On Sunday, January 6, 2002, at 12:01 , Michael Whitten wrote:
> I never believed the iWalk for a sec either, it just was not something
> Apple
> would design or put on the market. I think if Apple were to get back
> into
> the PDA market they would buy Palm, and reingineer that. Not create
> another
> platform.
It may well be that Apple will at some point in time get back into the
PDA business but I doubt that this will be now. Sure if they bought
Palm, now would be the best time to do so as Palm's share prize is
almost near junk value but would the Palm technology be something for
Apple worth to build upon ? Unlikely! The Palm is light years behind
what the Newton was and everybody would certainly expect a lot more from
an Apple PDA than what you could get out of the Palm as a basis. Apple
would basically have to dump the whole thing and start from scratch. The
Newton technology is far better suited to build upon than anything else
there is and Apple still owns that anyway. They would probably use the
Newton core and perhaps port the most important pieces to the PowerPC
and build upon that.
But as I said, I doubt that this is on the agenda.
> As for the Wireless Data/VoIP thing: This would actually be quite
> interesting to see, however, it would only work in the larger cities and
> centralized areas. Why? Range.
Sure, but the point is to have cheap but relatively high bandwidth in
highly frequented places. So even in the country side, a local coffe
shop or restaurant or whatever other kind of venue where people meet and
sit for a while.
> I live in the Outskirts of a suburb of
> Nashville. If I go farther south of here, I lose most if not all of my
> digital cell coverage.
I wasn't talking about cellular communications though.
> I could see this working in a centralized building or
> a tightly packed city such as NY. But this brings up another thing that
> plagues WiFi now. Cross-contamination and improper use. A person could
> take
> a laptop sit in a park next to a Wireless building and use their
> connection.
> Possibly their internal net too. Now imagine if the phone system was on
> this
> connection as well. Free international calls too! Unique Ids won't help
> either. Airsnort will find those Ids. Unless Apple comes up with a new
> technology that can integrate 802.11(x) With VoIP and is 100% secure, we
> will never see this.
This is not a problem to be handled at the WiFi level though. If you
have a VoIP portal on a public network you need to authenticate your
customers in any event. This can be done using SSL/SSH or the way
cellular networks authenticate mobiles. Services such as telephony could
require the use of a SIM card which is authenticated by the issuer of
the card or one could use RF fingerprints (no two radios have the same
RF signature, Corsair have a technology based on this to identify
cellphones).
> Now there could be something of a PalmOS device with wireless capability
> unveiled with Rosetta instead of Grafitti for HWR. THAT would be
> interesting!
But it doesn't sound like StarTrek.
I'd say it is certain that Apple won't come up with a beam-me-up-scotty
device, time warp or any of the fancy medical technology shown on
StarTrek, so what's left is a very sophisticated voice recognition based
OS, which may be possible but unlikely; a communicator through which you
are always in contact with the base or perhaps a pen computer which
wouldn't be anything novel.
rgds
bk
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