“Does EO-440/PenPoint (1992) = Apple iPad (2010)?”

Here’s the best answer…

—–

Absolutely.

I could go on and on why the GO/EO machines (eventually known as the Personal Communicator) didn’t make it back then – now that I know what really happened along with having been forced to recreate and dig up the past in the last few years. Those pages of history will be put into their place in proper time.

As for comparisons, let’s see…both are built on 20 year old message-based operating systems ala Smalltalk, implemented in C…using a gesture user model and application framework built from the ground up for mobility and communications. Both bury the concept of files and the application life cycle beneath a non-desktop metaphor.

The iPad is solid state, instant on as originally envisioned by GO. It has integrated wireless, its a phone (I just made several calls on it yesterday via Skype – putting a phone to your ear is not the future, or should I say the EO is back to the future).

Both are built with the mouse and keyboard out of mind. The finger is a stylus. The iPad has handwriting recognition capability, it has ink capability, there is a chinese handwriting recognition, and besides a myriad of drawing apps (there is a pen stylus for them as well) the old ParaGraph guys (now phatware) have apps that show handwriting recognition and ink can be an awesome experience on the iPad (that is about as close to having anything to do with a Newton – which is a laughable comparison IMHO).

Both have integrated address book, calendar and email…and apps that could be purchased for just about every category of use (here’s another ironic history tidbit: the original technology that became Flash – which of course Apple abhors for many good reasons – was developed on PenPoint and shipped for the EO).

Yes, you can even appease a fat cat from a gondola with it (though Apple’s marketing is slightly better doncha think?)

http://www.wanderbook.com/blog/iphone/2010/03/08/youve-been-here-before-alice-dont-you-remember/

Putting aside advances in hardware, the iPad in many ways is inferior to what the GO/EO machines would have been. For one, I think the phone metaphor has its limits, but at least its not the old WIMP interface stuck on a digitizer like the ridiculous tablets from MS.

The iPad (like the iPhone) is disruptive technology , as the GO machines should have been, maybe hard to see for techies, but when a 7 year old, and a 70 year old fight over using it as I saw yesterday, its easy to see where this stuff is going, and where it should have been years ago.

I can’t pick from all the brainless articles that have been going around since the iPad announcement  (that I will humbly remind you that I discussed in August 2009).  Which one to tackle? Hmmm, easy pickings, here’s one… from Yet Another Dumb Ass (YADA).  And then you  YOU HAVE TO see the original article linked to at the end…ya just have to.  Now to be honest, I changed a few words (in underline bold italics ) , just so to underline-embolden and italicize the points made here.

Apple iPad Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move: Matthew Lynn

Commentary by Matthew Lynn

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) — Few products have been launched with such a blizzard of publicity as Apple Inc.’s iPad.

To its many fans, Apple is more of a religious cult than a company. An iToaster that downloads video and books while toasting bread would probably get the same kind of worldwide attention.

Don’t let that fool you into thinking that it matters. The big competitors in the mobile industry won’t be whispering nervously into their clamshells over a new threat to their business.

The iPad is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPad is less relevant.

If column inches and airtime guaranteed commercial success, Apple would already have a global hit on its hands. For the past week, it has been impossible to open a newspaper or look at a Web site without reading something about the shiny new tablet.

Certainly, it loors like a nice piece of equipment. The iPad combines Apple’s iPhone and an eBook with a browser as well as having wireless Internet access for full e-mail. Instead of lugging around a netbook or laptop.  Even better, its battery life lasts all day.

It will be released in the U.S. in June, with a rollout to the rest of the world later, and will cost $499 to $599, depending on how much storage space you want. How many might they sell? Millions, according to Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs.

Three Reasons

Not everyone is sold on the idea.

“The iPad will not substantially alter the fundamental structure and challenges of the mobile industry,” Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said in a report this month.

There are three reasons that Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market — and why it is too early to start dumping  netbooks, ebooks and tablets competitors shares.

First, Apple is late to this party. The company didn’t invent the personal computer or MP3 player, but it was among the pioneers of both products. Yet there is no shortage of netbooks, ebooks and tablets out there. There are already big companies that dominate the space, all of whom will defend their turf. That means Apple will have to fight hard for every sale.

Next, the mobile  industry depends on cooperation with the other big companies [...].  Apple has never been good at working with other companies. If it knew how to do that, it would be Microsoft Corp.

