 600 and a Palm m130 personally, but I almost never use them anymore. I have found that I'm distracted by a device that does too much, and isn't particularly good at anything that it's supposed to do. When I'm writing notes, I find a pencil and a piece of paper faster. When I'm trying to make a call, the Treo is ackward to hold and often lacks reception compared to my Nokia. And when I'm trying to browse forums, I find the screen's resolution prohibitive and just go and find a dumb terminal somewhere.

Give the PDA something to do, and you'll see people who need it to do that purpose, buy it. Instead of bundling everything and the kitchen sink, give it a very simple task, and expand upon the device in a way that's non-destructive to the device's original intent.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[CountBrass]

Because mobile phone makers need to you to keep buying new phones otherwise they go bust.

My phone is a pda, has games, a camera, can browse the web. None of which I want, need nor use.

In contrast it often hangs (Windows Mobile so no surprise) and I have to take the battery out. When trying to answer calls it sometimes declares there was an error answering the call!?! And sometimes it simply doesnt ring/vibrate when someone calls me.

Why can't I buy *just a phone*? The original Motorola V (not the current bloated monster) and the Nokia 2110 were pretty much the perfect mobile phones: it's all been downhill since then.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[ciroknight]

Because they're mainly features to sell the device.

Picture messaging is gimmicky, but some people actually find it useful. And since it's still a telephony/communications tool, it makes sense to embed it into a cellphone. Video games, never understood it myself, but some people enjoy playing the games on the diminutive screen, in waiting rooms, elevators, etc. Text messaging; again, it's very inline with what a cellphone's intended purpose is to be - to help people communicate while on the move. Instead of having to communicate verbally, you can write the message and send it, thus avoiding distburbing classes, and talking about subjects you otherwise wouldn't be able to verbally.

I think the matra should be "The Spirit of the Device". What is the devices intended purpose? How can we make that purpose better, how can we expand upon the product with similar purposes to broaden its use for people who otherwise wouldn't buy our product? (on that note; I've seen deaf people use cellphones. Text Messaging is a definite boon). In the case of a PDA, the spirit just isn't there; a PDA is a catchall device. In a lot of minds, "a solution looking for a problem". If you can find a use for it, you'd buy it, but many simply can't find a use for it. Hell, I recieved a PDA as a re-gift from a friend; "I can't figure out how to use and even if I did I doubt I'd be able to find a use for it".

Re:I think you nailed it.

[lewp]

Because we do want those features, we just want them executed properly. In consumer electronics, as in everywhere else, the first few iterations of any new product are almost universally shit.

I'd drop my RAZR's camera in a second if it'd mean a smaller and lighter phone, but only because the camera on it sucks so badly I end up carrying around my little Canon S505 most everywhere. When they put 3+MP cameras with decent AF in phones, I won't do that anymore, and we'll be one step closer to convergence.

Likewise, when they give me a 20+gig PDA with the size and style of an iPod, with a large screen, the horsepower to play movies, and that lasts 8+ hours on a single charge, I'll be all over it.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Weedlekin]

1) Because people are going to carry a cell phone anyway, and it's pretty hard to find one that doesn't come with a thousand superfluous extras. Having them there doesn't mean people use them, all, though, whereas you wouldn't buy a PDA unless you did have a use for most of what it does.

2) Phone companies pay a large proportion of the actual device cost as a way of attracting customers. IMO most popular phones would have a lot less in the way of in-built extras if customers had to pay the full retail cost, and the one with cameras and other stuff cost $600 versus a basic model for $80.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[CastrTroy]

I think most phones have PDAs, they all suck. Few of them sync to your computer, and typing stuff in on the number pad is rediculous. The camera functions are equally bad. The only way to get the pictures off sometimes is to email them to yourself, and then they charge you for the bandwidth.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Henk Poley]

Mobilephones are targeted at a minority group with a strong voice. This group loves "cool"; cool means: change/difference, which implies featuritis.

It is that simple ;-)

Re:I think you nailed it.

[shmlco]

Agreed. My iPaq PDA has degenerated into being a glorified ebook reader.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Cali Thalen]

Why can't I buy *just a phone*?

There's a *bingo*.

Part of the appeal of the IPods is that they do what they do *well*. Interface, and sound quality. Now I'm not sure how they made it so that every kid under the age of 30 *has* to have one...that's another story.

Handheld computers just don't manage that simple job. They are sub-par computers with sub-par games and sub-par web browsing and some do a sub-par job of displaying video and playing songs. Yummy, just what I want...

I haven't replaced my old Samsung SCH3500 phone because few phones available today do a better job doing the things I *want* a phone for...reception, battery life, sound quality. I'd replace the phone every 6 months if they came up with phones that were better at being a *phone*.

In several respects, that's one of the reasons things are the way they are. Apple has always understood what the customer wanted (well, mostly anyway). It's just too bad they can't do it at a better price, or they'd be a frightening corporation...

Re:I think you nailed it.

[sniggly]

That still leaves the question how is it possible that apple manages to be so cool that everyone wants what they make? Apple is the only computer company that understands fashion like some (swedish) car manufacturers and fashion companies do, and manage to appeal to a very wide audience.

It doesn't seem all that hard to do but it's impossible for a company like Dell or HP to position itself as a fashion company. Nobody walks around proudly with a Dell laptop or Axim because the brand is about cheap and mass produced.

Also I think apple managed to place the ipod outside of the perceived complexity of computer appliances. It isn't simple because you do need a computer, internet savvy, etc to get the thing loaded with songs. Loading songs onto an axim is not much more complex. If I had my mom do either one she'd be vexed either way.

It's also got a lot to do with leadership and vision, It's almost as if Jobs is a magician that can control how people see things and influences them strongly.

4 years ago I got a powerbook g4 (400mhz) with osx on it and after some initial trouble with the original osx it's stil one of my favourite computers - without being able to pinpoint the why of it, it just rocks. It's like driving around in an old saab, just a very weird piece of marketing trickery, mass delusion or just plain quality...

Re:I think you nailed it.

[chrisxkelley]

This might comparing be apples to oranges,

well actually in this case we're comparing apples to pda's. nice try though.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[shellbeach]

Why can't I buy *just a phone*?

Eh? You still can. Or at least, you still can here in Australia. Very cheaply, too - I can pick up a pre-paid phone compatible with my current network for $79 Au, which has a monochrome screen and a speaker phone. There's probably cheaper available too, but I haven't looked into it much since my current phone, which is nearly four years old now, still works well. That's of course another option - you don't actually need to buy a new phone, you know - the old ones still work ...

But regardless, there's still a market for simple phones here, and I think one of the reasons for that is the wide-scale adoption of mobiles - they're not a tech-savy only market.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[usrusr]

if you really need an organizer so much that you carry one around all day then a pda (or trusty old pack of dead tree) is certainly the best for you. but there are enough people who don't need the functionality enough to justify all that carrying stuff around business.

it was a mistake (but a somewhat understandable one) how mobile phone makers used to target the first phones with organizer functionality at the businessman, he will always use the real thing. but in the mainstream market they do a great job at filling the gap between not having an organizer system at all and carrying around a second device, complete with all the hassle of keeping batteries charged, setting quiet mode during meeting etc. in the end it's all software running on some microcontroller anyway, technically it does not make much difference wether you stick gsm on a pda or slowly enable the phones to do the pda's job.

wait, there's exactly one difference (or two, considering the "cellular network provider pays for the phone" issue mentioned elsewhere):

pda are completely associated only with work by everyone exept the most die-hard geek while phones are also seen as a way to stay in touch with friends and family etc, so ironically the _p_da end up being perceived as much less personal than a phone.
people (those not on /.) generally tend to have trouble accepting electronics invading more and more of their everyday life, i think said more personal connection to their phones (or, thinking of the ipod, their personal music collection) could well be the means by which new applications sneak into people's lives that would fail coming in a seperate device like a pda, where the less liked work functionality stands in the focus while leisure functions come second.

ps: now one could speculate about how many of those "i want a phone that phones and nothing more" are people who are called more frequently by their boss/customers than by friends/family ;-)

Re:I think you nailed it.

