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Apple PDA?
Posted by
michael
on Thu Jan 03, 2002 08:14 AM
from the we-love-the-leader dept.
from the we-love-the-leader dept.
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If it stays up is probably a fake (Score:5, Insightful)
But then spymac.com is supposed to be run by Germans and Canadians. Maybe that would protect them a bit from Apple legal.
Re:If it stays up is probably a fake (Score:3, Interesting)
"Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond."
yesterday on their website. I dunno - originally, I'd agree with you, but I really don't think Apple wants to tip their hand right now. To put it another way: 2 months ago, I laughed at the iWalk. Now I wouldn't be surprised if it was unveiled soon.
Re:If it stays up is probably a fake (Score:5, Funny)
I figured out what it is. Jobs was so enamoured with the IT/Ginger/Segway, he's integrating everything into it. It's a scooter that can hold 1000 MP3s but only has one button.
Parent
Re:Did someone hire Sculley back? (Score:3, Informative)
Seems to work pretty well, too... Apple Store and iTools run on it everyday. At least, I believe what the
Unless you consider it a plant (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at all the more probable rumors right now: LCD iMac, PowerMac G5, iWalk, possible iBook updates, continual server / big iron rumors. Friend and I were talking about it last night. What if Apple released a bunch of stuff. All of the above (but a not lame version of the iWalk) along with a co-branded items from Sony. Here is the scenario: iWalk type thing is a $250 PDA with color screen, firewire, built in wireless (802.11b card capped at 2mbits, for power saving), 64 megs of ram. Can be jacked into an iPod and use it for storage. iPod price drops to $350. Now for $600 you can get the most kick ass pda/mp3 player on the market, and they work seamlessly with each other. Sony has a digital camera out with firewire on it, that works fine with the iWalk/iPod. Apple has been talking about the "digital hub" design for a while now, they could in one great keynote, announce all the key component blocks and unite them.
Apple has been hinting towards the digital hub setup, but most of the time saying this is what you can also use ____ for. But now they could say "here is a complete digital hub / lifestyle solution" that works seamlessly. tv components with firewire / wireless, PDAs that can control them, etc. Apple doesn't make all of them, apple just co brands them.
Whatever is going to be announced the 7th is going to be big. the tru7th will be revealed. I'm just glad I have planned to visit the Apple store near by the 12th and play with whatever has been announced (as they should have the new toys out to play with by then).
Parent
Re:If it stays up is probably a fake (Score:3, Insightful)
* Apple always asks sites to remove content which actual foretells coming products
* Spymac is not the most reputable rumor site
* Apple.com pronounced the spendor of their coming announcements after Spymac and others had made all of their conjectures of coming products--photos &videos came after this, but the iWalk name was no surprise to Apple.
* Photos & videos at Spymac have "irregularities"--see the PunkxRock comments at MacSlash [macslash.com] for all the details
* with audio I/O ports, what it is the iPod for?
* No tech specs are available on the device despite someone supposedly handling and photographing the device -- every rumor I can remember that turned out to be an actual product contained significant detail on tech specs, or at least offered a range of probable features.
* Visuals show login, web, writing recognition, and startup, but no other apps, graphic/video/audio capability are shown or detailed.
* Too thin for a the new 2.5" HD that's in the iPod, so nothing groundbreaking in terms of storage--and so you'd need firewire why?
* Bad functional design
+ huge port on top with no apparent function (resembles a serial port but what PDA syncs up-side-down in its dock?)
+ start up button on bottom edge--people will compare their rates of erroneous startup/shutdowns per minute
+ functionless jog-dial -- a HUGE button that only rotates the screen? That's like mounting a steering wheel on my back bumper to open my trunk when a key or even keyless remote will do.
+ too big for pockets, those handy sleeves inside your bag/briefcase, and most purses--except my mom's big 'ss carry-on size "totes"
So as another person once said, "To conclude, I will eat my hat if Jobs unveils this very machine tomorrow. No, wait - I'll eat my hockey puck mouse." (Hopefully I won't be doing this and going offline as this poor predictor once did.)
There's a good chance it's fake... (Score:5, Informative)
Seems likely to be a fake (Score:4, Informative)
I agree that it seems to be a fake. In the iWalk_Still10.jpg [interfacestudio.net], it shows the Apple logo on the job wheel, something that looks kind of retarded. If look at an iPod, it's clear that their industrial design goes for more of an understated look -- for example, there is no Apple logo on the front of an iPod. [apple.com] In fact, I'd expect an Apple PDA today to look more like an iPod.
