Some talk at Hack the Planet about Apple's old Newton PDA. Made me wonder about a few things. First some background. Everybody is reporting that the much rumored Apple branded Palm Pilot is not happening. Apple is officially saying they have NO PDA in development. This has left the door open, and led people to speculate that the widely reported PDA effort at Apple has morphed into a tablet web appliance type thing (thus allowing for top brass to mislead people with the no pda line - "well, it's not a pda, it's a tablet.") Fine. This sounds reasonable. With Apple's proven knack for industrial design, the web appliance category is clearly in their sites. (Really, I think only Sony can challenge them, although placing Apple so high on the list of future powers might seem bizarre to some people.) This will be a huge market. Probably much bigger than the whole PC market. So, what is this thing going to run. Strongarm? I don't think so. G3? Too hot, too high of a power drain. G4? No. Same reasons, plus, Motorolla can't even supply enough for the desktop line. So what's the deal? Could it be that porting Darwin to x86 (which is NOT porting OS X to x86, but is a first step) is a prelude to bringing Transmeta on board? A transmeta powered, Apple branded, OS X running, wireless (airport) tablet? Pure speculation.
|
- jim 5-19-2000 8:30 pm