[ciroknight]

Your post also indicates that you are a highly technical individual in a job that requires you to be in almost constant contact with technology. People like you and I are not general consumers; we tend to be gadget freaks and will buy the newest gadget just because it's cool, new, etc.

On the other hand, iPods are sold to everyone. Anyone can pick up an iPod, figure out its interface in a number of minutes (if it takes that long), and be well on their way to using the device. With a PDA, you pick it up, and you start playing with the applications. "Okay, these apps are great, but I don't see anything that I can't live without, or that would replace my current system."

So while I'm glad your iPaq is good for you (and it's funny; all 3 people who've responded to me have had iPaqs), I'm willing to bet if you handed it over to your mother she'd smile, and it'd be relegated to a desk drawer to live out the rest of its life.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[bmgoau]

Give me a 20 gigabyte + PDA, with media quality and feature ease of use on par with the ipod, with an 8 hour plus batter life at the same price as todays ipod and i, and i suspect many others, would buy it in a second.

Simply put, PDA's lack the battery life and storage capabilities of the ipod.

This relates to all portable devices with the exception of the ipod. Manufacturers keep adding more and more powerhungry and ill devised features to PDA' and Phones like video playback and camera support but always fail in two aspects:

The initial quality of the feature developed is horrible
They forget to upgrade the systems which these features need to be avaliable, which means phone and PDA hardware.

The problem is space, no more no less, all this media, includeing thousands of songs, takes space, and consumers are not happy that they have to buy seperate memory for their device which is inferior to the built in memory of the ipod 20 fold.

Take one of my family member for example, who recently bought a $400 camera, but in the process noticed that an increaseing amount of digital cameras do not include out of the box memory. Where was the marketing team on that decision. Surely they think if the dont include memory, consumers will be inclined to buy seperate memory, but what they forget is that consumers have the choice of the one with or without memory. The choice is clear.

So to make it clear: PDA's fail because they have the features (poorly developed) but not the infrastructure.

Give me a PocketPC PDA, with an IBM or Toshiba 20 gig microdrive, with a battery that not only promises but actually has an 8 hour+ basttery life in media playback, with the same price as the ipod and i would litteraly trash my ipod and buy it right now.

But why are things the way that are?

I suspect a features race between PDA's phones and media playback devices has left PDA's mortally wounded. I suspect marketing kept pushing for more features, not better features, and never gave one ounce of their time to the engenieers crying out in horror at the strain being put on backward technology, only to realise their jobs redundancy and a lack of demand from a detached marketing department for better hardware.

Of course it may be a subject of the limits of todays technology, but again, not enough work is being put on the desks of hardware developers to make better storage and battery devices. Instead all the work is landing on the desks of software developers who lie awake at night, and pull out their hair, knowing full well they cannot possibly write a fully functional feature set with such hardware constraints.

Consumers arnt stupid, esspecially when the average teenager has limited funds, and has to make every cent count. Consumers know the PDA only has 32 meg out of the box, and the similar priced ipod has 60,000 meg.

Give me a 20 gig+, 8 hour+ battery (music playback), and fully developed programs (that means everything from a better UI to more effeciency) on a PDA for the same price as an ipod.

Another great example is phones, where half asses features like camera's and operating system features (video, music) are more focused on than actually making a better fucking phone. I say work on the technology until its perfected, then implement these powerhungry features once the phone itself has been perfected.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[garylian]

I agree.

Though the biggest reason for failure is that most people simply don't need a PDA.

More than half the folks I know that have a PDA only have it as a status symbol. They don't need it, and barely use it. Most of the time they pull it out and start fiddling with it, they are showing off that they have one.

How many IT people are really on the go so damn much that they have to have a PDA? I sit in meetings and most of the people there have their PDA out, and are poking and proding at it once in a while. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that they are bouncing back and forth between menus, trying to look like they are important.

I could see some flunky of a famous person that keeps appointments and the like needing one. I can't see most IT folks needing one.

And quite frankly, when I walk away from my desk, whether it is to go eat lunch, take a dump, or simply to get some fresh air, I don't want work following me.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Dharh]

By definition a PDA is ambiguous. Its a Personal Digital Assistant. Which could mean alot of things but generally mean Calendar/Schedule, Notes, Email, and Contact Addresses/Phone Numbers. These three features should be the main focus of a PDA but for some reason are still not being done well. PDAs are also getting bogged down on extra fluff when their main functions aren't perfect. A phone wouldn't be worth it if its main function of being a phone were crap, despite all its cool extra features.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[vaximily]

Quote: Why can't I buy *just a phone*? The original Motorola V (not the current bloated monster) and the Nokia 2110 were pretty much the perfect mobile phones: it's all been downhill since then.

Response: You can, go with Nextel Service. They have an awesome network (I have been all over the country and 9 times out of 10 have a better signal than anybody around me), and they have very simple phones like the i530 which is the most durable phone on the market (I ran it over with my 3500lb Chevy Suburban and not a thing wrong with it). Plus you get the Direct Connect :D.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Burz]

Part of the appeal of the IPods is that they do what they do *well*.

That's what people said about Palm. And I agree (or used to). Palm's core appeal was always as a storage device and people have always clamored for more memory on them. Palm's mistake is that they did add a 20GB HD and MP3 syncing at the right moment. They assumed that people would prefer realtime apps like telephone being shoehorned into that focused, nonrealtime environment of offline reference (contacts, reference documents, etc.).

So Palm, and Rio, and PocketPC missed the 'big-music-archive' boat. (BTW, I own a Rio Karma and love it. But that product was late. I also own a Psion Series 5, which was early.) Those three all kept a Flash RAM focus for too long.

Symbian OTOH is another animal: It's reason for being is telephone and lightweight internet, and the company even ditched the old Epoc32 moniker to distance it from the handheld PC image. The OS invites you to do nothing that would require an HD or suck the life out of a tiny battery.

Looking back, if any OS could manage it, Palm should have taken iPod's market. In fact they could have licensed the core OS to Apple and noone would be any wiser until Apple started merging standard PalmOS features, one-by-one, in successive models where it made sense.

Assuming they didn't frustrate too many geeks, that could have worked brilliantly.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[ozmanjusri]

Mobilephones are targeted at a minority group with a strong voice. This group loves "cool"; cool means: change/difference, which implies featuritis.

The early '90s called. They want their yuppie group think back.

Wake up there princess, you've been asleep for a looong time. Everybody has mobile phones now.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[wwwillem]

Part of the appeal of the IPods is that they do what they do *well*.

Which is similar to why Google more or less wiped out Yahoo in searching. At the time, Yahoo was seen as the searching site that couldn't been beaten. Although we suffered their banners and other stuff. Google came and did nothing but searching, searching and searching, with a home page of only a few kilobytes. And even with textual advertising of only a few bytes. In short, the features were limited, but they did them well !!!

So, I'm truly convinced that when there is a company (history tells that this will be a new starter) that develops a cellphone with a voice quality and battery life that doesn't let me say from the start "shall I call you back on a landline", they will have a gold-mine. Sidenote: when you think currt cellphone sound quality is 'good enough', think for a second why everybody is shouting into their cell phones so loud that they anoy everybody around them.

It's all about KISS !!!

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Planesdragon]

Personally, I can't find much worth doing with a PDA that isn't already done better by something else. They have no "killer ap".

Sure they do. You just might not be the sort of person who would use one.

I've used my PDA for the last four years, every day, for the following things that nothing else could do better:

* Reading the news, for free, while taking the bus.
* Single-entry writing. (That is, I put it in once and don't have to "type it in later.")
* Tracking purchases as I make them, including cash-only transactions.
* Tracking dates, contacts, and anniversaries.

This past summer I upgraded to Palm's top-of-the-line 4 GB drive, and I get to do each of the above plus:

* Watch movies
* Listen to music or podcasts
* Reference material while at work or play.

The PDA is like a Personal Computer that you constantly have with you. It only makes sense in that venue, and in that venue it does its variety of small jobs better than anything else.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Tony Hoyle]

Going full circle.. remember dejanews? It did usenet -> web, and did it well. Everyone used it.

