I have this bias about data and app intergration both from time spent using a
PDA myself, as well as from watching the stuff that other people find most
appealing when a PDA is demoed. People go ape about the idea that a phone
number entered in one place is still findable from another place, that
appointments can be linked to phone numbers and that even silly things like
the city names in the Time Zones app show up when you do a find from the
NotePad.
People have never been exposed to this model before, of data and applications
being intertwined, of not having to catagorize their data into files and
remember what the files contain and my observation is that they just love the
hell out of the idea.
PS, I still strongly contend that PDAs are fundamentally different from
desktop machines. I don't want to process words on a PDA, I don't want to
deal with a spreadsheet, I don't want to do ANYTHING that takes lots of text
input, it's too hard. I don't want to read reams of information, either,
unless it's on a PDA with a larger screen than the current crop (which then
starts to look a lot more like a laptop than a PDA). I DO want to have
reference information at my fingertips, be able to find information I've
entered quickly, be able to quickly jot small notes, be able to set alarms
and reminders, and have it go from "sleep" to "run" very quickly.Subj:
Underlying Differences