iPod touch Backward Lesson from Windows Mobile: The Value of a Phone-less Device

A funny thing happened while the world was on the way to becoming mobile: A couple of common-wisdom concepts got thrown out the door. Here's a couple of mobile common wisdom topics from the past 10 years. And, note a couple of reversals along the way.

1996: No one wants to type on the tiny keyboards on Windows CE Handheld PCs. The Palm Pilot (they later dropped the Pilot part of the name because of a legal issue brought up by the Pilot Pen company). Microsoft and its partners eventually dropped the Handheld PC device line and this common wisdom appeared to be true for a while. Microsoft brought out the Palm-size PC which ran into a name issue with Palm. So, Microsoft changed the name of their keyboardless device to the Pocket PC.

1997: Everyone wants a tiny keyboard. RIM decided that the keyboard on the Windows CE Handheld PC devices were not small enough and introduced the Blackberry with its tiny QWERTY thumb keyboard. I remember seeing this at a mobile technology conference in San Francisco in early 1998 and trying to figure out who would use such a tiny keyboard. Little did I know... And, so it appears, did Palm. Jeff Hawkins left Palm, founded Handspring and put a tiny QWERTY keyboard on the Treo phone in 2002. Palm decided that everyone does want a keyboard and bought Handspring in 2003.

2002: Everyone wants a smartphone with an operating system and user-installable applications. Palm had Palm OS, Microsoft had the Windows Mobile platform (and Palm would too a while later), Nokia had the S60, and there were a bunch of Java phones too.

2004: Everybody wants a phone and no one wants a PDA. We started to see a drop in the number of Palm and Pocket PC type devices that were phone-less PDAs (with or without WiFi). The other common wisdom was that WiFi did not provide enough connectivity to count as connected.

2007-2008: Apple breaks all the rules! Apple decided that a physical QWERTY keyboard really wasn't needed after all. They also decided that user installable applications were not important (as of 2007). The first generation iPhone was amazing, of course. But, from my perspective, its amazing video capabilty really drove a demand for a iPhone-like iPod without any phone.

The problem with common wisdom is that it sometimes simplifies things a bit too much. Although Apple has sold millions of iPhones, there many more millions of us who are iPhone-less for a variety of reasons. Personally, I did not want to switch to AT&T Wireless and, more importantly, I knew I wanted tactile feedback on a thumb QWERTY keyboard. And, until last week, I also knew I certain applications were a must have on my phone (or PDA). And, although we've come a long way since the Apple Newton (mine still works, btw), I still couldn't find a single unified device that did it all for me. So, like many people, my smartphone (a Windows Mobile T-Mobile Dash in my case) was for voice and client-side applications while I carried an iPod for multimedia when I'm running around.

A funny change happened in my home after I bought the iPod touch last year though. I found myself carrying it around for on-demand mobile browsing and checking email via WiFi. The iPod touch's web browser and email client turned out to be far better than the browser/email on my Windows Mobile smartphone.

There still is a problem with the iPhone and iPod touch for me though. Altough a lot of people have become comfortable with the on-screen feedback-less iPhone/touch screen keyboard, I have not. And, I know a lot of people who feel (or not feel the keyboard in this case) the same way. I wrote most of the O'Reilly Shortcuts Windows for Intel Macs on an old HP Jornada 720 (the Handheld PC on the left on the photo near this paragraph) in 2006. It is a great Windows CE Handheld PC released in 2001 that weighed in at 18 ounces (~1.1 pounds or ~.5Kg), great battery life (up to 9 hours), and a 640x240 display (half-VGA). And, introduced in 2001, it predated the Asus Eee PC by 6 years as an on-the-go instant-on mini-notebook. You can find an old review of it I wrote for one of my personal sites here: HP Jornada 720: The First Handheld PC 2000

The iPod touch with its new ability to download and install applications will, I believe, demonstrate that there is a segment of the market that wants a multimedia-PDA device that is connectable (via WiFi) but not always connected. This is especially true for those of us in the US whose phones are tied to specific mobile carriers.

Phone-less PDAs had dropped to the $100 to $200 range before they started disappearing in favor of smartphone type devices. And, while subsidized smartphone are still in that range, in the US, you are mostly tied to the devices made available by your carrier. If you are a GSM (AT&T Wireless or T-Mobile in the US) phone user, you can buy unlocked phones. But, these phones often run in the $800 to $1000 range when unlocked and untied to a carrier. The iPod touch with its $299 to $499 price range provides a great connectable experience. If its price range could drop a notch to $199 to $399, it would, IMHO, deliver on many of the promises of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) by providing an affordable, highly portable, media rich, application rich computer. It also delivers the original promise of the Windows Mobile Pocket PC (pre-phone days). The wider availability of WiFi hotspots in 2008 (compared to earlier in the decade) lets iPod touch users be connected when needed with a little bit of travel planning. Other devices like the Asus Eee PC (another important common wisdom rule breaker) and the Nokia 700 and 800 series mobile internet devices shows the demand for affordable connectable devices that do not need to run Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X.

The killer app that makes all this possible for the iPod touch and iPhone is the Apple App Store. I'm surprised to hear (read) myself say this since I thought that having a single marketing point for applications was a bad idea when I first heard about it. However, after using it over the past few days, I changed my mind. The App Store provides a unified and simple shopping environment. I don't have to wander all over the net looking for apps to try on my iPod touch. Selecting, downloading and installing from my Mac or iPod touch is equally simple. I think, though, that Apple should do away with the $99 developer fee for people who provide free applications. These free apps serve as an important way for iPhone and iPod touch users to learn the value of these mobile apps and provide a free way to learn to use the App Store without risk. Starting with free apps makes buying the first for-fee app a familiar and comfortable experience vs. an anxiety causing one. I know I practiced quite a bit looking around the store on both my Mac and directly from the iPod touch. You can see the various free apps I've installed so far in the screen cap near this paragraph. In fact, I'm so excited by the free apps I've seen so far, that I've decided that (shameless plug) I'm going to start covering free iPhone/iPod touch apps on the personal blog where I've been discussing free and Open Source software for Mac OS X and Windows for the past few years.

The iPhone and iPod touch still don't qualify as the one-device-to-rule-them-all for me. I wish, for example, that I could use a Bluetooth keyboard with them. The iPod touch doesn't have Bluetooth at all, for that matter. And, I wish that they had user replaceable batteries (I carry an APC USB portable battery pack with my iPod touch when I travel). And, I really wish I could Bluetooth tether the iPod touch to my phone. But, that would kill the iPhone market. So, that won't happen.

That said, the ability to install applications on the iPod touch turns it into a full computer for me. And, I'm really looking forward to exploring its potential sans-a-phone-radio.