A recent Ask Slashdot pondered if people really use their PDAs:
I work in a high-tech industry and I see more people carrying their PDAs than actually using them. At the same time, I see many people actually going back to their paper planners. […] Have there been any studies on PDA turnover? I think the PDA has become more of a status symbol than a useful tool.”
812 comments, 75 at +3 or better. eBooks are popular, and plenty of people wrote that they love their PDAs for scheduling and tracking phone numbers. In the PDA abandoner camp, many give up because data entry is too tedius. One poster tells the story of a PDA becoming a Post-It note holder.
The article set many thoughts running through my mind.
I wonder where are the Personal Digital Assistants that John Sculley promised us? The original MessagePad over-hyped and under-delivered by most measures. OTOH, the Newton platform embodied many concepts that are still missing today.
Modern PDAs stick to the pattern that Palm invented: do a couple of things, do them really well. The original PalmPilot was designed to be a portable PIM extension. Contacts, scheduling, notes. Enter data on your PC, sync it with your Palm. The Palm’s input methods are best suited to minor data manipulations. A Palm is your PC’s companion, not your own.
More advanced devices offer some techy frills (color screens, audio and video playback), but at their core the differ little from an early PalmPilot.
Sculley promised us Assistants, not mere PIMs. A personal secretary for every schlub that would not simply recognize our scribblings, but interpret their meaning, automatically scheduling lunch with Joe, a time to beat up Martin, and cleaning up our jagged doodles.
Thanks to Moore’s Law we now have $200 PDAs with hardware capabilities that far exceed the final Newton’s, but nobody is even trying to re-create what the Newton attempted. Your doodles are as ugly as you draw them. Your Notes are only Notes, if you want to turn them into Contacts or Appointments you are on your own.
I believe that this is the real reason that PDAs remain short-term toys instead of long-term tools — they aren’t friendly to the way that people operate.
PDAs are stupid, and that is by design.
