From NMC: Speaking from the Wall Street Journal’s D: “All Things Digital” conference last monday in Carlsbad, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a number of interesting statements. Most notably, Jobs confirmed that Apple had designed its own PDA device, but canned the project just prior to bringing it to market. Jobs also hinted that the company is not working on a hybrid PDA/phone device.
Jobs: Apple Developed, But Did Not Ship Apple PDA
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Very funny. What makes you think Apple could not make a PDA?
They made one of the coolest hand held devices so far, the iPOD. You should hang out on slashdot – some ppl might appreciate your bad humor. -1 troll from me.
I’d love to see Apple’s version of a PDA/Phone.
Priced reasonably and competitively, I think it could easily go head to head with RIM and the Treo. Apple seems to have among the best UI and useability designers out there. They could easily make a killer PDA/phone.
Think of a phone thats hd based… litterally it could store your local phone book AND the Yellow Pages, in addition to your personal stuff.
To be honest I’ve owned phones bigger than an iPod mini….
I wonder what the reason(s) behind them not shipping it were?
Apple and IBM (or anyone who could make a black PDA) are the two companies I’d like to see one from. Or at least some cool concept art!
Why on gods green (well its almost summer here so mor elike yellow) earth do you want a HD based phone?
Why do you want something so fragile when you could easily use solid state?
So I would imagine Apple developed a PDA version of OS X, anyone know?
I think that the iPod will, in the future,come to gain all the functionality of a PDA/smartphone and that could be one reason that the Apple PDA was canned (so not to cannibalize on the popularity or market space of the iPod). Ipod is being positioned very well by Apple currently and it targets a very broad audience ranging from the youth market to aging baby-boomers. If Apple plays its cards right, the iPod could become the most important gadget in people’s lives: it would be your cell phone,pda,huge-capacity storage device…oh, and your music player.
Perhaps Apple will develop a powerful new OS for the iPod(I’m not saying this will happen in the next version of iPod but somewhere along the line…); it could then license this PodOS to OEMs for royalties. Apple’s got a rare second chance to capitalize on a HUGE potential market. The outcome should be interesting.
I don’t see the whole point of technology convergence when it comes to mobile devices such as the cell phone. It was made to be a cell phone, now we have camera phones, some smartphones, but why would anyone want a phone with a hard drive? Aren’t people satisfied with PDA/Phone combo?
In a few months, Nokia will even release their new Communicator which has what, symbian, bluetooth, wi-fi, gprs what the heck, everything on it.
As for apple making another device pda/phone whatever, well its a big market out there and they got to face once big stonewall which is Symbian.
>So I would imagine Apple developed a PDA version of OS X
I very much doubt that OSX can get as small as it is needed for a PDA foot print (e.g. 64MBs. Early OSX versions could barely run on 64MBs, but they had the luxury of a VM, something that it is not present on PDAs).
I had a tip earlier today from a fellow editor (who shall remain anonymous) that Apple was most probably using a modified PalmOS, but I can’t back this up any further.
>>>So I would imagine Apple developed a PDA version of OS X, anyone know?
>>>Perhaps Apple will develop a powerful new OS for the iPod(I’m not saying this will happen in the next version of iPod but somewhere along the line…); it could then license this PodOS to OEMs for royalties.
Apple licensed an embedded OS from another company to make the ipod.
I doubt it. You couldn’t exactly port OS X over, primarily because of hardware constraints. It’d be easiest for them to grab something like PalmOS and hack it to look like OS X. I don’t see Apple using Windows Mobile, so Palm OS would probably be their choice. I don’t think that Apple would try to bring a new OS into the market at this point; the sheer amount of software the PalmOS has going for it makes it far preferable. A less likely, but still viable option would be for Apple to take the OpenPDA (I think) Linux distribution that MetroWerks (again, I think) created, and build a GUI on top.
I did a Google images search for Apple PDA and found some interesting pictures (that may be fakes)
First one is the iPad (likely fake)
http://www.theapplecollection.com/design/macdesign/images/steve-mas…
And the iPhone (concept?)
http://old.hi-pda.com/news/0104/iphone.jpg
These are both fake.
