Apple PDA MUST - List (no trickling of features)

if I may add, i think an iPod Hard drive would be nice too, to play mp3s, record video and pictures, and whatnot. But then you have to weigh in the fact that it might hurt iPod sales.

A Cell phone would be nice too, or perhaps a docking port so you could get whatever module you wanted, either a camera, wireless or whatever.

Another PDA thread! Could it be the start of another PDA-related posting epidemic???

I am so sick of the PDA rumors. Steve Jobs said apple WILL NOT venture into that market.. if steve says something isn't going to happen. it ISN"T going to happen. The PDA market is NOT something you want apple to get into... they will fail. Apple.. concentrate your efforst on powermachines.. and people.. no more PDA threads.. ugh

hey newbie,

steve also said that the possibility of super drive powerbooks would not come for a while or not at all, and look at wat happened!!! so how bout keeping an open mind and not acting like you know everything,okay? this is not a good start newb!!!

Originally posted by insidedanshead
I am so sick of the PDA rumors. Steve Jobs said apple WILL NOT venture into that market.. if steve says something isn't going to happen. it ISN"T going to happen. The PDA market is NOT something you want apple to get into... they will fail. Apple.. concentrate your efforst on powermachines.. and people.. no more PDA threads.. ugh

Click to expand...

I'm a newbie because I decided to join macrumors after years of reading the boards... to help people like you understand reality. I have probably been using a mac since you been sucking your thumb. If you want to get into newb calling names ask me a few questions.. and we'll see who the real newbie is...

http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/19461.html
"Jobs has said the market is limited for existing devices, and he may be waiting for next-generation wireless networks to roll out, offering Internet access and embedded technologies," Ro said. "If Apple does offer a PDA, they do not want to jump into a slumping market."

"Yankee Group analyst Sarah Kim agreed that now is not the best time for Apple to launch a PDA. Most Mac users already have a Palm PDA, she told Wireless NewsFactor, and it could be difficult to alter brand loyalty.

"To offer a new device, they would have to connect with consumers who are not using all that is available with PDAs today," she said. "People need to see the value beyond personal information management, which is available on the iPod."

Case and point the PDA market is already overly saturated by handheld devices.. the simple things you can do on a handheld you can do on a 99 dollar palm that you can sync with your mac.. go and check out how the pocket pc is doing.. if apple comes out with a pda solution it wont be a true pda at all.. it will be something along the lines of upgrading their iPod to have more pda aspects.. what i'm really interested in is an Apple iphone. good day to you .. you friendly mac user.

One More thing: >>powerbooks would not come for a while or not at all>>
never did steve say this. he was quoted as saying they might not come until the current enclosures would fit them.. NOT AT ALL.. was never mentioned.. so do you think we will never see DDR.. or PCI X.. or faster than 167Mhz buses.. i'm interested to know..

Yeah, well...

Hey, I would love for Apple to make a good PDA to get me into them, but I doubt it. Palm isn't really making too much money, and it looks more and more like Microsoft will sucessfully leverage their monopoly now that they are beginning to compete on price.

When PDAs merge more and more with Cell Phones, then see Apple enter the market, but I don't see it happening soon....

Whoops...

yeah.. I was going to end with the fact that Steve Jobs isn't so stubborn on stuff he said before, thankfully....

Remember: "I guess this looks like the death of CRT."

Yet, almost a year later we still see eMacs and stale G3 iMacs...

the fact that no one has backed you up with your bull **** response should give you angle on how ****ing wrong you are ,you pessimistic bitch! We need less people like you and more people that believe in Apple and them coming through to their customers. Many things have been said here that prove people like you wrong, and people like you disgrace the apple name by being so negative about possiblility and people like you...should be using windows and stay away from macs because all you do is give us a bad image!

Originally posted by insidedanshead
I'm a newbie because I decided to join macrumors after years of reading the boards... to help people like you understand reality. I have probably been using a mac since you been sucking your thumb. If you want to get into newb calling names ask me a few questions.. and we'll see who the real newbie is...

http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/19461.html
"Jobs has said the market is limited for existing devices, and he may be waiting for next-generation wireless networks to roll out, offering Internet access and embedded technologies," Ro said. "If Apple does offer a PDA, they do not want to jump into a slumping market."