Then a bunch of marketing execs got together and said "Everyone's looking at our site! I know... let's rename it to a 'portal', fill it with advertising and all sorts of extra features. Oh, and get rid of those boring news pages."

They went bust. Very fast (within 6 months IIRC).

google bought up the remains and now do what dejanews did originally... and they're very successful at it.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Tony Hoyle]

Not really...

eg. I picked up a Motorola V3 (from the supermarket of all places) for £180. I'm on a minimal PAYG tariff nowadays (I keep the sim and just transfer it around phones), and typically pay £10/mo in phone calls (£120 for a round figure).

To get that 'free' on the network would have meant paying £30/month for a year... £360, with no upgrade possible for 12 months an no cancellation possible for the same period.

Multiply that profit by a couple of million and the carriers really aren't losing money at all.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Tony Hoyle]

Marketing is *every* reason to want more than one. Why do you think people upgrade cars, change fashions every couple of months, go to a chainstore and pay 3x as much for hardware than you and I pay, and, yes, think they need multiple mp3 players. Marketing. It's certainly not because someone would actually *need* more than one.

The ipod is a good mp3 player, but it isn't a *great* mp3 player... it's just well marketed. No I don't mean the adverts, I mean things like making the term 'ipod' generic as if there were no other mp3 players around, and managing to make the things fashionable amongst teenagers.

The ipod video will sell millions... doing exactly what other video player has been doing for years (often cheaper too). Precisely because it's well marketed.

Hell, Windows Vista will make new headlines on its release (paid for by microsoft, no doubt) and will so well marketed that everyone will believe they need it even if their current OS is working fine.

You don't need adverts for that. Well placed 'news' stories, rumours... people are smart enough to filter out the crap when it's an 'advert', so marketing people use more underhand techniques. (ever heard someone on slashdot saying OSX is 'intuitive' and 'easy'? No OS is 'easy' by defintion (certainly not OSX which is more than a little counterintuitive in places).. it's a little bit of underhand marketing that seems to have taken off in the slashdot geek crowd, even if it never reached the masses).

Re:I think you nailed it.

[AndyElf]

Much of what you say is, indeed, spot on. I had a knee-jerk reaction after reading the question posed -- the guy must be kiddin': iPods in the same price range as a decent PDA come with at least (now) 40 gigs of space, not measly 128/256MBs like your standard-issue PDA. Sure, you can expand it by plugging an SD or MMC card -- but not by much, not even into the region of a Nano.

I always find it so very amusing that for its time Palm IIIx was awesome -- with only 8MBs (eight!) it could do everything that my T5 can, sans browse the web (and I could do even that in an off-line mode had I *really* wanted to). But T5 has much more capable CPU (Dragonball 33MHz vs. XScale 416MHz), much more memory, much bigger screen -- why can't I get as much out of it?! And don't even get me started on reliability of IIIx vs. T5.

And then my iPod -- it does not try to do much more than it is designed for -- a music player (ok, now also a video player -- but I think the vPod was a bad move). It does have features to read books, store my phonebook/addresses and a basic calendaring thingy, yet these are there only because there is a spare place on that 80Gb hard drive, not like the case of a T5 with a bloody RealPlayer that sucks up the place I personally would have rather used to put TPCMP on.

Take another specially targetted device: BlackBerry. I used to think they were a fad -- who needs that tiny little box with tiny buttons and a barely readable screen to look at the emails in the wee hour of the night? I still think that people punching BB keys any time they have at least 30 seconds look ridiculous. However, now that I used one I can concede -- for the task it was designed for (instant email wherever you go) it is *very* capable. Much more so than Palm or PocketPC -- that tiny little keyboard makes a lot of difference. Starngely enough I would feel much more inclined to write a longer piece out on my Palm with a stilos, rather than on a Blackberry, yet it is mostly because longer piece is likely to be written somewhere wher I can sit and hold a Palm with *two* hands, while a brief reply to a business email on a BlackBerry can be done on the run and with just one hand.

And then -- all singing, all dancing cell phones. All these jokes of uber appliance that in many cases can't do their main task right... Why building in an MP3 player with some cool visual effects on a tiny 1" screen? To ensure that your little pocket monster that barely lasts a day without a recharge drains itself of all the juice by the time you get to work?

Re:I think you nailed it.

[arminw]

....I have found that I'm distracted by a device that does too much, and isn't particularly good at anything that it's supposed to do.....

In so much of life there is specalization. Think of how many kinds of medical practitioners there are, each specializing in a different part of the body. I wouldn't want a general family doctor to do open heart surgery on me, but a good surgeon who does heart surgery only, every day.

It is like that in tecnological devices also. In a phone, I want one that does that really well and not compromise that function with a lot of bells and whistles that waste precious battery life and have nothing to do with calling or receiving just plain phone calls.

If I want to have my entire music library with me and easily select any song, a phone will always be a compromise compared to a specialized, well designed device like an iPod.

If I want to enjoy a movie, I'll go to a movie show or at least watch it in the comfort of my living room on as big a screen as I can afford or fit into the room.

In a digital camera, I want one with enough quality so that I can significantly crop a picture and not have it look fuzzy and pixilated when printed as a 5x7.

Devices that try to be a jack of all trades are a master of none are ultimately a huge waste of money.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Meagermanx]

What about the trendiness factor? If you have an iPod, you're cool.
 
And, girls get out of class, and half of them whip out their phones for a quick chat between classes. Most of them have trouble operating a PC. What would they do with a PDA?
 
Me? I don't leave the house (besides work and school) enough to warrant carrying a very breakable, very expensive object around with me.
I'd rather drag along a GBA than a PDA. Better games, I'm never around a WiFi connection anyway, and I don't need to bring videos and my entire music collection everywhere with me.
The whole $80.00 for a new GBA-SP doesn't hurt anything, either.
 
And, really, doesn't anybody else here still carry paperbacks around?
 
**crickets chirping**
 
Stupid PDFs.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Meagermanx]

It also relates to the Game Boy. And the GBA-SP. And the Walkman. And the...

I think I got them all.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Meagermanx]

It won't shift to the video packrat.
The video packrat wants the best video he can possibly get, not his entire collection on a 1.5 inch screen.
The video packrat is just going to buy Blu-Ray or HD-DVDs.
It's different with music, because it's pretty much the same quality, whether it's coming from your $2,000.00 home PC, or from your $200.00 iPod.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[usrusr]

oh, trendiness sure matters as well, but i don't think it could make anything close to that much of a difference on it's own. and besides, pda did have their fifteen minutes of hip: when the time came that mobile phone early adopters could not pose anymore with the fact of owning a cellphone, because suddenly everybody did, there was a short wave when the typical bars and cafes where that kind of people gathers where filled with people between their late 20ies and mid 30ies all trying to trump the palm pilot of the next guy with their newly bought shiny pocket pc. but unlike mobile phones and ipods (and, to a lesser extent, digital cameras) there simply wasn't any single application useful for the rich-and-hip, so those machines quickly disappeared again.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[thparker]

And then my iPod -- it does not try to do much more than it is designed for -- a music player (ok, now also a video player -- but I think the vPod was a bad move).

I've seen a few people say this, and I really don't understand it. Could someone explain? As I see it, the new iPod has increased battery life, it's a bit thinner and has a little larger display. Beyond that, it's the exact same device it's always been and functions the exact same way it always has -- except that it'll play some video now.

I personally think the video iPod is a brilliant strategic move. They've kept the device essentially the same, not upsetting a winning formula. They still made marginal improvements in the core music player in terms of battery life and size. But they've put video capability out there to test the waters and see if the legal video download market turns out like the legal music download market has. If downloading Lost and Desperate Housewives turns out to be a winner, you can bet that other content providers will come running.

So what am I missing? Why is the video iPod a "bad move"? It looks to me like they've managed to pilot a totally new service while continuing to give people the same device they already love.