I would love to see an Apple phone/PDA. It really completes the “digital hub” so to speak. I am not surprised that they have chosen to pass on releasing it. I hope it is because they are focusing on products they already have on the market…their computers being the key here. They really need to get their act together before they lose every ounce of marketshare they have. I am very concerned right now as an Apple user. Focusing in on increasing their userbase, not make a cool phone that will have a very limited audience should be the priority. Everybody likes listening to music (an argument for the iPod), but most people couldn’t give two $hits about their cellphone. It is a means to an end/
i thought they tried marketing a PDA before but it failed. Called “Newton” lol They invented the PDA
apple would be uber successful if they did a phone + PDA + iPod combination.
id owner finance one
Heard of a Newton?
“apple would be uber successful if they did a phone + PDA + iPod combination.”
yeah, but how much would it cost? how big would it be?
Apple currently does neither phone nor PDA’s, and the device would need to be drastically different than the iPod because who would use a phone with a hard drive in it.
What providers would they partner with?
Smart phones are already very unpopular due to high prices and cumbersome shape.
Such a product would probably be best handled by a company that already has smart phones on the market.
I don’t need a PDA but I might buy a flip phone with a flash drive and MP3 playback.
It would be very surprising if Jobs then created a “son of Newton” given that almost every pet project of his predicessor was canned without so much of a second thought (Newton in this case was canned very shortly before the arrival of the Palm Pilot which went off the scales in terms of sales).
Thats not to say they couldn’t do it, I’ve no doubt that their previous experience in the field would be highly useful, but what would be the point?
The market between the PDA and High end mobile phone are (if they haven’t already) converging. To create a standalone PDA at this time would to me at least rather silly.
But even accepting that fact Jobs has on occations been adament that he would not be producing another such product for the forceable future, I’ve no doubt that an “Apple” Ipad or whatever it would have been would have reinvigerated the market, but I can’t see Jobs going back on this.
I think it was cool that they managed to developed one and showed interest, but the PDA market is dead or flat out evened out. I think the proof of showing the PDA is moving out is when Sony annouced it will stop marketing or selling it’s PDA line in the United States.
Since Smartphones and the new Blackbarry phones, the PDA is pretty much gone.
Apple is amart to not even attempt to enter this market, and I’m glad they aren’t, because having this product would just be a waste of money. People that already have PDA’s are probably not going to switch out for one that probably won’t have PC support.
As for a PDA + Phone, wishful thinking people, that’s NEVER going to happen. Do any of you really see Apple going into the telecommunication business? I don’t see them being a cell service provider or even consider partnering up with one.
The PDA is dead people, go and buy a Smartphone, or buy that wonderful device that OQO (http://www.oqo.com/) is going to release! Now that’s something to talk about!
Now seeing an Apple tablet computer, that would be interesting! But I don’t think tablets are really doing anything in the business market, even thought it was an amazing idea, the technology just isn’t there yet.
But hey, one can dream.
What about the ARM powered Newton of a few years back?
good question. they’ve done PDAs before but stopped shipping due to Palm,inc.
Oh come on, Smart Phones are outselling PDAs in the USA. They are far from unpopular. Theres been a big boom for em.
As for the other questions, that’s a big “i dont know” because I’m not an apple exec. I’m just making suggestions and telling what I would buy, If Apple ever says that you could forward those questions to apple to answer for you..
I think they can pull it off but I doubt they want to go into the phone market
“(Newton in this case was canned very shortly before the arrival of the Palm Pilot which went off the scales in terms of sales)”
In the finance textbooks I’ve read, the Newton is often given as an example of throwing good money after bad. They canned it with very good reason. (I’m an economist, not an accountant, but I like to keep well-read on the practical side of things!)
That said, I’m sure Apple could make a pretty good PDA or cell phone, especially with the lessons learned from Palm, Sony, and Compaq. But the fact is, their core business is _selling computers_. PDAs and MP3 players are related, I guess, but cell phones? There’s no synergy, and Apple has no expertise whatsoever in that market. It would not do well for their stock price, and unfortunately for Apple, the market still remembers with some clarity the days when “Apple is dying!” was true.