Lastly, the iPad is a defensive product. It is mainly designed to protect the iPhone, which is coming under attack from mobile manufacturers adding smart phone capabilities to their products. Yet defensive products don’t usually work — consumers are interested in new things, not reheated versions of old things. Likewise, who is it pitched at? The price and the e-mail features make it look like a business product. But Apple is a consumer company. Will your accounts department stump up for a fancy new handset just so you can watch Avatar on your way to a business meeting?

Fresh Competition

In many ways, that is a shame. The mobile industry is becoming a cozy cartel and a limited range of manufacturers. It could certainly use a fresh blast of competition from an industry outsider.

It may come — but probably from an entrepreneurial start-up somewhere.

It won’t come from the iPad. Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPad won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.

(Matthew Lynn is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

And now, here’s the original, enjoy as you read this and all the other YADAs that are a little more current.

Apple Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move: Matthew Lynn – Bloomberg.com.

1) It Won’t be a PC - Not only “it won’t be a tablet” but it won’t be a PC.  The desktop metaphor won’t work here, period.   A “Start” button on a tablet is a joke.   A hovering mouse pointer is stupid.  Drag-able windows everywhere is nuts.  Icons and menus and scroll bars driving functionality is lame.

Apple gets it.  There is no Finder on the iPhone is there?  Thank goodness.  The failure of screen-driven devices beyond pocket size has to do with the reluctance of the industry to disrupt the PC.  Instead this class of device has always been forced into a position of comparison with that of the standard PC either as a companion,  or as an extension, or as a replacement.   This is what happens when industries, not the end users, get to dictate how new technology will be applied into the market.  One of the major criticisms of Apple has been they failed to open their platform and create an industry like the Wintel world, and they also failed to compromise their fixation on the consumer and the end-user experience, rather than put more effort on the standards of corporate IT world.  Thank goodness again, otherwise we would have no iPhone.

2) EBook Store – Yet another store for Apple:  iTunes, AppStore, and now an ebook Store.  I remember reading awhile back that Steve Jobs said nobody reads anymore. Ha ha.  More revenue PLUS, the possibility of a subsidizing angle from a top book store, say Borders?  Unlike the muzak industry, retailers have a bigger foothold on the market and therefore Apple won’t be dealing with the publishers directly.  Border’s makes sense, they are the number 2 giant and just last year decided to go after Amazon head to head with its own internet presence. Why wouldn’t Apple make a deal directly with them? It makes a lot of sense.

3) Video –  This is not the no-brainer people think it is.  A laptop has an advantage besides having a keyboard.  It works well with tops: laps, desks, tables, airplane trays, and other flat surfaces.  Watching video is mainly a stationary activity.  That is why I should also say you can’t take the “TV metaphor” and put it on this device.  If the user interface for this winds up being an Apple TV extension or a touch version of Front Row then this will fail.  It won’t be though, Apple is too smart.  The real killer application of an iPad for video of course is an extension of how we already are using the iPhone 3GS.  Not just for video clip streaming and viewing while in ultra mobile environments, but for video clip creating. It will have a camera, and it will supplant the home cameras in a way that will make it a home video studio with feet.

4) Personal Communicator with Choice. “Not an iPhone” means Verizon and Sprint will be a contractual possibility.   That means the iPAD Pro (vs. a possible WiFi only version) most likely have both a CDMA and GSM radio in it like HTC’s Touch Pro 2. Though I am pretty sure the iPAD will be based on upgraded version of the iPhone’s cocoa touch OS, it is likely the “iPAD” will be considered a new product category.  It won’t be a phone, but it will be a Personal Communicator class of device that was supposed to (and should have) disrupted the PC’s dominance a decade ago. The competition from having more than one choice of providers will allow for even better subsidized prices, making this new contraption even more appealing.

5) WebPad. Wanderbook was conceived with from the idea of creating a WebPad in 1999.   When wireless technology began its rise, the idea of pen computers running a browser, untethered, seemed to be a no-brainer. It was, and still is a valid concept.  As I said in #1 above, the problem is the concept got killed by trying to also port a big fat desktop operating system on to these devices where the will of the mighty PC industry refused to compromise for the benefit of the end user.

