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View Full Version : Will Apple force PDA manufacturers to increase storage?


biglouis
10-13-2005, 01:40 PM
Looking at the new Apple Ipod 'wide' device with its 30GB of storage and video playback really makes me wonder how much longer we'll have to put up with PDAs which only have 128MB or 256MB of RAM storage.

I could seriously see abandoning my PDA for any form of entertainment in favour of carrying this ipod. The amazing thing is how slim it is compared to a PDA considering it packs a 30Gb drive.

It cannot believe a 30GB drive would add 'significantly' (e.g. double) the cost of an existing build like a Dell Axim 51v. Offering it as an option would be one way of introducing it, if it did.

Is it just that PDA manufacturers aren't radical enough in their thinking, or what?

LouisB

Darius Wey
10-13-2005, 04:55 PM
I could seriously see abandoning my PDA for any form of entertainment in favour of carrying this ipod. The amazing thing is how slim it is compared to a PDA considering it packs a 30Gb drive.

The new iPods are nice, but I wouldn't treat it as a PDA replacement. For starters, its PIM functionality is basic. Windows Mobile-based devices will always rule as far as PIM is concerned. So okay, the new iPods play videos. But let's look at the file formats it supports:

H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats
MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats

That's very limited, and obviously centred around Apple's narrow-minded approach to digital content. Because of that, it will never beat what a Pocket PC can offer. Armed with Windows Media Player and TCPMP, it's a definite winner. But the iPod has advantages - and that is it connects seamlessly with iTunes and can pull available digital content in an instant. The inclusion of TV shows, music videos, trailers, podcasts and music is fantastic, and being able to put all that on the iPod at the click of a few buttons is one of its most appealing factors. So having said all that, I'd love one, but it'd be a supplement to my Pocket PC, not a replacement.

Is it just that PDA manufacturers aren't radical enough in their thinking, or what?

I doubt they're stupid. It doesn't take a mobile professional to work out that expanded storage would rock. But is that the right move for everyone? For increased storage, we might face shorter battery lives and increased retail costs (due to increased costs of production). And that's not something every single PDA user would want. So the best approach would be to leave PDAs as they are, and create a separate multimedia PDA with increased storage. Introducing the LifeDrive...

Okay, it runs Palm OS, but the concept is there: that is, it's a multimedia PDA with increased storage. But I bet you're asking when one running Windows Mobile will surface? I'd like to know the same thing, but I'm sure one will be released in the near future. The Samsung i300 is already a step in the right direction.

PetiteFlower
10-13-2005, 07:14 PM
I'd still rather NOT have a hard drive. Too power hungry and too breakable.

Sven Johannsen
10-13-2005, 07:27 PM
I'd still rather NOT have a hard drive. Too power hungry and too breakable.

1G, 2G, 4G solid state memory is readily available, and those sizes are certainly functional for many MP3/picture players on the market, including Apple's. I expect you want more than that if you are courting video. Economics at the moment drive you to hard drives for that.

It would be sweet if the interface to a Portable Media Center was available on a PPC, just like Media Center Edition is really just an application on an XP box. The capability with Pocket MP10 to sync content just like a PMC is already there. I can imagine my X50 with a 4G microdrive (or CF) and a button that puts it into landscape and brings up the PMC front end. With all the rest it does, that would be compelling.

kosmos
10-13-2005, 09:04 PM
I agree wtih Sven, and also really will avoid a mecahnical storage device, sooner or later all those iPods hard disks are going to crash, its the fate of every mechanical device: to wear out.

And Apple have been very sneaky with this pocket video. Have you every tried to get a Quicktime video file running on your PPC? What a mission! Despite many claims to compatibility, the only path I could find was to convert to a .3gp format which TCPMP will read. So they have made running Quicktime on the PPC very difficult by shifting goalposts with enconder algorythms to ensure they keep a hold on it. And we all thought MS were just the baddies...

Yes the attraction for the ipodions is the iTunes, which the average user seems to love. All this nonsense about 'podcasts', like Apple invented it!!! I have been recording radio shows off the net on mp3 and listening on portable devices for over 4 years. Its because I can handle dealing with files and compression options, even command line if I have to :) iTunes offers 'neat' intergration, but I am sure others will catch up. Come on Google!

What we must not forget is that the ppc is a universal device: it can be anything we want it to be, but virtue and ease of programability.