The idea of an Apple tablet is a good one, and I think they could do pretty well with it if they marketed it towards the educational market.
A PDA version of OS X seems implausible. They would probably custom-develop an entirely new OS, or use the Mach kernel and implement a totally new GUI on top of it.
-Erwos
I thought Newton was canned after Palm released it’s PDAs due to competetion?
I agree with the tablet PC idea for OS X.
Well think of it this way, If linux fans can port linux to game consoles, toasters, watches, PDAs, etc. Why couldn’t Apple do that with OS X. I personally don’t see the point. If I were Apple I’d just buy out Palm and make improvements.
Has it ever been proved that the iWalk was fake? You can still find the videos here:
http://www.newtenlightment.de/downloads.html
(This webserver runs on a Newton, so I guess it will become very slow if many people download the videos.)
IIRC, the videos have never been proved fake. People thought they were fake because Apple didn’t release something like the iWalk.
I think the reason we haven’t seen a Apple PDA recently is because the market for PDA’s begin eroded away, and will continue to get smaller as phones with PDA capabilities move into that market even more. I just looked at a mates Moto 8925 and was amazed at how cool these phones are getting now…
Before long we’ll be able to plug USB devices/wireless (keyboard, mouse, printer etc.) into them, plug them into a monitor and so on… We won’t be syncing them into our desktop computer, they will be our computer.
So if I were Apple, I wouldn’t go near Palm… I would look at improving the iPod, or a variation of it maybe in the short term, but basically I think pda/phones are the way to go. People will only want to carry around 1 largish item, and a phone will win out over just a pda, mp3 player and so forth I’m guessing…
Phones will begin to erode the iPod market as well at some stage soon, so the sooner Apple looks into that, the better…
All it will take is a phone with a HD in there to get things going… Apple has the design team to get these things small enough, an OS that is a good starting point, or maybe look at Symbian perhaps? I’d prefer an OS X variant, but hey 😉
Who knows, all I know is there will be a shift towards a device like this and I hope Apple are ready…
why do i keep seeing women or pictures of ‘female creatures’ wearing revealing clothing or none in that? i dont want to see that.
reagrding the iwalk and stuff… apple was ahead of its time.
what about symbian? it’s developed for use on mobiles, also why would you want a HD in your phone? reason you can store alot more things, no need for Memory Sticks (if you own certain SONY mobile phones) with 3G once it becomes the norm, there will be alot more for phones to handle and the space that a HD can offer will be welcomed, also reason you dont want to use solid state storage like Flash memory is because after 1000 writes it begins to fail, yes a HD will fail but only after years.
Steve Sakoman (former Newton original developer; former Be Inc co-founder; former CTO of Palm Computing) leads the new Apple iPod division with long time Apple manager John Rubinstein and Tony Radell (iPod original technical designer).
Jobs said that he doesn’t like PDA, but he often uses his mobile phone as address book and calendar. iPod can be used as address book and calendar, but it isn’t a mobile phone. Smartphone can be used as address book and calendar, but it isn’t good digital music player. What can the man who introduced “wireless” (Wi-Fi and GSM/CDMA) in PalmOS 5/6 make with iPod? 😀
Also, the iPod OS is based upon an embedded OS develeped by former Apple engineers for MOBILE use. Now this OS is owned by Sun and the future release will be J2ME powered. I think a new iPod phone (based upon iPod mini) can be a really good device.
Oh, I forgot it: Toshiba said that Apple will be his first “partner” for the brand new 60GB microdrive. 😉
steve should avoid this segment. It is small, a lot “smart phones” are purchased for features other than the smarts, and it is soooooo controlled.
I think the later is a particularly big sticking point for steve. Is jobs ready to deal with carriers calling all the shots. Steve and apple would need to give up a lot of control. the carriers are pains in the rear.
