Apple's PDA
Sunday, 18 November 2007. Apple.
Update:
This post was written prior to the January Software Upgrade 2008.
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod Touch to the world on September 5th, he claimed it was one of the seven wonders of the world. He might have been exaggerating a little, but in response to Blake Brannon's question 'Did Apple Just Release a PDA?', I think he might be onto something.
Having played with the Touch, it really is a remarkable device. Like the iPhone it sports the revolutionary touch screen interface, a physical home button, and all over cool Apple design.
At 8mm thin and only 120g it packs some impressive power; playing music, movies, photos, and a providing a link to the web via Safari.
Also present is a gorgeous calendar, automatically syncing contacts, and a clock/alarm, all are features typical of any PDA. However, as Blake points out, the Touch is without Office Document processing and an Email client to be comparable to most PDA's.
Well with the built-in WiFi, is the lack of a native email application really so much of an issue? I mostly use Gmail for everything now- due to the wonderful Mail Fetcher, I can 'pull-in' emails from all my other email accounts, and manipulate them from within Gmail.
Originally the iPod Touch was released without the ability to add or edit calendar events, however this was rectified with firmware update 1.1.2, (released Monday 12th November). This put's the Touch one step closer to a true PDA.
Basic Document Editing
Well, Google have announced that the Google Docs interface has been re-designed for the iPhone/Touch interface, for a mobile-optimized versions of your docs, spreadsheets, and presentations. All well and good, however the design is read-only, allowing you to view your documents, but not to edit them. I am sure the editing feature is coming soon, but this still requires you to always have access to WiFi.
Just like the iPhone, the Touch has been jailbroken allowing third-party applications to be run, many ported over from the iPhone. However when the iPhone/Touch SKD is released in February, I am convinced we'll quickly see true native office apps. Google will no doubt integrate a local editing application for Google Docs powered by Gears, (a software that enables you to access to services off-line that normally only work on-line), which would automatically sync back to Google whenever you got in range of a WiFi signal.
Apple already provide a whole host of web-only applications such as Facebook and BBC Podcasts, but seeing Apple already have the killer online store I can see the sale of applications for the iPhone/Touch in the new year. Lets face it, the iTunes Store already sells games for the earlier iPods, and is cross platform with DRM built in.
The iPod Touch might actually do for handheld computers, what the original iPod did for digital music players.
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