Palm holds some good (valuable is debatable at this point) patents from their purchase of Be Inc. circa 2001. Among them is the rights to the BeFS (BeOS File System) which was years ahead of its time and had most of the features of Spotlight without any of the hassle and heartache (eg. OSX pegging the CPU to index a newly attached Firewire hard drive without even asking if the user wants it indexed). HFS+ is pretty nice, and gets better with each release, but holding the rights to something even nicer could never hurt Apple. Besides, Palm obviously isn't using that kind of stuff whereas Apple could.
There's also a little point of truly amazing multi-threading technology that was built into BeOS that made even a single CPU run like a dual CPU system and made dual CPUs look like God's gift to the computer. If Apple were able to acquire any insights or patents or whatever to make OSX and all Apple apps that much faster on their new dual-core chips, it would be worth it, especially when people inevitably start evaluating Macintosh versus Windows on the same hardware platform (x86).
Apple takes an iPod, tosses a phone in it, and makes the screen a touchscreen...ergo, an iPod/PDA/phone. I understand that this is probably vastly complicated then I make it sound, but I think it's definately possible, and, as done with the iPod 5G, it can be always advertised as an iPod first, PDA second (since we've had iCal/Address Book sync for a while now), and phone third (unlike the ROKR or the SLVR).
Apple takes an iPod, tosses a phone in it, and makes the screen a touchscreen...ergo, an iPod/PDA/phone. I understand that this is probably vastly complicated then I make it sound, but I think it's definately possible, and, as done with the iPod 5G, it can be always advertised as an iPod first, PDA second (since we've had iCal/Address Book sync for a while now), and phone third (unlike the ROKR or the SLVR).
Yeah, that would be great. I just wish there was some more news out there in regard to this. I would love to drop nextel/sprint as soon as possible but will only do it for an apple phone. Otherwise, I'll just wait for my contract to expire and then, if there is nothing new from apple, I'll probably go cingular and get the latest ROKR or whatever.
I joined this forum primarily to express my hope that Apple would create something akin to my Trea 650. I have always thought that the digital hub idea was a great guiding light but missing a crucial part -- personal communication. The Treo is so close. Its problems are easy and effective syncing with AB and iCal. If Apple could do an iPhone/PDA, I think they would have a winner. An SD card with iTunes generated mp3s, PDA info, internet and phone connectivity..... There is a broad market out there in my opinion and Apple is missing a chance to fill it. They need to do something whether it involves buying Palm or not.