"Yankee Group analyst Sarah Kim agreed that now is not the best time for Apple to launch a PDA. Most Mac users already have a Palm PDA, she told Wireless NewsFactor, and it could be difficult to alter brand loyalty.

"To offer a new device, they would have to connect with consumers who are not using all that is available with PDAs today," she said. "People need to see the value beyond personal information management, which is available on the iPod."

Case and point the PDA market is already overly saturated by handheld devices.. the simple things you can do on a handheld you can do on a 99 dollar palm that you can sync with your mac.. go and check out how the pocket pc is doing.. if apple comes out with a pda solution it wont be a true pda at all.. it will be something along the lines of upgrading their iPod to have more pda aspects.. what i'm really interested in is an Apple iphone. good day to you .. you friendly mac user.

One More thing: >>powerbooks would not come for a while or not at all>>
never did steve say this. he was quoted as saying they might not come until the current enclosures would fit them.. NOT AT ALL.. was never mentioned.. so do you think we will never see DDR.. or PCI X.. or faster than 167Mhz buses.. i'm interested to know..

Click to expand...

Let's knock off the personal attacks...

... we are all well aware that the PDA threads have been done to death.

gooddog has a point, the development tools for the Palm/Visor platform are garbage, and the screen resolution (size, too) is too small for any significant data entry.

For the development tools, I was going to try ThinkDB. It is available at Office Depot. However, it looks like the client is PC-only.

Other than that, there's C. I like C, but it is a tad slow for developing things. I was hopeful there would be a Hypercard-like product, but years after the intro of the Palm, there still isn't.

If you don't mind learning a completely strange object-oriented language used nowhere else, you can program a PDA with a much bigger screen size than the Palm, with plenty of memory capacity and Ethernet capability. No digital camera or MP3 playing, though, but WDYK? It has an Apple logo on it! It's called the Newton.

Originally posted by swahilibill
the fact that no one has backed you up with your bull **** response should give you angle on how ****ing wrong you are ,you pessimistic bitch! We need less people like you and more people that believe in Apple and them coming through to their customers. Many things have been said here that prove people like you wrong, and people like you disgrace the apple name by being so negative about possiblility and people like you...should be using windows and stay away from macs because all you do is give us a bad image!

Click to expand...

You have a lot to learn. Apple is a company much like any other out there. They make money by making products that people want. There isn't enough demand out there for a PDA like that that is being suggested.. the market doesn't lie. Through purchases and refferals I have made apple more money than most. I love apple. I just don't have fairytale expectations out of them. I know they are a company and I think its our job to push them.. and to be real. the market shows we don't want pda's.. we want faster architecture in our machines.. to allow people like me.. who use the mac everyday to be able to do what we do quicker.

I designed an entire software interface for a classroom education system on my mac. I have developed numerous corporations identies on my mac. i now create advertisements globally for my company.. on my mac.. my entire office is pc heads. i deal with people that hate macs everyday.. yet im still doing it.. because i love them.. to me you sound like one of those people who only roots for the winning team.... but i have been with apple since I was able to type.. and i know how they run themselves.. like any company that has been to rock bottom they only cater to areas where they will make money.. and for this i commend them.. but don't expect things that are unreasonable.. if there is a pda boom yeah.. expect one from apple.. but sorry to tell you but the economy is down and the pda market is a big fat pile of saturated goo..

im done here. instead of wasting your time antagonizing a fellow mac user.. go spend your time trying to switch someone over..

:-/

If Apple were to make a PDA, which I do not believe they are, and they were going to release it any time soon, they would be way past R&D.

In addition, Apple (to the best of my recollection) has not listened to consumer requests either through petition or forum.

Finally, Apple's mentality is one with which they treat the consumer as a client and only a client. They know what is best for us. Luckily, they are usually right

While it is a nice thought and a PDA with these features would be nice, I don't see it happening.

This isn't intended as a flame and I hope it isn't flamebait, I just want to put some of my ideas on the board.

- RandomMacGuy

PDAs are vital to the "digital lifestyle"

Apple ignores the PDA market to it's own peril. Many of us have great need for a well designed, truly portable, and useable device. Apple already produced such a device in the Newton, and the PDA market has yet to catch up to the standard Apple set more than 5 years ago.

