Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm, gave a talk this morning. Afterward I asked him if we'll see next year the secret project that Jeff Hawkins has been working on. "Yes," he said, and moved immediately to another question.I pinged him this morning to see if he could say anything else about the talk he heard, writing "I realize that Colligan probably didn't have anything else to say about their still-secret project," to which he replied:
Nope, but I have a tidbit for you. I was talking to someone who supposedly knows someone who knows stuff, and I mentioned the Hawkins project.
"Is that different from the Linux tablet they're doing?" this person said.
If I had to guess today, based on the very fragmentary hints I've heard, I'd expect:
--Something slightly larger than a handheld.
--WiFi based.
--A large amount of local storage.
--Syncs with, and acts as a light client to, your PC (and perhaps also a data store on the Web).
The key thing I don't know is what specific problems the device would be designed to solve. The rumors I've heard so far are more focused on hardware features. The "zen" is in the solution.
Well, he's right about that. As much of a mobile computing enthusiast as I am, and as much as I've seen how the technology can have a huge impact on how my clients are able to conduct business, I personally remain stubbornly dissatisfied with every device I've tried out there. Various smartphones and PDAs have tantalized me with the possibility of getting all my "stuff" under control and on my person, but as much as I like them they don't really help me with the fundamental problem. The best description of what I need is the "Info Pad" idea that Mike floated back in the Spring. But no one has really developed a device close enough to the Info Pad for me to put my whole life onto it and have it work. It's just amazing to me, because I know so many people that are in the same boat.
Last night I ran across an amusing article that C|Net published back in July that highlighted how little the major players in the mobile device market have learned about what different people really need from their mobile technology. It was a face-off between the Samsung Q1 UMPC and—get this—the Apple Newton MessageBook 2000.
The 10-year-old Newton won the match.
I suffer daily—literally, physically suffer—for the lack of a device that helps me keep everything in my life together, accessible, and on my person: email, handwritten notes, whiteboards, reams of articles, projects, drawings, diagrams and docs that are spread across multiple PCs, desks, bags, and file cabinets in three different offices across two different states. I'm dying here, and I am praying for someone to deliver me from this hell.
What Mike Mace describes gives me hope that Palm could be the one.
Posted by cervezas at 13:45:03. Filed under: Mobile Devices
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