6)  Headset Oriented – The iPhone is a self contained phone, and like all phones you can raise it to your ear and speak into it, put it into your pocket etc.  - a major advantage over Personal Communicators with larger screens.  Ok, but this advance could be a disadvantage as well.  Is it really healthy to put a transmitter next to your brain all day?  I won’t feed into the health concerns of mobile phones, just that it is a concern to many people, valid or not.  Plus, handsets are now a no-no in many states while driving and it seems wireless speaker or headsets are the way of the future for this and other reasons.  Plus, unless it is a speaker phone, which for many reasons are not practical all the time, you can’t use your screen simultaneously. So, a device that is meant to be used with a head makes sense.

7) Games – The iPhone and iPod Touch have open up news possibilities in the game market.  A bigger screen simply means bigger possibilities.

8) A New Metaphor UI - This is one I am not sure of…(why I said 7 reasons).  I think this is going to be a very tough nut for Apple to crack. Sticking to the phone metaphor was brilliant, but I think it could fall apart with a bigger device.  However, a more sophisticated digitizer integrated with multitouch may be too much too soon.  Also, of course, breaking too far away from the iPhone U/I would be risky.

But the thumb can only reach so far, and let’s face it, thats the primary “stylus” we use, our other digits on our hand – not as much.  The phone metaphor itself can only go so far.  I am guessing the iPAD will not only have a bigger display, but  a richer display, like that from Pixel QI which is a new kind of epaper that has a rich full color and fast refreshing screen, and with a lot of the advantages the other epaper technologies have: high paperlike contrast, low power, lightweight .

Pixel Qi Product Vision

Therefore a richer U/I to go along with it makes sense.

Personally I love the Notebook metaphor of the electronic briefcase (AKA PenPoint), and I find it amusing the PC industry took away the notebook name for itself, but never took the metaphor.  A richer interface means more gestures, and now that Apple has brought back the notion that gestures can be good, instead of bad (yes, there was a time when this was standard thinking, again it was driven by PC industrial driven world).  Not to forget the “ThinkPad” which by the, was also originally a system design for PenPoint.

Anyway, this iPad means there is a need for something richer than the finger or thumb as a stylus.  No not a keyboard, arg…I mean yes, a better software keyboard, perhaps, maybe handwriting reonigiton done right (but thats another article for me to write) – but one that includes ink.  You know, like ink on a piece of paper but digital, concept we some of use know as “ink as a datatype”.  By the way, those who know a little know nothing…Microsoft did not invent ink writing applications.  The whole concept was full realized out of, yes once again, GO corporation with PenPoint.

But I digress.  Handwritten digital  ink, and the ability to manipulate it with a rich gesture set would enable a more human interface, not simply a paper note taking application, no, no, this would permeate throughout the entire U/I, like a lamented layer over everything.   Get it?  Maybe not, it’s really sad that  much of what was PenPoint was ripped from the history books.

WWDC No Shows: 10 Things We Wanted From Apple and Didn’t Get.

What was number one item?

1. The Apple Tablet

Much of the tech community expected Apple to unveil some sort of tablet-like device at the WWDC this week. Reports suggested a 10-inch touchscreen could be coming our way, priced between $500 and $700 and running a Mac OS X-like operating system with multitouch capabilities.

Every since Moses its seems humans have been fascinated by Top Ten Lists and Tablets.

Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O – O’Reilly Radar.

I understand the point of an emerging web application platform and web apps can do what many native apps did 10 years ago. I  don’t get the graph…is it another way of preaching the silly idea that the superiority of the native app reign (or OS) is about to end?…it looks here like the point in this graph is today’s web apps (RIAs or HTML5) are as good as today’s native apps…and I hear it over and over again.

Let’s not get carried away…please.  Google Earth compared to Google Maps, seriously, one is like flying, the other is simply useful, that’s all.

There is an excellent point in the article though, the observation that mobile browsing is driving a lot of the web platform now.  Yep.

Even so,  the native apps (and the mobile browser on an iPhone for example, is a native app) will always be superior. The native iPhone apps blow away the iPhon web apps  or any other mobile.   I just downloaded Google Earth on the iPhone, web apps can’t do that.  The real disruption to talk about began over a year ago, not in 1991.

Its not the web application platform that is displacing native apps, its that web connected mobile platforms are displacing personal computers.

I am certain Apple’s response to this “Netbook” era will be more of a new platform, not just a big iPhone, or little Mac.  The phone metaphor for a pad size device won’t work, but it probably will use a lot of the iPhone functionality, app store for sure, and apps in general should mostly be compatible.   Speaking of Pads (lighter version of tablets) and netbooks, this technology could be the biggest breakthrough yet.