Stephen Beesley
10-14-2005, 03:06 AM
...Yes the attraction for the ipodions is the iTunes, which the average user seems to love. All this nonsense about 'podcasts', like Apple invented it!!! I have been recording radio shows off the net on mp3 and listening on portable devices for over 4 years. Its because I can handle dealing with files and compression options, even command line if I have to :) iTunes offers 'neat' intergration, but I am sure others will catch up. Come on Google!

I feel a bit the same way about this announcement - Jobs makes it sound as if Apple has invented the whole idea of tv shows on a mobile device. I have been doing pretty much the same thing (as I am sure many others reading this have been :D) on my Pocket PC for at least the last few years. As Kosmos said - what iTunes brings is the integration.

As for the original question of storage space - I would seriously love to see a PPC with a xxgb hard drive although I can see why it would not be for everybody and, at this stage would probably not be a priority for the manufacturers. A Windows Mobile version of the LifeDrive or something similiar with a large solid state memory capacity is more likely in my view - and I would be pretty happy with that as well.

Patrick Y.
10-14-2005, 03:51 AM
Well, Pocket PC and iPOD are meant for completely different thing. I mean, iPOD is mainly for music and most people use PPC for PIM, video, music, dictionary, internet, word processing, photo, games, calculator, taking notes, check weather, reading rss news, reading ebook, view documents/powerpoints, alarms, etc... etc... In opinion, I don't need 30GB of memory for any of the thing on my device.

To keep the price low and the device small, iPOD has limited functions. To keep the price low and device small, Pocket PC has limited storage. Basically, a device with functions of both will have the price and size of two device combined. :lol:

Sven Johannsen
10-14-2005, 04:00 AM
As Kosmos said - what iTunes brings is the integration.

I won't even give them that. If you have had the opportunity to play with MP10 on both devices, the capability is wonderful. I can set up playlists to automatically sync when I connect, that dynamically update to recently ripped CDs, favorite music based on what I have been listening to and recorded TV that I have not yet viewed. It does take a little effort to set up the first time for a PPC, but it seems the facility to do that from MCE to a PMC is integrated into the MCE interface, making it significantly simpler.

Hell, my snapstream video setup had the capability of recording a TV show, transcoding it to PPC playability during the night, and copying it to a flash card that I could grab in the morning for several years now.

I'll take nothing away from Apple's style and marketing, but this ain't nuthin' new. Shame that MS will be seen as catching up in a race they started in first.

shawnc
10-14-2005, 12:37 PM
I was wondering when this thread would turn into snide apple-bashing. Let me share a couple of my thoughts. As an avid PPC owner for the past 7 years, I have been fiercely loyal to anything MS. A month ago I purchased a Nano and let me tell you something, there is simply NO COMPARISION between the iTunes/apple connection and the WMP/whoever. I'm not interested in the technical reasons (i.e. excuses), all I know is that I tried to purchase music on-line from 3 different providers to play on my PPC and none of them worked (eventually I was able to use a work-around thanx to some advice from this forum) unless I went through the staggeringly bizarre process of copying the downloaded music to a CD and then recopying it back to my library. Apparently this removes the protection? I don't know, I'm getting a headache just thinking about it.

Try buying music from iTunes. It just works. No hacking, no convoluted work-arounds, no frustration, and no wasted time. The da*n things just works. And very smoothly I might add. My hunch is that their execution when adding video will be just as flawless. Did Job's invent this? Of course not. No one is suggesting that he did. But I've watched the MS camp come out with these gawd-awful, butt-ugly, brick-like video devices for around 2 years now with absolutely no sucess. Apple comes out with a music player that is more elegant and sleek than the best device on the market....and oh by the way, it's also a video player. It's not always the smartest person that wins, sometimes it's about the execution. Gates may be brilliant but Job's executes flawlessly! Heck, sometimes it's not even about the best technology. Remember the betamax?

I understand that some folks have a hard time giving respect to the competition. You want to bash Palm, Treo, etc., go right ahead. But denying that apples execution and popularity is due to more than just uninformed or technically lacking consumers is hard to understand.

Back to the question at hand, of course PPC manufacturers will be forced to react to apples devices. Most consumers could care less about whether their storage is on a hard drive or flash. It's all internal to them. If apple can get 30G of storage on a device with a 20 hour battery life that is sleeker than many of the current PPC offerings, either the PPC manufacturers will react or continue to lose customers. It's just that simple.

