No Apple PDA Just Yet...

I like a great many of you would love to see the return of Apple to the PDA world... But I was just thinking of one major reason why they can't do it right now...

OS X...

Apple is still in the process of getting developers on board with OS X and this in itself wasn't an easy task... I'm pretty jazzed by the X support the 3rd party devs have put forth and it's only going to get better as the months go by...

OS X isn't in any condition to be cut-down into a OS X Lite PDAish OS... Not yet anyway, Apple still has a fair bit of nipping and tucking before it could think about a 'lite' version not to mention come summer they have a new CPU on the way (I don't see the G5 hitting in Jan).

So if Apple were to release a PDA it would require an OS... Would they adopt/license PALM? I don't think so, after all if you want a Palm.. buy a Palm... Now seeing that OS X (IMHO) isn't ready to be shoved into a PDA Apple is still in the need of an OS... Newton? While it's old it still has hardcore developer support but then it was written for the StrongARM... IBM has a new PPC based System on a chip and I'm pretty sure Apple would make use of that (if it had the OS)...

Now if you agree with the above and I admit you'd be puttin a ton of faith on nothing more than a bunch of guesses... Apple either had to write a whole new PDAish OS from scratch and then get developers to agree to write for it or wait for OS X lite and have all of your already migrated developers developing for a PDA without them even knowing it...

If I had a choice I'd have a PDA but a PDA that could work the way Apple designs things... Clean and Simple... Apple/Palm is a sucky idea (unless Steve purchased it and could Appleize it) and anything that required developers to re-write to YET ANOTHER PDA spec just ain't gonna fly and a PDA without 3rd party support would be just as bad as having no PDA at all...

So do I want an Apple PDA? You're damn right I want one (I wanted it like YESTERDAY) but for Apple to do it the right way will take some time...

Dave

[ 12-31-2001: Message edited by: DaveGee ]</p>

"First, what makes you think it'd use an OS X Lite?"

Didn't you read my post? 3rd party developers... You think Apple is in a position to get 3rd party developers to write to a brand new OS AGAIN? Microsoft might be able to get away with it but not Apple.

"Second, what makes you think such an OS wouldn't exist? OS X Lite wouldn't have to be OS X any more than WinCE is Windows. It's possible."

Like I said... Microsoft might be able to get devs to do this but not Apple... Apple was forced to do this with the move to OS X and they did succed (IMHO) but I'm not sure they could do it again and if they had plans on an OS X Lite from the initial planning of X they wouldn't have to re-sell developers a new PDA OS.

"What do I think? Look at the iPod - uses an OS from Pixo (?)... so... well, you put the pieces together."

As of today... Apple isn't selling the development of iPod apps to the 3rd party developers now are they? What Apple can do 'in-house' is totally different... The iPod as it stand now is a one-trick pony... Will that change I sure expect it to and we might even hear/see about some of those changes in a weeks time... but it's a playground that only Apple's in-house developers get to play in.

Dave