The screen looks kind of odd in that shot, too. it looks like the scroll bar on the right doesn't quite line up with the tool bar on the bottom. I'd also expect the UI to look more like Aqua.
If this thing plays MP3s, Apple will be canabalizing sales from their successful iPod. They've been pretty good about marketing recently, and I'd be surprised if they pulled an obvious blunder like that (particularly since they're still stinging from the poor marketing they did with the overpriced Cube).
Finally, if I understand correctly, Steve Jobs hated the Newton. I believe he called it a "damn scribble toy" before he killed it a few years ago. It would be odd for him to resurrect it.
In short, I think this is likely another hoax.
Parent
logo there for a reason (Score:3, Insightful)
People have a lot of reasons why it's fake, but I think this is just way too elaborate. It's gotta be the real thing.
Re:Seems likely to be a fake (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, wait till Monday, I'm sure Apple has plenty in store.
Re:There's a good chance it's fake... (Score:5, Interesting)
Other problems they have might be entirely overlooked by actual Mac hardware and software makers; the MessagePad doesn't look very much like a Mac at all and the bottom group of buttons was screened on in earlier versions but turned into a floating dock in later versions (that looked the same).
... etc.
I don't know if its a fake or not, but Apple's got to feel stupid for discontinuing the Newton right before Palm did so well (considering Palm wrote Graffiti for the Newton at the time).
People also seem to not realise that the printed text recognition in the Newton OS 2.x devices was almost perfect; so if you could bear to print your text instead of cursively writing it, the recogniser did very well, as well as being able to store the vectors of handwriting to be recognised later when you had more time to turn up the CPU usage.
Parent
Re:There's a good chance it's fake... (Score:5, Funny)
Courtesy of archive.org's cached copy [archive.org]: "To conclude, I will eat my hat if Jobs unveils this very machine tomorrow. No, wait - I'll eat my hockey puck mouse."
The following morning, after Jobs announced it at MacWorld, the site went down temporarily and then permanently not long after. Oh well!
Ian
Parent
Re:There's a good chance it's fake... (Score:5, Funny)
Geez, what do you expect? He's going to be in any kind of shape to keep a website running after eating a mouse? Even a translucent cute one? And just what would he be using to update his website?
That guy is probably sitting there right now, integrity intact, mouse in digestive system, with no way to interact with his iMac. You should be honoring him, not flaming him.
Parent
Movies seem fishy. (Score:3, Interesting)
-Okay, about 7 seconds into bootup.mov, the guy starts turning the jog dial... for about 4-5 frames, his finger is turning the jog dial, but the Apple logo on the dial *ISN'T TURNING* as well. Then all of a sudden on frame 6, the Apple logo appears rotated 20 degrees. At first I thought it could be a simple glitch in the compressed video, but the guys hand which should be moving in sync with the jog dial does not suffer the same glitch. It seems like somebody spliced to pieces of video together. Why?
-There's a video of the guy handling the device(picking it up, flipping it over, etc..) and videos of him using the device (turning it on, writing on the screen), but no videos of him handling *and* moving the device. Bluescreening would be a pain in the ass if the device were moving.
-This point is purely an ergonomic issue, but wouldn't you constantly be moving the jog dial if you were holding the thing in your left hand and writing with the stylus with your right hand?
If it is a hoax, spymac.com definitely had their hand in it.. but why would a rumor site cash in credibility in the future for 15 minutes of fame? I guess we'll all find out in a few days.
Re:There's a good chance it's fake... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:There's a good chance it's fake... (Score:2, Funny)
The assumption there is that Mac users can somehow manage to figure out how to use a keyboard with over one hundred little tiny keys yet they are too stupid to be able to figure out how to use a mouse with more than one button. I mean Sweet Jeusus at the bus stop, it would have been more innovative for them to sell mice with a great big "L" on the left button and a great big "R" on the right button. That way the Mac user could figure out the difference between a right click and a left click.
The whole "one button mouse is easier to figure out than a two button mouse" is one of the biggest urban myths ever propagated.
Only a few more days... (Score:2, Informative)
As for the G5 chips, Apple seems to like to offer 3 speeds of processor. Supposedly Apple will offer 1.2, 1.5 and 1.8GHz speeds. If the production of 1.8 chips doesn't work out very well, then they might make the 1.5 the high end and make a 1.0 the low end.
Still, whatever comes out is my next computer purchase
SCSI (Score:3, Offtopic)
For what it's worth in the real datahauling business, firewire is a laugh
It comes from SpyMac.com (Score:5, Informative)
Big announcement with be OS X for Intel (Score:2, Interesting)
Jobs' NextStep OS, which forms the foundation of OS X, was at one time ported to the Intel platform. Since many of Apple's latest innovations are an extension of failed ambitions at NeXT, it's not a stretch to imagine this product being announced on Monday.
