iMac - PDA Edition ??

[josephz]

I'm a fan of the iPod, but the thing of it is I don't use it as much as putting the music into a PDA off a 516mb miniSD card. But my curiousity wants to know if Apple/Mac is planning on releasing PDAs down the road to their customers?

[symphonix]

The short answer is maybe, but probably not.

As for the long answer ...

In Apple circles the rumours of PDAs have been popping up again and again for about 10 years now, and the success of the iPod has only fueled the speculation. There really is no solid indication though that Apple would ever want to re-enter the PDA market. It is not very profitable, as has been proven by the poor market performance of both PalmOne and Microsoft in this field. Apple already made the first true PDA when they released the Newton, and while it has a cult following it was never really profitable.

That doesn't mean things won't change.

[Qion]

All you can do is speculate. I personally believe that Apple could make a killer PDA, but there's still everything that goes into producing that...

However, knowing Steve Jobs, if he wakes up tomorrow morning and says "Hey, time to make a PDA", Apple will do it.

[fryke]

(10 years ago, there WAS an Apple PDA. THE PDA, in fact: Newton. The last Newton was the MessagePad 2100, released in November 1997. Apple stopped selling Newtons in early 1998. But I'm straying...)

Qion: Like how you imagine Steve to strategise. Hilarious. I guess the iPod HiFi was pretty much done like that... "Hey, I need a boombox. But it needs to be designed by Apple. Heck: Let's do it."