I realize it would be so much cooler if iTunes 6 had the ability to rip video content and transfer it just like we do with audio, but I just don't think that's possible. Since most DVDs incorporate copy protection, I don't think it would fly under the DMCA. If Rick Boucher's legislation gets passed, we may see something like that. You should probably head over to the EFF Action Center and support it.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[pthisis]

Which is similar to why Google more or less wiped out Yahoo in searching. At the time, Yahoo was seen as the searching site that couldn't been beaten

Basic point is right, but this seems revisionist; Yahoo was mainly a categorized set of links (like dmoz.org) with a halfassed search engine tacked on as an afterthought. Indeed, at the outset it didn't even have a search engine--and even after adding one, it was never really a search engine back then. Altavista was the "preferred" search engine at the time (having replaced Lycos when Lycos decided to go in the portal direction).

But yeah, Google came on the scene and did just searching, and did it better than Altavista and Lycos at a time when they had lost the search focus and were adding relatively crappy portal features instead of improving search.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[LordNightwalker]

Part of the appeal of the IPods is that they do what they do *well*. Interface, and sound quality.

Exactly. Most people don't feel comfortable around complicated stuff like PDAs, but they knew how to operate their radios, stereo equipment, car radio, walkman, discman etc... They don't have to "start an application" to play their music, they turn their *audio equipment* on. They have a simple interface: play, pause, stop, next, previous, fast forward, rewind and volume. That's all they really need, so they want it in easy accessible locations: in the form of buttons on the case of the device.

I have both a PDA and a small flash-based mp3 player. I could technically use both to play my music, yet I never bothered installing mp3 software on the PDA. The mp3 player has a battery life of 17 hours of continuous play; the PDA doesn't come near that "always on" time. I can operate my mp3 player without looking at it, even if it's in my pants pocket. If I'd use the PDA for that, I'd need to whip it out every time I wanted to skip a song, turn the volume up or down etc... because I'd have to look at the screen to manipulate the virtual buttons. I'm not sure the music would keep playing if I switched to another app, like say my calendar, to check my meetings for the day. The music would definitely skip if I'd use some app that would do some burst of number crunching, assuming the PDA is multitasking in the first place.

A PDA is like a swiss army knife, or a Leatherman multitool. Yeah, it's a cool gadget for those who can afford spending cash on such frivolous things, and sometimes it comes in handy to carry around all those tools in a small package instead of having to drag along a small briefcase of single-purpose tools. But when I want to skin a bear, I'll use a hunting knife and not my swiss army knife. And when I want to fix my computer, I'll use a screwdriver set and not a leatherman multitool. There's a thing to be said for the simplicity of an ergonomic screwdriver with the head in the exact centerline, as opposed to a multitool where it's so far off center it becomes a pain to use for any job longer than 3 screws worth.

Basically, a PDA is just a crappy idea for mobile entertainment. It doesn't have the cool image projected by the iPod, and it's confusing to boot. That's why it doesn't appeal to the blinking 12's. The geeks and audiophiles for whom these disadvantages don't matter, since they're used to having somewhat more complicated toys, reject it because they rather have a device that does one thing and does it well as opposed to one that tries to do everything, but excells in nothing.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Phaid]

When you make a comment like:

And, girls get out of class, and half of them whip out their phones for a quick chat between classes. Most of them have trouble operating a PC. What would they do with a PDA?

It becomes obvious to the point of redundancy to say:

Me? I don't leave the house (besides work and school) enough

Re:I think you nailed it.

[JonathanBoyd]

I always find it so very amusing that for its time Palm IIIx was awesome -- with only 8MBs (eight!) it could do everything that my T5 can, sans browse the web (and I could do even that in an off-line mode had I *really* wanted to). But T5 has much more capable CPU (Dragonball 33MHz vs. XScale 416MHz), much more memory, much bigger screen -- why can't I get as much out of it?! And don't even get me started on reliability of IIIx vs. T5.

I don't recall being able to play video files or mp3s on a IIIx. Or view colour photos. Or open pdfs. Or transfer files/connect to my phone via bluetooth. There's plenty that my T3 can do that a IIIx can't and I'm sure a T5 is even more capable.

Re:I think you nailed it.

[Mrrt]

My wife owns an iPod Shuffle and a 40GB 4G iPod and the comparison between those and my O2 XDA IIs PocketPC highlights why Apple is walking away with the market. The expense and add-on nature of the tiny 1GB card on my Aus$1200 PocketPC compared to the 40GB hard disk in the Aus$400 iPod is shameful. However, that is the least of the issues. Add in the following Windows Mobile PDA problems and the picture becomes much clearer.

- Windows Mobile 2003 SE is not as good a phone OS as Symbian UiQ running on my P900. Accessing contacts to phone someone is not as intuitive and takes a lot more fiddling.

- Windows Mobile is also not as good a PDA GUI as the Palm OS. Putting a "Start Menu" on the PDA in a vain attempt to emulate Windows XP results in a GUI that is much more awkward than the simple icon based Palm interface that my previous Palm III PDA used.

- Slow downs and freezes. My PocketPC froze often enough for me to need to pull the battery off the back to restart (the power or reset buttons wouldn't work) about twice a week, before I updated the firmware. It seems to have improved somewhat though it still suffers slow-downs requiring me to quit all running applications.

- One occurrence that I think might have been caused by ActiveSynch, but could have been an Exchange problem was the case where I lost almost all of my Outlook calendar entries from Exchange (on my desktop PC and my Mac) over a weekend while my IIs still had all the entries - once I synched the PDA all the entries on the PDA were also wiped. It was very frustrating.

- Volatile local storage. MS should be shot for designing these devices to erase all local storage (including user data AND all settings requiring a complete re-install of apps, personal settings etc) if the battery goes flat! Neither my Newton PDA nor my Palm ever suffered from such a poor design.

- Firmware updates. Again who ever heard of a PDA needing to be completely set up from scratch again if you update the firmware. Pathetic.

- Forced lesson in how to use the pen every time you re-initialise the device. You should not be forced to "click and drag" on simulated diary entries every time you re-install because your battery went flat! - it should be optional. I want to strangle the MS team who designed this "feature".

- Forced hardware upgrades. Being able to upgrade the version of the OS on the device isn't necessarily guaranteed - I understand a lot of Windows Mobile 2003 devices can't be upgraded to Second Edition.
- It's another play by Microsoft for world domination. ;-)

Now if Apple had only continued developing the original Newton which coined the name PDA and whose OS is *still* amazingly in advance of most current contenders in many ways - well the story might be a bit different.... :-)

-Mart

Storage capacity

[MadDog Bob-2]

Unless you sprung for extra storage, the space on your PDA is measured in tens of megabytes. On an iPod, it's measured in tens of gigabytes.

Re:Storage capacity

[adrianmonk]

Unless you sprung for extra storage, the space on your PDA is measured in tens of megabytes. On an iPod, it's measured in tens of gigabytes.

True in most cases. However, PDA manufacturers are starting to get the clue. It may be a little too late to capture much of the market, but just a few months ago, Palm introduced the LifeDrive which comes from the factory with a 4 GB hard drive. That is starting to be a decent amount of storage. In fact, it's sort of what a lot of manufacturers have realized is the sweet spot for a music device. (Unlike myself, lots of users apparently don't want to try to fit their whole music collection on their music player.)

Now, here's the problem: the LifeDrive is priced at $499. That's basically double what you'd pay for the 4GB iPod nano model. Granted, the LifeDrive does a lot more, but the question is whether consumers need or want those things.

The big problem here is probably just that PDA companies (at least Palm) aren't big enough players to make a profit on a cheap device. Apple can sell iPods for virtually no profit as a way of getting the iTunes Music Store off the ground, but a smaller company like Palm can't do that. Unless they can radically increase sales volume, they can't make a PDA with 4GB for much less than $499 and still make a profit. So, that makes the PDA a lot less competitive with a dedicated music player than it could be.

Also, keep in mind that there are reasons why PDAs are more expensive to make. They have to have more RAM, faster processors, and (most importantly) a bigger screen than something like an iPod has. The screen on the Palm LifeDrive is 320x480 pixels and 16-bit color. Any music player's screen isn't anywhere close to that, and it doesn't need to be for a dedicated music player device. Even the new video iPod only has a 320x240 screen, which is half the resolution. Just like in laptops, a bigger screen will really cost you.