Re:Big announcement with be OS X for Intel (Score:2, Interesting)
So why would they release ANY mainstream OS when it could ensure MS being able to wriggle out of such claims? That's like fighting the war against Nazi Germany and handing them the A-bomb (godwin be damnned)...
they have a tough NUt to crack (Score:5, Insightful)
the only palm device that has my interest is the Sharp Zaurus running linux. but only for a few of the neat-o features. as for productivity? it offer's nothing, and will actually hamper my productivity by forcing to learn a new interface, no Linux sync and probably a much shorter battery life.
So what can apple offer to this world that would entice me to drop my palm-pilot for their peoduct?
Discussion (Score:5, Interesting)
Mirror (Score:4, Informative)
i just read that apple did not register a iwalk related domain. can anyone confirm this? they registered ipod.com before that was released...
they were going to name it... (Score:2, Funny)
Dudes, it's fake (Score:2)
The poor design (that's a jog wheel?!) makes this an obvious fake.
as an earlier poster said... (Score:2, Redundant)
Another thing that got me was the jog dial. It was OBVIOUSLY bolted on. Look at the iPod's dial: it lands perfectly under your thumb, and it is grouped closely with the controls. It is about 3/4 of the way up the device, putting it everything perfectly in reach. This thing, its on the bottom, and it PROTRUDES. In any configuration, it's in the wrong place, because you have to use the bottom button thing to actually anything. At least the iPaq's bottom-center button is a 4-way hat thing.
I wish it was true. Like the Ars Technica articles, "I want to believe".
Apple secrets revealed (Score:3, Funny)
It's a fake and here is why (Score:4, Insightful)
Now Play the video, notice as the guy writes, the "PDA" is moving around (which is normal) but the screen is NOT moving along with the PDA at all (which btw, is abnormal)
Oh well, next rumor ->
Rumors and speculation..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Spend time doing productive things, like volunteering the time you would have spent on such a rumors site in a local charity. Or read something NOT online.
Need UserID/Password to view....free one here (Score:4, Informative)
Password: Xv74mS2
SPAM ALERT!! - same one I got! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Spymac original video/images (Score:4, Informative)
Username: iwalk5198, Password: Xv74mS2
What's Woz playing with? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:What's Woz playing with? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Is this real? Is it the new Newton? (Score:3, Interesting)
I had a Newton MessagePad back in the mid '90s and it got killed by a falling phone (screen smashed). At that point, I went to Palm. After a while using Palm, I switched to Windows CE. It still didn't seem right. Then I bought a full pen-based PC last year and ran Linux+xscribble on it. These other PDAs and pen-based computers were all just wrong.
When it came right down to it, the Newton *software* and NewtonOS was what I was missing. Nothing else yet manufactured comes close for the PDA paradigm. The hardware is a little bulky, and is expensive for its age, but I finally just broke down and bought a Newton 2100 last year to see if the Newton magic was still there...
And it was like a revelation. I hadn't really appreciated my early Newton as well as I could have... It was my first PDA, it was early technology, and all I could do at the time was see things wrong with it. It's only after using other PDA devices for a while that I realized just how important and wonderful NewtonOS was and just how sad that it was discontinued.
If Apple DOES ever release another PDA, I pray that it will use NewtonOS technology. If instead Apple goes with Palm or some such nonsense, I hope to God that they release the NewtonOS code for StrongARM as open-source so that we don't have to try to copy [sourceforge.net] it ourselves. Imagine a modern, open PDA hardware platform running open-source NewtonOS!
As for right now... I've stocked up on several Newton 2100 machines which will hopefully last me well into the century. I've taken to hand-replacing their dimming backlights and manually repacking their rechargeable battery packs just to get them running well again. At least for the next few years, it looks like we will be dominated by weak software like Palm and Windows CE -- only the few lucky (like me) who are aware of what has gone before and can maintain the machines will be able to depend on something as advanced as NewtonOS for our information.
GUI Standard (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Do you seriously think that with all the effort Apple has been putting into GUI conformity in OSX that they would at least try and keep the GUI at least similar (if this thing is indeed real - which it isn't) to the OSX look-n-feel.
2. Also, I severely doubt that they would make their own browser - that looks like a whole lot like iTunes... If they had gone to the trouble of producing such a browser - why isn't it included with OSX now?
3. Also the widgets at the bottom of the screen look much to similar to those used by the linux Sharp Zaurus.
4. Apple would never put a big cheesey logo on the front of the thing. Does the iPod have a huge logo on the front?
Think Different, Think Minimalist.