Sven Johannsen
10-14-2005, 04:09 PM
I have no problems with Apple, or Palm in particular. I started real PC life with an Apple II and was an Apple User Group president for over 5 years. My issue with Palm was the "you don't need it 'till we have it" and this Apple "wow, look what we did". I have held a Nano, it is awsome, but it is not a PDA/portable computer and oh-BTW does media too. It's an MP3, uh, AAC player. As for the video iPod, it is always easier to bring a killer device to market after you've watched a competitor's attempts for a couple of years. You get to see what works and what doesn't before hand. Of course with Apple's marketing savvy and user hysteria, uh, loyalty, they could have put an Apple Logo on a white plastic Creative Zen PMC and been hailed as geniuses.

I'm sorry you had issues with the early state of DRM, as that was the issue, not a failing of the Windows OS. Apple had the advantage of a closed system, where they had control of the distribution, and players. The rest of the industry was trying to settle on competing standards. Certainly a credit to Apple's forethought, but maybe not the best for consumers. How many companies are building itunes compatible players? How many players work effectively with Walmart music, and Yahoo music and Napster, and MSN Music. I find it interesting that the company that started it's rise to stardom with the famous throwing of the shackles of conformity ad, is now so proprietary, they demand royalties from folks that even connect to their boxes.

The experience you would have with several music services and windows platforms today with the Plays for Sure compliance is virtually as seamless as the Apple experience. With Plays for Sure you get the option of any PC, a number of different player hardware vendors and music vendors. With Apple it's Mac, iTunes, iPod, period. Not that it is a bad combo, but it is pretty restrictive, and that makes it a whole lot easier to get right.

PetiteFlower
10-14-2005, 08:45 PM
Plus if you use iTunes and have a different mp3 player, I believe you have to burn the songs to a CD and re-rip them before you can copy them to your device as well. I have heard many people complaining about this...personally I don't have an MP3 player or use iTunes so I don't have to worry about it :)

IpaqMan2
10-14-2005, 11:54 PM
In response to the topic:

There's no reason why PDAs... specially PPCs shouldn't have more storage. These devices would be 10 better if it had the space for storage, (like 4 plus gigs)without the cost of forking out hundreds more on top of the device so they can be used for heavy multimedia use. It kills me that Apple has made a killing off of the iPod which is nothing more than a massive storage device with a weak crappy OS, yet no one in the PPC world has been able to bridge that same idea and make a true multimedia PPC with the storage and gear it for or include some extra accessories and a program so it can act as a miniture recorder to record your own videos, take your own pictures with a built in 1.3 mega pixal camera, and play your MP3's and keep your PIMs all in your hand. Thank God the mobile phones OEMs and Wireless companies didn't have such a narrow and weak vision of what Cell phones should be. If they did, we'd still be sporting those ugly 3 and half pound brick cell phones.

Sven Johannsen
10-17-2005, 02:35 AM
Plus if you use iTunes and have a different mp3 player, I believe you have to burn the songs to a CD and re-rip them before you can copy them to your device as well.
That's exactly what I had to do to play my Napster (legal/paid for) downloads on a PPC, pre Pocket MP10. It worked fine with my Napster compatible Samsung player, but would only work with Pocket MP9 if I was copying to the internal RAM. Not much room there. Now with Pocket MP10 the licensing works with numerous online music stores and you can sync your tunes to any external storage like an SD card or a microdrive. Note that the DRM stuff is supported and I can't take the microdrive out of the PPC to which I sync'd the music and play them in another PPC or PC.

Sven Johannsen
10-17-2005, 02:51 AM
In response to the topic:

There's no reason why PDAs... specially PPCs shouldn't have more storage.Maybe not now, but there was. Until just recently, WM5, when you drained the batteries in a PPC, what happened? You lost all your data. What happens with an iPOD, or Muvo, or Zen? Nothing. You just charge it back up and you are ready to go. Imagine a 4G Dell X30, that was marketed as a combo PPC/Media Player, and the outcry everytime someone fell asleep to tunes, or pushed it to that last second of video and all the contacts, and calendar and everything else was gone. Not a pretty scenario. Those of us who knew, had no problems, we just bought a big flash or micro-drive and moved on. But for the average consumer, and MP3 player buyers are much more average than PPC buyers, that wouldn't have gone over well. The extra memory wouldn'ty have been free either, nor the developement involved in devising a UI for the media portion. A media/PPC would have been more expensive and folks were having a tough time swallowing the price of PPC already. It wouldn't have been a smart move.