Re:Storage capacity

[Alfwine]

just a minor point, Apple's business model is to make money on the iPod not itunes. They just break even on iTunes. Their gross margin on nano is 50% and ipod is around 40%. Itunes is around 10%.

40 Gb Hdd?

[CDMA_Demo]

It is the poor marketing, bad media apps, public perception, or do people simply not want an all-in-one for mobile media?

iPod is just a glorified HDD which makes it important. Your PDA is a teeny weeny computer which makes it not-so-important. Plus,what is the biggest HDD you can put in it? Apple understands the low-profile-market better

simplicity and capacity

[fredistheking]

Most people just want to listen to music. Also show me a PDA with a 60GB drive.

Re:simplicity and capacity

[stuffman64]

Well, it's not 60GB, but I have managed to hook up a 20GB drive to my Zaurus SL-C860 with a homemade CF-IDE adaptor. The drive came courtesy of my Rio Riot MP3 player, since it decided to erupt in a cloud of smoke when I plugged it in once (fortunately only the power regulation section of the board was damaged; the drive was perfectly fine). When I don't feel like lugging that mess around, the 5GB microdrive from a Rio Carbon holds plenty enough music, video, games, and various other forms of entertainment. All in all, I've shelled out more that a kilobuck on the whole setup, but that's a small price to pay when being able to rock out with XMMS while editing images with the Gimp while on the go*.

*though you probably don't want to because of the limited RAM and having to set up a swap on external media- it's slow as hell, but impressive nonetheless.

Of course, I like having all of these features. Ninety-nine percent of people don't give a crap about all of this- all they want to do is press a button and listen to the song they want to hear. If they want to play video, they'd rather do it with an iPod than have to mess around with some hard-to-use videoplayer on their PDA. It's as simple as that.

Clue 1

[ackthpt]

Clue #1: Cellphones have become PDAs.

Re:Clue 1

[Jozer99]

Clue #1 Cellphones have become PDAs (3 day battery life) Clue #2 iPods have become PDAs (18 hour battery life) Clue #3 Laptops have become PDAs (my 3lb Centrino) (4 hour battery life) Clue #4 PDAs have become desktop computers (2-3 hour battery life)

Its the interface

[john_chr]

My take on why PDA's haven't been as succesful as the "ipod" - its the interface. Apple got that bit right and it became a hit.

Re:Its the interface

[Trepalium]

How about the fact that they serve different purposes. PDAs are information devices, the iPod is an entertainment device. PDAs can do just about everything, but the battery life sucks, and it can't always do everything well. iPods serve a single purpose, and they do that one thing extremely well. Add to this the fact that most information services people want while on the road are being added to cellular phones, and that leaves the PDAs in smaller and smaller markets. It basically comes down to the fact that people prefer single purpose devices because they're generally much simpler to use.

I only want 1 device in my pocket

[GWBasic]

I tried a PDA about three years ago, but I found that it was difficult to carry it and my phone in my pocket. As a result, when my PDA died, I bought a phone that contained my desired PDA functionality. Later, when I needed a portable music player, I bought a Nomad, which doesn't stay in my pocket all day. Someday when WiMax is widespread, I hope to replace both devices with a single handheld computer that can access Rhapsody and Skype.

I didn't want convergence...

[ajservo]

I've never sought out all for one convergence.

There's a variety of reasons for this.

1. I don't work in a traditional office setting with meetings and appointments.

2. There's compromises that are made on the portability and "all in one" nature of these devices. The camera feature on an older PDA wouldn't have met my needs for what I had at the time. Do I want to limit myself to 512MB of space for everything? These are questions I evaluated before I made my purchases. The cell phone served it's purpose, the ipod does it's own. I can't see much need in crossover for what I use the two for.

How about storage space?

[sterno]

Name me one PDA that has 30GB of space. Or 10... or 5 even?

I've got a treo. It's a nice phone/organizer and it'd suck donkeys for playing mp3's. Why? Because it has no storage space.

I think, quite honestly, it comes down to a decision about the intention of the devices. PDA's are marketed to business people. So part of that marketing choice involves trimming out features that would make them well suited to being mp3 players. Why does a business traveller need 10GB of space? It'd be nice, but in the grand scheme, they don't need it and they wouldn't be able to convince their employers to shell out for it.

The other thing to keep in mind is the costs involved. An IPod is basically a disk drive with a very minimal interface to manage the music. Simple input and simple output using relatively low cost parts. If you tried to build a PDA with similar capacity it'd get a lot more expensive quickly and then who would buy it? Business execs would compare it to a blackberry and think it overpriced. Consumers would compare it to an ipod and think it overpriced.

Laptops

[RUFFyamahaRYDER]

Because laptops have 90% of the function of a PC and they run on the stuff that people already know (MAC OS and Win XP). The only thing a PDA has on a laptop is size, and even then size can work against PDA's because it's easier to type on a bigger keyboard and look at a bigger screen that all laptops have...

Re:Laptops

[shmlco]

Don't forget that PDAs are also getting squeezed by the ultra-portable laptop market. If you want a computer, why not get a computer?

I think it's simple, but am I wrong?

[OS24Ever]

The last PDA I bought was a Palm T3 to replace my Treo 300 that I was furious at sprint with because the flip top lid thing snapped off after about eight months of use and the prick told me it was misuse. I am 'careful' with my devices and being told I chucked it at a wall in hopes of an upgrade really made my day.

Anyway, a PDA while decent to do lots of stuff, it doesn't do lots of stuff well.

There are things out there to improve the experience, but most of the time they cost money.

A iPod works out of the box, you don't have to jiggle here, tweak there, poke here. That's why the Pocket Windows devices appeal more to geeks but not to the rest of the world. On a lot of things I want them to Just Work (TM) and it seems when there is a device out there that 'does more stuff and costs the same' it doesn't Just Work(TM) you gott a dick with it. I don't get paid to dick with little devices to listen to music or look up my calendar so I'm not gonna waste my time and look for something that just works (TM)

My $0.02

PDAs haven't failed...

[WIAKywbfatw]

I have a Treo 650. It's a phone, it's a PDA, it's a pretty good MP3 player, it's a pretty good games machine to pass the time when I'm bored travelling and it's power-efficient too (and has a removable battery). All in a small form factor.

People who make generic statements such as "PDAs have failed" are just simply wrong.

My View...

[michaelzhao]

My parents have often asked if I needed a Pocket PC. Invariably, my answer is always "no." I thought about it for 5 minutes of why I said "no" upon reading this article. I have come up with reasons (BTW, I have an iPod):

1. No use. I have a laptop, a desktop, a cellphone, and iPod. The laptop and desktop are meant to be ubquitous devices. They handle anything I throw at it. The iPod is for use for my huge music library (50 Gigabytes). No PocketPC could handle that. And my cell-phone is my phonebook.

2. Price. A PocketPC is around the price of an iPod. However, why didn't I buy a PocketPC instead of an iPod? Simple. Refer back to reason 1. I have no use for a PocketPC. I have no need to addictively log on to Technorati, Digg, or Slashdot. Also, checking e-mail every 5 minutes gets old. To me, the PocketPC doesn't do any one factor well. The iPod does music extremely well. What does the PocketPC do well? Organization? Well, between the back of my hand, my memory, and my pen and paper, I do got that base covered.

3. Price of Internet. Lets assume I'm not near any unsecured WiFi hotspot. To utilize the expensive brick I just bought to the max, I would have to get online. Well... T-Mobile Internet is $20 a month for abysmally slow Internet. Also, why would I connect using a PocketPC when my cellphone connects to the Internet just as fast and just as well?

4. Lack of Apps. Lets face it, PocketPC's lack Apps. I put everything I need on my laptop. I owned a PocketPC before, it died, I didn't need a new one. But lack of apps really hounded it.


My views on improving the PocketPC.

1. Bigger hard-drive. Between my 80 Gig Laptop, my 73.4 + 2x250 HD's on my laptop, and my 60Gig iPod, the PocketPC suffers from suitable space.
2. Lack of Apps. With not enough users, developers are loathe to code for it.
3. Price. Clocking in at the price of my iPod and considering how little I would never considering dropping the cash.

