We have passed the 10th anniversary of the Palm OS. I have never had a Mac, but I have gathered that the Palm UI is a descendant of the Mac OS. I am on my 3rd Palm device. I wear them out. I do not wish for enhancements because my Palm does everything I need -- with some small qualification.
My lower powered PCs are usually relegated to entertainment duty, providing audio and video, plus a few simple occasional tasks. I have often wished for a Palm UI interface for these machines so they would be easier for my family to use. A Palm UI on top of Linux would be just fine.
There is a certain glory in taking a low powered microcontroller like the Motorola dragonball 68328 running at 16 MHz and running a GUI interface with a touch screen. The first Palm Pilot was a fine accomplishment. The interface does everything required of it. For those who care
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8...retrospective/ has a nice piece about the beginnings of the Palm.
When we have an interface that performs adequately, tabs and transparency add only a marginal improvement. To make the instrument take a great leap forward we need to add some startling new functionality.
Certainly we have added MP3s and video, plus loads more memory and processor speed. Wireless connection is a wonderful addition. But the innovation that will really change the way we use our pocket devices will be good quality voice recognition.
VoiceIt Technologies LLC has introduced voice recognition for the Treo and the Lifedrive. These applications include a dialer, a launcher and a security device. Other OSs are supported too. I am wishing for the day when I can do voice dictation on my Palm device and have it turn my words into print.
With good voice recognition the handheld could perform queries much as we do on Google today. We will move beyond the application oriented interface of the Palm screen, or the file oriented interface of Windows (yes, that is the way I usually use it), to a more friendly and useful information oriented interface that we can use without taking our eyes off the road.
With a built-in mic and camera, our future devices will be able to chronicle our lives and passions. Do you remember the pocket computer in Arthur C Clarke's 1976 novel,
Imperial Earth? It was called a minisec, and it functioned as a video phone and PDA. The memory store in the device was sufficient for a lifetime, and one could store literally everything in it; audio, video, text -- the works!
Clarke's idea came to me the same year I had built my first home computer. I was still soldering discrete components to double-sided circuit boards! Yet I was confident that the future would bring me such a device. Thankfully, the future is almost here.