I think steve’s best best is mobile computing with smaller laptops and ad hoc wireless nextworking capabilities which would consist of multi-mode wireless cards (wifi/gprs/egde and in the future maybe wifi/802.20/EDGE).
wireless data to the smart phone is not really doing that much anywhere but japan and korea. Its going to take a long time to get the mainstream to use smart phones and wireless data to phone-like devices.
I agree that apple should stay away from smart phones from now and away from PDAs.
“it is soooooo controlled. ”
Hint: the RIAA controls music FAR more than any single cell provider could control Apple.
-Erwos
Apple shipped the first and the best PDA out there. They have the design team to do it again, but I think Jobs realized and as I am realizing, the PDA market is dying a slow death. I think we only have about 3 years before PDAs as we know them are history. Cell Phones or some variation of cell phone will ultimately replace the PDA as we move to a more mobile society.
The PDA division is too congested right now. Apple would have had to either license the Palm OS, Windows CE or Linux to run on the PDA. I personally dont think a new PDA is what would have been successful. Sure the Mac fans would have loved it but I dont think Apple saw enough of the user base.
>I very much doubt that OSX can get as small as it is
>needed for a PDA foot print (e.g. 64MBs.
>Early OSX versions could barely run on 64MBs,
>but they had the luxury of a VM, something that it is not
>present on PDAs).
Actually, you can have VM on a PDA – I occasionally set my Zaurus up with a swap file for extra memory (put the swap file on my IBM Microdrive). It’s not good for the battery life, but down the line there’s no reason it cann’t be done more widely…
I am unhappy at this trend toward bulky cellphones (the sidekick/hiptop! http://www.hiptop.com/) I do not want to surf the web on my cell phone, nor would i want to talk into a big screen on my cellphone. I currently have a T3 and a Nokia 3650 with unlimited internet. Its a great combo, a phone that is a phone, and a PDA that is a PDA. I surf the web on my PDA without having to take the phone out of its holster. I can even talk on the Phone and use my PDA (take notes, play a game, follow along on a map, etc) I do not agree with this “phone/pda synergy” because I do not want a “bulky” cell-phone!
I want a small cellphone like this: http://www.dynamism.com/n900/
I do see the subnotebook and Hand-held PC market making a come back. The mobile OSs are becoming extremely mature to the point where you can have a PC that is almost pocketsize.
This is the future of mobile computing:
http://www.dynamism.com/u70/
http://www.dynamism.com/u101/index.shtml
You have to remember, when it comes to mobile things the US market has never mattered very much(phones included). We have been in the dark ages for around 3-5 years. We are playing catchup. (Edge/G3/GSM)
Ok, enough of my ranting!
“Hint: the RIAA controls music FAR more than any single cell provider could control Apple.”
The RIAA can’t tell apple a thing about how to make the ipod. Apple has complete control because they are selling to consumers. Itunes (a software and service package) is a different beast but i am talking about hardware. AGain apple and only apple controls iPod despite the RIAA and apple does not need the RIAA for iPod.
It don’t work that way in the cell phone world. There is a gatekeeper with complete control that stands in front of the consumer called the operator. Whatever the operator says goes and if the operator wants changes you change or you loose.
The best way for apple to address wireless is by leaving space to add wireless capabilities via pcmcia, firewire or whatever. don’t deal with the operators. It is a closed monopolisitic mindframe and it sucks dealing with them.
im with dev here, interconnectivity of mobile devices are more important then a all in one unit.
need to call someone? break out the cellphone or activate the bluetooth headset and say the magic word(s).
want to check up on some osnews? break out the pda and have it access the net useing a bluetooth link to the cellphone.
want to make a post? maybe its time to dig the laptop out of the backpack and connect to the page via the cellphone, or you could in theory use the pda if its not a long one your planing (alltho two thumbs on a zaurus cant be hard;).
i just hope that we soon will see bluetooth enabled digital cameras.
oh and from what i have read they are uping the bandwidth on the bluetooth. now its becomeing compareable to usb1
so as long as your not planing to send linux isos around (who does that unless they have a hardline anyways?) you should be fine for when it comes to sending small text and images.
A bit off topic but here is your wish hobgoblin! bluetooth enabled digital cameras!