Three reasons why iPod and paper beats a PDA

[bexmex]

1) battery life

Your average iPod will play for 10 hours on a charge. You average PDA is lucky to last one hour. Putting the MP3 decoding in hardware is a huge battery saver. Although keeping it in software adds OGG support.

2) crash!

In the event that you didn't know #1, and your battery drains, those Pocket PCs have a nasty habit of deleting every file they can find.

3) effortless synch

With a PDA you have to manually move folders of MP3s over. Not much playlist support. The iPod with iTunes is effortless, especially with Party Shuffle.

Synching in general is my main gripe about my PDA. Its a royal pain in the ass to synch unless you use 100% microsoft, and it takes forever. No thanks. Palm is better on the Macs, but not by much. And considering problem #2, being able to quickly synch with many different apps and servers is VITAL.

Until somebody solves problem #3, Ive pretty much shelved my Axim. I use an iPod and a Hipster PDA instead. It wont synch, but neither will it crash.

Jack of all trades....

[irritating environme]

Truly a jack of all trades, master of none problem

The iPod is a focused device that does its original intent quite well. PDAs never did any of their information tasks very well, and considering a mini-laptop was far more useful and almost as portable, PDAs beyond address books (which a watch or phone does better now) never justified their 300-500 dollar price point.

I worked at a startup that chased enterprise apps on PDAs in the early 00s.

Developer tools sucked/expensive/closed, and the APIs changed constantly. MS does this junk on the desktop all the time with technologies, as in OLE->COM->DCOM->whatever, but can hide backwards compatibility in the OS bloat, but PDAs don't have room for backwards bloat. So no vibrant utilities or third-party apps really flourished. Palm wasn't much better, either.

I mean, try making an enterprise app for all the diffrent flavors of Palm+PocketPC. Jesus, it's like writing a 3D driving game for the NES, SNES, and Playstation2 all at once. Too expensive, and not enough money to be made.

Heck, processor architectures and fundamental OS capabilities (single-thread vs preemptive multitasking) changed constantly.

Battery life was always terrible, and if you ran out of battery, POOF! goes your installed apps and data (on the iPaq at least).

Finally, when I had to pay $150 for a damn PCMCIA sleeve for an iPaq that cost only $250, man, that is just WRONG. Any interesting thing you could do with it, from early WiFi or heck even wired networking went out the window with that.

So basically, the PDA market fragmented into dozens of minimarkets, where nothing could flourish. This was okay in the nascent PC market back in 1980 and you could release a computer with just BASIC interpreter and an extremely rudimentary OS, but people have far different expectations of applications (actual user interfaces, connectivity to internet, etc).

Re:Jack of all trades....

[LWATCDR]

Actually the Palm like the IPod was a focused product with an elegant interface. It didn't fail as much got killed by WINCE devices.
The Palm was a great little PDA. It replaces your day planner and that was pretty much it. Yea you could play a few games on it but wasn't it's main function.
Then came the WINCE devices. Look it has color neato. You can run Excel on it. You can listen to music.....
The PDA got defocused. Microsoft couldn't make a better Palm so it made PDAs into something different.

Poor marketing

[psycho_driver]

As the proud owner of a Nokia 3300(b) cell phone, I found myself wondering almost the same thing recently. Cingular has started advertising a new phone line with mp3/itunes support as if it's a hot new item. My phone (which is over two years old now) has 512MB worth of mp3s in it, which sound great when played back via the nokia dbus earphones. It also features nice battery life, probably twelve hours of continuous mp3 playback. True, it doesn't have itunes support, but realistically would you rather have a phone you can hook up to your pc and transfer mp3s off of your hard drive, or one that you have to pay $.99 for every song?

My phone also has a full keyboard, something I felt was a necessity for taking quick notes and because I'm a huge text message flirt. I'm wondering why this phone (the 3300) had such a small impact on the market when it's so feature rich? My guess would be the lack of any advertising done on its part. I do a lot of research before making any serious purchase, but I'm guessing the majority of America just buys whatever they see on tv most often, or perhaps most recently. Back when the 3300 came out those chintzy camera phones were all the rage and were getting all the tv airtime on commercials.

Maybe you should just consider yourself trendy and go around telling everybody you see with a video ipod "I could do that two years ago!" :)

Re:dont need

[Locutus]

yup, don't need all that stuff and it just makes it harder to figure out how to use it. ie, too complicated. Just look at the iPod. There have been other MP3 mplayers for years before the iPod. IMO, the reason the iPod took off was because Apple made getting music and getting it onto the iPod REALLY easy. The UI on the iPod is pretty simple too and I think the simplicity is what makes it sell to the broader market.

Now if someone were to build a Linux image for your iPaq that strips it down to a simple music and video player, AND builds a website or desktop app( JAVA maybe ) to easily load the files.... Then again, it won't look like an iPod so it ain't got THAT going for it.

LoB

In one word...

[MMC Monster]

...usability.

Can any palm-top computer reach the ease of use of an ipod, or any other portable media player? I have a Palm Tungsten T5, and it surely is more difficult to use, even when I'm just running the Real music player.

It doesn't help that ipods mostly are measured in gigabytes, not megabytes.

It's marketing, and software

[digitalgimpus]

The iPod is successful for two reasons: ease of use, quality

That's something lacking on most PDA's. Palm OS was great, has become patchzilla with about a billion things bolted on that old OS, and the new version is still vaporware. Microsoft on the other hand, released a complex, ugly looking OS that makes that tiny screen feel way to overwhelming.

As far as quality goes... well think about it. The Treo isn't bad, but has it's downsides, those cheap Dell PDA's are just that, cheap.

For there to be a winner, someone has to do what Apple did. Combine killer features, and quality with ease of use.

Palm had that formula for a while, but dropped the ball a few years ago. Sony picked up the hardware side with the Clie, which I still carry around. As far as the software goes... it never came back.

I'm still waiting for my new Apple PDA.

iPods are Hip, PDAs are for Dorques

[Shadow Wrought]

At least that's what the marketing weenies tell us. Simply put, PDA's ain't chic. Once the iPod fad fades (in a little less than a year if you're the betting type), their sales will stabilize and then generally decline. That's the difference between a trend and a fad. I think mp3 players are a trend, iPods, a fad. Not that anyone, save slashdot, asked...

People just don't want them...

[Robotech_Master]

...at least, not in big enough numbers to make it worthwhile to make them.

Jeff Kirvin talks about this in the latest entry in his Writing On Your Palm blog. He points out that companies like Toshiba, Sony, and HP who used to make all these high-end super-geek-toy PDAs--the "Ferarris of handhelds"--are now either out of the PDA industry altogether, or at least having a hard time keeping up. Whereas Palm, who makes "Toyotas," just keeps on ticking.

Apparently there just isn't a market for a super-duper-gee-whiz-does-everything PDA at this point.

Exactly

[sterno]

The fact of the matter is that there are very few people who really need PDA's. If they can get a phone that has PDA features without paying a lot more, they'll take it. But as a standalone device, the PDA is the jack of all trades master of none.

If you take a straight up pocket PC, you can:

-Make phone calls
-Listen to music
-Schedule appointments
-Send e-mail
-Watch movies

But how many of those tasks is it really exceptional at? It's great for keeping track of a calendar and corporations are the biggest buyer of PDA's for that reason. They set up a centralized meeting system and then hand out PDA's to everybody.

It's not ideal for phone calls. I have a treo which is about as good of a compromise as you can get it and it's still a bit bulky for the average person. It'll fit in a pocket but it bulges quite a bit. You can listen to music but then you have storage space issues and the interfaces aren't nearly as good as what's on an ipod. You can send a small e-mail with ease but you need a laptop for real productivity. Movies... well, if you like watching movies on a 2 inch screen, more power to you and your optometrist.

The niche that a PDA is trying to fill is deceptively difficult. Basically give people a computer that they can carry in their pocket all the time. There's practical limitations to how small you can make the display and keyboard before it becomes unusuable. The treo is the best compromise I've seen and by most phone standards it's huge.

