Re: [NTLK] Re - Strength in numbers

From: Andrew Beals (bandy_at_cinnamon.com)
Date: Mon Jan 14 2002 - 17:45:06 EST


Even at 1M units sold at a grand apiece, that's still in the neighborhood of a
$250,000,000.-, figuring a 25% cost of goods [what folks shoot for]. While
such a figure would set 100 of "us" up for life, it's chump change to the
likes of Apple and Mister Softie.

The MP2K came out after people stopped buying monochrome lapdogs ["It's not
just for life, it's for Christmas!"], but before color lcds started appearing
on small devices.

Nowadays, nearly everything displays in color, aside from watches and
microwave ovens. Nintendo has shown that you can sell a color display that
does not have backlighting and still be able to get decent battery life
[~50hrs on a pair of AA's] and sell a bunch of units.

So the question becomes this: what features do you need in order to be able to
sell someone something that's half-way between a sub-notebook and a "PDA"
[filofax substitute] that they will be willing to carry around everywhere they
go? Clearly the OMP's feature set wasn't good enough -- and that's what
people think of when they think "Newton" and HWR.

P*lm has managed to sell to nearly everyone not only because they were
"first", but they concentrated on having the data that's available on your PDA
also be available on your desktop. I personally use the default set of apps
to my advantage, and in addition, I have a spreadsheet on the PP that syncs to
Excel, which I use for little tasks like charting stock options, mileage costs
and the like. While input to the PP is possible, it's a big pain [especially
now that my digitizer has gone all jittery], but you can do your major input
on the desktop [good keyboard, big screen] and d/l all the data to your
pocket. Big selling point.

For something that doesn't fit in my pocket, I'd like a few extra features:
        * readable screen
        * color [no more photos in my wallet]
        * easier input
        * "IT" feature [as in "``IT'' Girl", not "Ginger"]

Web browsing has been done -- and has ramped up to the point where you almost
NEED a fat pipe [DSL or better] or you're screaming about web "programmers"
who get paid by the byte.

Speech to text has been done, and unless you are a businessman, talk like Mark
Twain, or invest oodles of time in training it to your voice and vocabulary,
the results are as laughable as someone writing Shakespeare into an OMP. I've
been meaning to put up a rebuttal to the Newton HWR giggles page using a
virgin copy of ViaVoice. [A friend from the Newt team lamented that they
should have put The Bard into the dictionary.] [And I say: probably followed
by common Latin, French and other foreign-language phrases.]

Wireless access has been done -- only it's either very expensive [& your ISP
folds: Ricochet/Metricom!] or it is painfully slow [surf the web at over
FOURTEEN THOUSAND BAUD!] and extremely expensive [cellular data per-minute
"service"] and doesn't work everywhere or it only works when you're on-site
[802.11b] and near wall power and a network jack anyway.

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