Now that we have persistant memory though, at least we won't lose all our data when we screw up and drain the beast, entertaining ourselves. Still when you get off the airplane, and you can't check your calendar, or look up the contact you are supposed to meet, because you tried to watch the Matrix on your PPC, you are going to be ticked.

Media Players and PDAs are different devices. So are phones and PDAs. Can you nail them together? Sure you can. Is a combo device going to appeal to everyone? Of course not. Will a particular combo appeal to enough folks that making one is profitable? I couldn't say, but I'll just bet Dell and HP, an HTC, etc. have there views on that.

dsbabe
10-17-2005, 04:30 AM
I've recently read an article about the new windows mobile 5 for pocket pc. The stuff that it supports suggests that future pocket pc's will treat ram like ram and rom like rom. Mentioning the new microdrives (currently in mp3 players etc), the article left some heavy hints about pocket pcs moving to true PC functionality. I am vey excited and have actually decided to put off a new ppc purchase until I start seeing some of these promising inovations. My ipaq is being good - I can wait. :wink:

IpaqMan2
10-18-2005, 04:45 AM
It wouldn't have been a smart move.

I don't know if I agree. Every new inovation is a bad move or looked upon with a negative speculation, until someone else does it. With PPC 2003 SE, you are correct, a change in design would need to be made so everything wouldn't be lost if the batteries were drained, still I believe this could of been over come with that OS from a little add on program and some other form of storage, (micro drive, or a large enough flash). Even in WM 5, I think this can be done with little effort. The OS is more than capible of being able to supply all the multimedia needs. Take the Axim 50 or 51, drop a microdrive in the CF slot, and you have a perfect multimedia device (or close to it) and it coould do everything the iPod can do and more. So why would that be a bad move.?

Don't let OEM's fool you. Anyone who knows anything about marketing understands how much of a markup most products are when manufactored by OEMs. Dell probably spends less than $250 US to make the Axim. Truth is OEMs are able to include technology dollar for dollar cheaper than you or I could if we bought the Axim and than added a Microdrive.

If HP is able to alter the design for the PPC to make PPC Phone, than why couldn't another OEM make a PPC with a 320 by 320 screen, add a Microdrive or even a laptop drive, load it with WM 5 so when the battery dies it doesn't lose its data, drop a mid range CPU that is strong enough to do video and music but not power hungry enough to really hurt the battery, and make it about the same size of the average 30 gig iPod and sell it as a multimedia device that could blow any iPod out of the water?

It can be done...Because it's happening right now with CF Microdrives in PPCs, it's just no one or no OEM is thinking "outside of the box".

shawnc
10-18-2005, 12:25 PM
It can be done...Because it's happening right now with CF Microdrives in PPCs, it's just no one or no OEM is thinking "outside of the box".

Couldn't agree more. It's amazing how many excuses folks are willing to make for PPC makers/MS failure to innovate. PPC's should have come with 2-3GB of storage years ago. If there was an issue with memory management, it should have also been addressed years ago. It's stunning to me that it's taken MS this long to address the issue of losing data when your battery drains. Oh BTW, have we finally gotten the alarms to work :roll: ?

Phillip Dyson
10-18-2005, 01:54 PM
Sven has a good point. I'm a PPC power user. I'm well aware of the volatile memory risks of losing all my data. Thats the exact reason why I don't use my device for multi-media. In WM2003SE and earlier, power is a premium because its all you have been you and a pad and paper. This goes especially for the x50 prior to the WM5.0 upgrade.

My 3rd gen 10gb iPod is really getting on my nerves and before grabbing another one I'm spying out the alternatives on the market. Once I'm running WM5.0 I will probably revisit my PDA as a MM device though.

As to the original post, I'm actually afraid that its more likely the market will splinter and many people going after the IPod now will turn their attention to the PMC platform. OEMs seem to have a hard time believing that there is a large enough market that actually once to do it all on a single device and MS is not helping. Very creation of the PMC OS will promote the same seperation of features in the WM family as the PocketPC, Phone Edition, and Smartphone flavors did.