Re:Exactly

[Nightspirit]

Honestly I really love my Samsung i730 pocket PC phone.

The phone quality is IMO excellent; it is far clearer than any cell phone I've ever owned. So at the very least it ties with standalone phones.

The mp3 player I have installed (pocket music player) is great too. The only thing that it lacks is space: I have only a 1gig SD card. However, my desktop music jukebox autosynchs, so I get new mp3s with little effort. So the ipod wins here, but the samsung is adequate.

The video (betaplater, now called TCPMP) is excellent as well, and it is perfect for watching episodes of futurama or firefly while I'm waiting. Encoding is a breeze as well with pocket dvd studio. I'm not sure if you can easily encode your own DVDs or tv shows with the PSP or ipod, so I'm going to put the win with pocket pc until I find out otherwise.

Games are adequate. The PSP and gameboy clearly beat it, but there are a few fun games for the pocket pc. Enough so I really don't need to carry around a seperate gaming device. Age of Empires, Skyforce, and Warfare Inc are all great games, amongst others.

So really, I have no reason to carry around an ipod, PSP, PDA, and phone. My device does it all adequatly enough so that I don't have to. The newest pocket PC Treo may be even better.

Doing One Thing Well Counts

[Gumber]

Because more functionality isn't aways better, especially in a smaller device.

You might as well be asking why people buy screwdrivers and pliers instead of a single Leathermen.

Easy /= PDA, but = iPod

[wernst]

A PDA has been my constant companion since my Psion 3a in 1993, and I've since moved through Palms and Treos to my current Treo 650. The Treo has abilities my poor little Psion would never have dreamed of, and despite a much better user interface, is just as complex to use overall because of it. It is about as complex as a modern PC or Macintosh, just as my Psion was about as complex as PCs or Macs were back in 1993. I happen to be comfortable with this, and it seems the original poster of the question is too.

The iPod I carry around in my bag is about as simple to use as the cassete tape-playing Walkman I had in High school, in spite of the fact that it has far more abilties than that Walkman ever had. That lowers the barriers to ownership right there.

Then toss in the "cool factor" that comes with each iPod, and contrast that to the "nerd factor" that comes with every PDA, and it is soon clear why there are a few billion more iPods than PDAs out there.

Batteries, Batteries, Batteies

[monopole]

I've got a Clie TJ-37 which is capable of playing mp3s and video (via mmplayer) both of which I have got running in the past. The limitation is not really one of memory but of battery life. Playing MP3s or worse yet, video will drain the batteries in less than an hour. While I love my Clie as a PDA and eBook Reader, it blows as a media player.

When I want a portable media player I grab my Gameboy (DS or micro)with a Play Yan which has an insane battery life (5hrs plus w/ video) and great compression (4-5hrs on a 1 GB flash) and is well nigh indestructable. Beats the hell out of the iPod and beats my PSP on battery life. I even hear you can play video games on it.

Finally PDAs get no love. Every time a PDA topic comes up, everybody on slashdot becomes a luddite insisting that a 3x5 index card and a pencil outperforms a PDA (try GPS mapping with that guys !). On the other hand Apple generates slavish devotion, even with very mediocre products.

Why...

[GimliGloin]

There are only two reasons to get a PDA:

1) Because they are Cool and you can show off... This fades FAST... Fads are not really a good business model.

2) Because you have a high-pressure or high-travel related job. In other words, you NEED all those tiny portable productivity features to stay employed. For this case, a PDA is more of shackle than a gadget. After a while, most people would love to be able to shred the PDA and go back to a normal job. So in this case, you really are not going to buy PDAs for your kids are you?

IPods on the other hand are ONLY bought because people wish to enjoy life with them. You can use at work, at home, wherever. They are pointed to a TOTALLY different and much much wider market than PDAs.

When I see someone with a PDA I have to wonder what kind of reason they would have to HAVE to use that tiny device for business.... Does that PDA simplify their life or does it introduce far too much complexity and expecatations or superiors?

When I see someone with an MP3 player, I see someone that has found a way to mix work with fun. Its a pretty good compromise.

Which person do you really want to be?

GSG

Batteries

[Windcatcher]

For me the main issue is battery life. I can't speak for Pocket PCs, but Palm devices don't have removable batteries, and even a Tungsten T3.5 (see the Brighthand forums to learn what one of those is) only lats a maximum of 6 hours with the screen brightness at minumum. My iRiver can last many times that, and it uses a standard removable AA battery. If Palm devices had better battery life and removable batteries (e.g. allow the use of thicker, ultra-high-capacity batteries), then they might become a much more viable alternative. A Power To Go sled can add more life by recharging your Palm but they don't make them anymore, presumably because the new Palms don't use the Universal Connector. It also isn't all that great a solution -- a better alternative would be the cell-phone model where you simply swap batteries, and have choices of battery capacity.

In terms of battery life, currently the best Palm MP3 player would be a Tungsten T2.5 (T2 with a Powerizer 1400MAh battery shoehorned in), which will give you 12 hours with screen brightness at minimum, but you have to perform serious surgery to get the battery in there (I've done it to a Tungsten T and it's not for the squeamish).

People dont want mobile video.

[GeorgeMcBay]

The only reason Apple made a video iPod is the idea comes basically for free once you have the new nicer screens and a big harddrive sitting in the unit.

People who are looking at the video iPod as a validation of the demand for mobile video are mistaken.

99% of the people who wind up owning a video iPod are only ever going to use it to listen to music.

PocketPC's were useless, up till about amonth ago.

[Orangatang]

It seems it took pocketpc's a few years to go through enough iterations to become useful. Over the past month a couple have come out that make them borderline useful. The one I'm going to get is the HTC Universal (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000777057087/). It seems to have decent battery life, can play music/video, has wifi/bluetooth/3g connectivity, can edit office docs, pick up e-mail, and play games quite reasonably. The storage is SD cards, which are now up to 4GB, which is starting to get useful now were counting in GB's. The only downside is it can't act as a USB host - then I could plug in my ipod and use it as extra storage :). The best thing is they're going on cheap mobile contracts for no more than a 3g phone...

Capacity

[dtfinch]

Does your PDA have a 60gb hard drive? If so, did it cost the same as an iPod?

Re:Laptops don't beep at you when they're closed

[Absentminded-Artist]

You're almost there. There're a few other features PDAs have over laptops.

I use a PDA daily. It is vital to my productivity. But I also have an iBook. I don't use my PDA for my addressbook anymore. I look numbers up on my iBook. I don't take notes on my PDA anymore. Anything important goes into my iBook. I could play MP3s on my PDA, but I'd rather use my iPod for that. It's easier to manage and manipulate for music. I can also play music on my iBook while doing other work, something the Zire72 attempts but doesn't always succeed in.

The two things that PDA are indispensable for me are To Do lists and Calendars. Laptops don't beep at me, and boy do I need that beep. My Zire72 has a piercing shrill alarm I can hear all over the house. My iBook not so loud. My PDA turns on instantly. My iBook not so quickly, especially if I have to cold boot it. And since I replaced my PDA's Graffiti2 with the original version, the hand writing recognition is very fast.

However, if my iBook had a PDA screen built into the lid with access to my to do lists and calendar (synced with iCal or Entourage of course) and a loud alarm, it might possibly replace my PDA.

In fact, I think it would replace my PDA.

You can't buy a cellphone

[Jay Carlson]

No really, you can't buy a cellphone. You can only lease one from your provider. At least in the US. Because cell networks must approve the devices that live on their networks, they can veto anything that looks too useful. Like, say, a *good* iPod clone that doesn't give the network provider a 100% tax on music loaded. Or software that gives you decent RSS feeds, or location-dependent services, again, without a tax that's somewhere greater than 100% of the inherent service cost.