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C1812/
http://www.concordcam.com/products/wireless/wireless.htm
dont thank me, thank google! 🙂
dev
I’m not sure the PDA are bound to vanish … What we seeing currently is a merge of PDA and mobile Phone … this doesn’t mean that the PDA will disapear. What will for sure vanish are the PDA that don’t have phone/wireless capabilities. If you look at the up-to-come Nokia SmartPhone, they are simply PDA with phone functionalities … just like the Treo from Palm …
As for Symbian OS … humm … I’m actually coding for it …. I have very mild feelings about it … It’s not too bad, but when compared to what I beleive is the best OS for PDA, the NewtonOS, Symbian just don’t cut it (at least the current version) ….
Probably 😉
Having a Newton, I have to admit that it was leaps and bounds beyond its competitors, even a few years after its demise!
I’d love to see Apple’s new PDA. Especially if it is Newton OS, since that OS was designed from scratch as its own thing and set the trends Palm uses (used?).
Steve Jobs HATES John Sculley. Newton is a “son” of John Sculley.
Steve Jobs closed Netwon division. Newton will NEVER come back.
“Steve Jobs HATES John Sculley. Newton is a “son” of John Sculley.
Steve Jobs closed Netwon division. Newton will NEVER come back.”
That’s a very good point. Jobs erased all signs of Sculley when he came back.
PDA’s I think will go away soon. In a few years all phones will have most PDA capabilities and will be so commonplace that no one will remember those huge PDAs of today.
your right.. jobs is a stubborn.. damn stubborn.
I think that an iPod with wireless capabilities would be the logical next step in Apples “Digital Hub” strategy. You want the latest song on your iPod? Why wait till you get to your iMac to buy it? Grep your iPod, connect directly into the iTunes Music Store (of course just one click away), download your song (via UMTS just a couple of secs) and use it as a ringtone, play it with your cars stereo, whatever.
Every German provider has such a service (download music with your phone and pay with your phone bill) at the moment (or plans it for the very near future: Vodafone), but having an iPod for this would just give you some synergy effects (buying all songs from one company, sync with iTunes when connected to Mac, all songs on onoe device, etc)
I think connecting the iPod directly to the store would be a great idea. It would always be in ‘browse’ mode, but nonetheless a great idea. All signs point to a wifi iPod anyway, with the new Airport Express. Plug the Express into you stereo and stream without a computer.
Yes, I remember the Newton.
It wasn’t the first PDA… Psion had been making PDAs for years before the Newton arrived on the scene. Yet another tired “Apple did it first” claim that’s wrong.
On the other hand, the Newton was a nicely integrated machine, whose only real failing was form factor. I would dearly love to have something Newton-like in the form factor of my current PDA (a Clie NR70V). Specifically, the Palm-based PDA’s are missing the Newton’s best feature: the free-form not taking ability that let you integrate hand-drawn diagrams (which were automatically cleaned up bu the Newton) along with text. I’d love to see that again, but Palm seems stuck in the Graffiti world.
I don’t think PDAs will disappear totally, since the form factor has certain advantages over cell phones. Reading more information than just an address or quick SMS requires more screen space than can fit on most cell phones these days. My current cell phone (Sony-Ericsson T610) really wouldn’t be great for reading an ebook on. I suppose if you had a folding screen in the thing that would essentially double the size of the unit when opened, that might work.
From the Splitting Hairs Department: the term “personal digital assistant” (PDA) was originally coined on January 7, 1992 at the CES show in Las Vegas by Apple CEO John Sculley referring to the Apple Newton, thus the first PDA was created by Apple. *grin*
Joking aside, I’ve actually gotta disagree with you about the form factor of the Newton. IMO the Newton 2100’s are really the perfect size for data and diagrams; essentially the same size as a DayTimer notebook. I’ve owned lots of PDA’s and I always find myself going back to the Newton because once the newness of all the bells and whistles wears off, more modern machines ultimately just don’t cut it for me. Palm and CE-based devices are a good size when you’re NOT using them (like when they’re in your pocket) but far too small to really be useful (taking notes, creating diagrams, etc).