The PDA market sucks only because the toys being sold as PDA's are lousy. A well-made device would quickly fill the vacuum that has emerged.

As it stands now, Apple has left it's user base to fend for themselves. Palms are not now, nor ever have been Apple-friendly. And, the Palm OS is nowhere near powerful enough to provide the usability that is needed in the PDA market.

The PDA that gooddog describes sounds like a disaster -- if not flat-out impossible for *anybody* to build, right now. I count loads of major functions: Basic PIM stuff, laser pointer, digital camera, digital music player, mobile phone, audio recorder, video recorder, motion and proximity sensors, bluetooth, smartmedia. It's unlikely that you're going to pack all that functionality into a pocket size package. Regardless of size, it's going to be terribly expensive, and will do a crappy job at each of its major functions (particularly the camera/video stuff), compared to what a more dedicated piece of hardware for any given function could do.

You also get into UI issues: You can safely pack a lot of varied functionality into a computer, because computers have fairly high-bandwidth UIs (i.e. big screens, full-size keyboards, and mice). A small device has a much lower bandwidth UI, and navigating through a large set of functions is painful. I'd rather just grab my digicam and turn it on and know it's ready to take pictures, than have to navigate through a menu or something to put my hydra-PDA into camera mode.

Anybody remember the Simpsons episode where Homer designs a car (named 'The Homer') for his wealthy long-lost brother? Remember how it turns out to be a mess because it tried to serve too many different needs? This is 'The Homer' of PDAs.

I'm looking at the top-of-the-line Clie (specifically, the PEG-NR70V, at http://sonyelectronics.sonystyle.com/micros/clie/models/70V.html), now, and having a hard time seeing how it would meet the need you describe. The camera it includes only has 100,000 effective pixels (i.e. 0.1 megapixel, or images about 360x270). This resolution seems far too low to effectively capture the text of a document of any size; you could only capture a small chunk of 10pt text with an image that size, a fraction of the text that you might find on an 8.5x11 piece of paper. Sure you could take multiple photos and stitch them together later when you're at the computer, but that sounds terribly tedious to me.

Also, pixel resolution doesn't tell the whole story. You also need a lens system that can effectively resolve a very fine level of detail; It's extremely difficult to make such a lens that will be an appropriate size for a pocket device that will also have the resolving power you need for document capture. So it's not just a matter of cramming a higher-resolution CCD into the thing.

I built it just for you:


On a more serious note if Apple does a device, it won't have a laser pointer, a camera, or a massive screen. These are niche items, clumsy add ons, or poor substitutes for other devices.

They are far more likely to build out the iPod to include phone and pda funtionality, in a similarly sized device (this is one device my golden pocket clutter killing dream).

The iPod has a DSP, a hard drive, contact and calendar features, an OS, audio out, and a damn good battery. To become a PDA, it needs an input mechanism. To become a phone, it needs a mic and an antenna (and some telephony software).

So, add a mic, and antenna (headphone cable), and a pen sensitve screen, and you've got the iPDAPhonePod. Not likely in this market, but not impossible in the future.

It may happen yet, but it will be a while.

Damn, I never saw so many flame wars! You guys are getting overly excited with everything that is posted here. This are discussions boards, so we discuss what we think. Take it easy guys...

Nipsy... can you build one those for me too??? How are you going to call it? iSh*tloadoffeatures??? LOL J/k!!

i always find these pda threads interesting. really i do. i am considering buying a T68i for the Mac-cellphone Bluetooth thing. However i am waiting around a little bit to see if there are more substantiated rumors about apple & any type of phone. bluetooth is okay for a few things, and it would be neat to try with a cellphone and isync.

do i think apple will release an all-in-one device that combines a cellphone, ipod, & digital camera? probably not. they have no track record i know of with telephony. the cellphone/ipod thing would be more likely. if i want a digital camera, i'll just use the one i already have. i don't think apple could support people with digital cams having probs... they would need to hire a new customer support group for something like that i imagine. it would be a huge undertaking to support a combined device like that.

so i could drop the cash on the T68i right now, but i'm gonna wait. keep the feature requests and ideas coming... creative thinking is what apple fans are all about. keep thinking different... i won't flame you down for pouring your energies out on these boards!