This is what I was praying for at the last Apple keynote:

Steve Jobs says "oh, and one more thing. We have a GSM iPod now. [Audience says, ooh, ahh. It is beautiful. There is a brief demo.] It will be on sale in Europe within a month. Unfortunately, we have not been able to reach any agreement with US providers, which is unfortunate, since any provider that is willing to have our device on their networks will both help their customers, and provide an incentive for people to switch to that network. At http://apple.com/cellpod/ we've put a few links if those of you with American cell contracts would like to speak with the potential network providers in the US. Remember, we'd like to sell you as many of these as we can. That means that you will only be helping us if you can provide valid economic arguments to them. Although I'm sure many of you blogging on AirPort connections are shorting out your keyboards with drool over this. [Roar of audience laughter.]"

The teenage daughter test

[monkeyGrease]

Very simple... My teenage daughter paid her own money for an iPod and can use it easily. She walked into the Mac store (Glendale Galleria), played with one for three minutes, and could use it. No problem. She bought it. She now wants a Mac Mini.

She tried to use a PDA, with guidance, and still lost interest almost immediately. She said it was like trying to use a PC with ten foot chopsticks.

Apple == Ease of use. Zero learning curve to start. Like a toaster.

Note that this does not exclude a learning curve and more sophistication _after_ entry. Entry must be immediate and rewarding.

Another factor..

[jvagner]

PDAs seem like a good idea when you value your work life enough to carry it around with you. PDAs showed up at a time when most people's data was centralized on their desktop's hard drive.

Two things happened:
1) the market crashed, everyone gave up on the idea that if they sacrificed their life to their job, and melded the disparate goals in their life to their corporate goals, they would get rich. to that end, everyone wanted to have their personal and corporate life in a sexy little device they could access at home, work and starbucks.

2) the data just isn't centralizable anymore. between corporate databases, ASPs, etc., synchronizing is almost impossible. you want your contacts? nobody gets excited about contacts anymore.

iPods are for lifestyle and play. Work isn't as much a lifestyle thing anymore. And good riddance.

Re:Intended use, capturing imagination

[SmurfButcher Bob]

>> A PDA? It's not designed to play music or video.. how do I know I won't have to jump through hoops to get it to do either?

A PDA (even an old one, like my IPaq) isn't designed to do anything - it has exactly six buttons with no implicit function on any of them, and a large touch-sensitive region that has a near-infinite set of potential purposes. As a result, my PDA is exactly designed to play music or video - What you suggest is that Winamp (etc) are not suited for playback... when in fact, that style of UI is what made computer based music / video popular in the first place. Can an IPod compete with my IPaq for codecs? Not even close. How about the player UI? My IPaq will bury it in every case (unless you physically drop the unit and break it), because Winamp doesn't suck - nor do any of it's PPC-based clones. It's interesting to note that even today, the best music or video playback device still cannot compete with my Ipaq, which is pushing 5 years old, in terms of usabiity, flexability, expandability, and features... since it has everything you've got on a full PC. Find me a player that competes with Winamp - you cannot. Plus, you can do more than just listen or watch - you can play solitare, check mail, write junk and compile it with GCC, blah blah blah, WHILE you listen. The only advantage the new units have is durability, due to the nature of the typical PDA display. However...

>> What you can do is irrelevant to 99% of the population (who are not geeks). It's what you can do easily that's important.

I agree here. If the market convinces people that something is hard, they'll believe it. IPod sells because the aquisition of music is marketed as being trivial. Obviously, aquisition / ripping of MP3s is likewise trivial... but that fact isn't marketed, so people shy away from it. The iMac was perhaps the only real attempt at selling on this point (click,rip,burn) - and obviously Apple discovered that it was *still* perceived as tedious and technical no matter how well they automated it.

>> If what it's designed for captures my imagination, and it's presented so I feel I know how to use it, it's sold.

Key point / editorial - and I don't disagree with you - but it's sad that something needs a concrete design in order to inspire imagination, as opposed to a mildly abstracted tool. Palm was probably a small culprit in this as far as PDAs are concerned - they were the big dog on the market, and those stupid tap-regions at the base of the screen were hard-coded to exact functions. When the PPC hit the market, Palm had such a legacy market presence that people (myself included, initially) expected that to still be the case. I find that when I tell people that the buttons have no explicit meaning, they totally fail to grasp it. THAT is probably why Palm originally dedicated those tap-regions to specific functions, and THAT is probably why the PDA is such a failure - people are so dumbed down that they have no freakin Vision.

Re:It's not unusual to own 300 CDs

[steve_bryan]

iPods don't support any lossless formats

what's the point of listening to lossless audio formats on earbud headphones

Sometime between these two comments wouldn't it occur to you that you might acknowledge that you are just spouting off and don't really know basic facts? It might even make sense to apologize for saying something completely false like your first statement. Never mind, Jake, it's slashdot.

Well, let's see...

[alcmaeon]

PDA's are good at:

Keeping a mobile Calendar
Keeping a contact list

They are OK at:

doubling as a calculator
Sending email (if they have networking of some sort and a thumb board)
reading ebooks (if you have a high resolution, decent-sized screen)

They suck at:

Web-surfing
Word processing
Spread sheet use
Games (except solitare)
picture taking
picture manupulation
video shooting
video manipulation
storage
speed (Palms are decent here, but not good)
playing music
note taking
one handed UI navigation

What are they marketed as? A device that does all the things in the bottom list.

Apple's gamble

[MisterSquid]

As I see it, the new iPod has increased battery life, it's a bit thinner and has a little larger display. Beyond that, it's the exact same device it's always been and functions the exact same way it always has -- except that it'll play some video now.

You're right, in theory. The iPod added video capability without increasing the price or changing the basic functionality of the ipod. Some things, of course are changed, small things like no transfer over FW (Apple has glitchy USB 2.0 support on some machines) and the lack of remote functionality on the iPod's specialized headphone connector (now, it's dock-only).

But the real proof is in the tasting of the pudding. What I mean by this is that if people perceive that the video experience of iPod is not very useful and it becomes a vestigial function, then people will irrationally perceive that the iPod has lower value than an earlier iPod that doesn't do video. Part of this will be due to the fact that people will be lured to the new iPod by the video functionality but will find out it's not what they hoped. In particular, people may reject the video on the iPod because there is no easy way for users to produce video content for the iPod. Sure, some people will buy a bunch of $2.00 shows, but that novelty will wear off fast.

However, if I'm wrong and people do buy TV shows and music video like they do hotcakes, then the video iPod will probably be very successful. But without massive video iTMS sales, the fact that the iPod does not allow users to easily create/acquire content outside of commercial distribution channels may scratch the pristine surface of the iPod's reputation.

My guess is that Apple is working on a version of iMovie that will practically beam video content into your new video iPod and so the video iPod will revolutionize video consumption just as the iPod (r)evolutionized music-listening.

End to end user experience

[pcause]

Others have pointed out that the iPod is a dedicated device and Apple has made it easy to use. It goes beyond the device. Apple provides, through iTunes and the iPod, a fully integrated experience. Since they control all aspects, from the client to the store to the device and the DRM, they can provide a seamless and simple experience.

They also are not religuous about the Web and browser and recognized what we all know: rich media is inherently a desktop experience and desktop clients can be far richer than web apps (Yes, AJAX is great, but...). So iTunes is your portal. It uses the web as a data source, may display some stuff in HTML, but it is a desktop client that is quick and simple and totally integrated with the device.

The other options all involve multiple parties using some kind of standard (even is a proprietary standard like MS). This means that different people do different things and the integraiton isn't as good, the pieces can not count on each other, etc.

It is all about the end ot end integraiton of the experience.

Security and corporate culture

[Br._Fjordhr]

In my previous jobs I used a PDA constantly. had customer lists in it, commonly used part numbers, and a bunch of other stuff. I now work in an environment that I can not connect anything to my computer. Therefore, I can not get information to the PDA. People here use paper day-timers. I had never used one in my life and am still having a hard time adjusting.[p] The culture here is just to not use computers (people look at me like I am from another planet when I mention email, or the assume it is porn because it is the internet and we all know the internet is porn). hen I asked for palm manager to b put on my computer the answer was not only no; but I was also put on the list of people to check for hacking activity on a regular basis. Putting things in the windows startup folder or on the server is considered hacking.[p] As much as I hate using a day-timer and prefer that PDA, there is just no way I can use one in the culture of secutity fear and ignorance that I work in.