Re:gullible (Score:2, Redundant)
Apple discontinued because it seems they were 6 years ahead of the market and not quite smart enough to make a cheaper version to whet peoples' appetites.
Search "newton messagepad" on ebay.com or "ntlk" or "newton package" for lots of good sites on google.com.
the newton is dead, you know. (Score:2)
Re:Apple started the PDA (Score:2, Informative)
Xerox patent was for an non-human sort of handwriting - when a human had to adopt to the PDA .
Btw, Graffitti from Palm started its life on Newton
Re:Apple started the PDA (Score:4, Informative)
Newton's Handwriting recognition (HWR) software was done by a Russian company called Parasoft [parascript.com] (now known as Parascript, and based in CO).
The Newton was waay ahead of its time. For one, it didn't have the processing power required to do great handwriting recognition. Given today's embedded CPUs, I would not be surprised to see some really good HWR stuff in this (rumored?) PDA.
Parent
Re:Apple started the PDA (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we please lay this canard to rest?
The reason Xerox hasn't sued, and won't sue Apple, is that Xerox made a boatload of money on Apple stock. They bought in pre-IPO, and made hundreds of millions on their investment over the years. Everything Apple ever used that came from PARC was used with Xerox's blessing.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Additional Photo (Score:2)
Re:delightful.....yes, it is (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple's strength (and their current strategy) is that all their stuff works together in ways that cheap commodity crap cannot. Yes, many of the features are Mac-only. Gee, maybe thats because they want more people to buy Macs. Go figure.
Just because they carry a massive boulder of FUD around on their back does not mean they aren't doing some really cool sh!t these days. I'll bet my left testicle that this thing can do sh!t no other PDA can do.
Why?
1) Jobs is one nitpicky SOB, and this (ala the Cube and iMac) looks like one of his pet projects.
2)This is Apple's latest marketing scheme and product strategy. Leveraging the fact that they make the hardware AND software.
3)Apple invented the fscking PDA. There is no question they have been working on this since the Newton got killed.
While you can have fun getting your Visor, Rio, and Heinz 57 box to play nice, life just got a little sweeter for 5% of us. =)
Re:delightful.....yes, it is(?) (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's licensing their hardware to 3rd party vendors would have been the best move they made except for none of the 3rd parties that Apple licensed to actually expanded the market. While they brought faster CPU speeds to the market among some other neat things, they just eroded Apple's share of the Mac market and didn't actually increase the Mac market. This was bad because the Mac market was too small to support everyone.
One of the best moves Apple made was buying out Power Computing and getting their great engineers and technologies.
Parent
Re:Apple Hype (Score:2, Funny)
No, but then I remember all the hype about Ginger, and we all know how earth-shattering that was.
Re:Apple Hype (Score:5, Funny)
"Big, even for our standards"
"Count the days, count the minutes, count on >>being blown away"
"Beyond the rumour sites, way beyond"
"A backstage pass to the future"
How about:
Apple has finally regained its lost sanity and ported OS/X to x86 architecture. In an astounding jump, Apple, like Sega, has discovered it is better off as a pure software shop.
Or better yet:
This just in: Apple is not out of the hardware business entirely, they are also releasing an entirely new games system, called the iBox. Its going to cost over a thousand dollars and will only work with Apple brand televisions, which will be released later.
Okay, I'm just kidding, okay. JUST KIDDING. Comprende?
Parent
Temporary Mirror w. vid clips (Score:3, Informative)
Just for today.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
In the last 4 years what products has Apple come out with and then dropped?
2
Newton - 4 years ago
G4 Cube - 9 months ago.
That's it.
They came out with a new OS and are still upgrading the old one. Since OS X came out, they have done 3 patches on OS 9. When MS releases a new OS, the patches stop for the old ones. Sorry, free patches.
Re:hope this does better than the newton! (Score:3, Funny)
as for platform dependancy... well i would think apple would want to be able to jack these things on every box sold on the planet since they are up against the likes of the Compaq iPaq and the HP Journada (which don't have Mac Client apps. Apple seems serious about the gadget market and jobs hinted at a windows version of iTunes.I am just guessing that it will be more fulfilling if used with apple OSs'.
I hate to say it as a very long time Palm user, but i have been taking a long hard look at the journada 565 and i am glad i didn't blow coin on it just yet. apple makes slick toys. this may be just what i have been looking for.
oh yeah... you realize that if the videos download too fast... you can hit that arrow pointing right button, and like magic you can see the video again and again and again...