Thread: Apple vs Nokia
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Wizard69 is offline Wizard69
2007-11-01 , 05:36
Posts: 27 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Oct 2007
#73
Originally Posted by lavo View Post
The 2000/2100 Messagepad were far from being just a PDA.
I think we are artificially limiting ourselves with the definition of a PDA. People want to make these things into something static based on devices made years ago. That does no one any favors and flies in the face of the way similar technology gets evaluated.

I prefer a simpler approach; a PDA is simply a computing device, with the ability to execute user software, that you carry on you person.
If you go through the Newton software archives (UNNA), you will see the newton can do just about everything the IT can do today (obviously limited to 1997 hardware and no camera). Newtonscript had a great following, and it shows in some of today's programs that can extend the newton far beyond its original capabilities. If you can find some of the ads from the time, it was being pitched as a personal computer, rather than a PDA.
A PDA is a computer. I really see no reason to drift from this concept PDA simply means a computer you can carry on your person.

The thing for me with the IT, is that there is no killer app. Why would people want to buy the IT?
This is what I mean by saying it has no primary function that is attractive to people or at least the mass market. This is why so much technology is going into the cell phone market, people see a need to have a cell phone, the added features just help with marketing
Deride Apple at will, but with almost all of their products they find a way to market a killer app to drive sales.
Apple demonstrates that you don't even need to have a completed software suite to take market share. Just bundle the right features and people will come.

The killer is that Apple either hasn't finished its software or has customers with low standards. Just today I was in the Apple sotre looking at iPhone again. If you go to Apples own iPhone web site it can't even handle that page fully. Things that should be links don't work, it won't even play Apples own videos and of course flash doesn't work. Granted the browser is probably better than 90% of the other Cell/PDA browsers out there. Still I expect better.
Having a webcam on board and being portable, I thought Nokia would have really driven home video messaging.
There seems to be a total lack of marketing for this device. They could have done well marketing it as a really intelligent MP3 player too. The funny thing about video messaging though is that the thing is obviously designed to do just that.
At this stage it is still all over the shop One other thing that impresses with the Newton is that everything is linked. You had "soups" which held various bits of information, such as addresses, and made this information available system-wide. So you could write a third party app that could access this information, without having to double up and enter it again. I'd love to see more of that in the IT.
This really isn't out of the question right now. After all things like vcard have been around for awhile. I think it is just that nobody goes that route software development wise. Looking at the iPhone though it does look like Apple is moving back somewhat in that direction with the use of HTML.
It really opens up the scope of what the IT can be used for, rather than just surfing the web or playing a video.
The IT is open for those sort of things as it is. There is a rather large suite of apps that can be downloaded. The problem is that Nokia needs to sell the thing with a set of common apps that give owners and developers a base line as far a PDA type apps go.

Dave