why did PDAs die?

[lensovet]

the question of why the PDA market completely fell through is one that I think is both interesting and worth considering. about 4 years ago would be the peak of this market, by my cursory and uninformed observations of it. namely, it was in the summer of 2004 that sony pulled out of the PDA market in the US, and less than a year afterward, ceased

Comments

[swapbuffer]

Hey, did you get a chance to evaluate the iPhone?

yep

[lensovet]

the iphone fails on a number of really simple but yet basic functionality. namely,
- horrendous bluetooth stack (only supports headset profile)
- no MMS support
- no voice dialing/voice commands.
those 3 are really simple features to implement and yet don't exist on the iphone despite existing on my not-so-smart sonyericsson t616.

Re: yep

[lensovet]

it's interesting to look at this two years later. in particular, the bluetooth stack problem has been largely fixed, MMS support is here, and voice dialing and commands has been made available on the 3GS but not 3G. but the iphone still has a number of serious issues:
-no Tasks support, this absolutely insane
-no ability to snooze event reminders
-pretty lame camera
-same resolution as the 4-year-old clié on a bigger physical screen...high DPI please!
it's good to see that at least we're getting somewhere, though.

Re: yep

[lensovet]

and another few months later, the last two items off that list have been knocked off!
unfortunately at iOS 4, the notifications system is still a complete disaster and needs a serious overhaul, especially given that we now have "local push" in addition to the APS. but tasks support is really, really glaring at this point.