From Pixel Qi – Home.

“We are a fabless developer of a new class of screens that use standard LCD manufacturing materials and processes.

The screens will be available for mini-laptops and ebook readers in high volume mass production in mid-2009.  Our mainstream laptop screens will be available in 2010.

The readability and legibility of our new screens rival the best epaper available today.  What’s new about our screens: fast video rate update (refresh), and fully saturated color at very low pricing because we use standard manufacturing materials, processes and factories.  Our screens use 1/2 to 1/4 the power of a regular LCD screen, and when integrated carefully with the device can increase battery life between charges by 5-fold.

The choice of the screens used in a computer, or any portable, can have a huge environmental impact.  Pixel Qi screens are the greenest screens ever made and will be critical to new generations of green electronics.”

Pixel Qi – Home.

I did all that instead of pursuing Internet startup opportunies that I am embarrass to name….arg.

I still think the concepts of ecase were many years ahead of its time, and only recently has the concepts and technology surpassed it…(yeah, I thinking of the iPhone’s cocoa OS).

ecase1998.pdf>

Here’s some clips from marketing promos we did back then with me giving a brief overview of the technology at the end:

Like me you may have realized that sometimes the only way to communicate effectively with a teenager, say a 13 year daughter,  is to “Sm-ess” with her.   Yeah I am learning not to mess with her,  she is becoming a tough cookie, but in this case I mean “texting”.

Even if she is in the next room, I find it is less inhibitive to discuss the deep issues, (like “what would you like for dinner?”) by “texting” rather than face-to-face.  No, I don’t dare take a chance of interrupting her listening to “Panic At The Disco” on her iPod while watching Hanna Montana, and risk her wrath upon me.

Anyway, short messaging is everywhere, smart phones make it easy,  I do it all the time on my Mac – it surplaces (surpasses and replaces)  IM & Chat and even email on many occasions.  From Twittering to Facebook status updates, it can be used to and from blogging sites etc.   Its not rude like calling someone, its immediate, yet not rude.  Only Luddites deny now that it is one of life’s necessities.

Wasn’t always that way, especially here in Silicon Valley over 10 years ago, where short messaging was seen as kind of a joke.   Except maybe in vertical industrial applications,  where an oil well in a desert needs to send a status messages to a central station.  But not too much glamour was seen during what was then, the first Internet bubble era.

Awe, but satellites, those are always cool.  So I got into it when I joined in on a project called Leo One.

Leo One was one of the many planned Low-Earth-orbiting satellite systems that almost, but never quite made it off the ground.   Because LEO’s are closed to the earth,  they act like radio towers in the sky.   Only problem is they move (unlike GEO’s which are far away but in stationary orbit).   So you have to have lots of satellites following each other, handing off transmissions to provide continuous coverage.  That’s okay, LEO’s are cheap (relatively) to put into orbit versus GEO’s.

LEO’s had started as satellite phone services, like Iridium and Globalstar.   Back in the early 90’s remember, terrestrial mobile phone systems were hardly ubiquitous, nor did they seamlessly work together across many boundaries….so this seemed like a killer product for almost all mobile professionals.

Besides phones, a wide range of applications were envisioned.  The most ambitious was the idea of putting broadband internet into the sky (does anyone remember Teledesic from a good old boy at Microsoft?)

Another idea was less ambitious, real time short messaging.  One that did make it off the ground was Orbcomm.  Leo One was to be a much more reliable, ubiquitous, and faster version of this.  A 48-satellite constellation providing 24-hour coverage with near real-time operation on a global basis.

So I was tasked with an exciting assignment, research the market requirements of  numerous industrial solutions applicable to Leo One, and define a set of common application interface requirements for service providers reselling the Leo One service.

I came up with a concept called Global SMS. Now think back and remember, in the year 2000  “text messaging” was hardly known here in the USA, much less “SMS”.  But it was big time in Europe.  Guess why?  Yeah, the kids…what we are going through now with the kids text this and that, well, Europe had been in this craze 10 years ago.

Also, vertical applications were already being developed there, like  telematics solutions for Mercedes Benz.   I saw the light.  Didn’t take a genius I thought, so obvious. Until I came home.

To keep a long story short, let me just say this: whats obvious now, wasn’t so then if you don’t see it.  So put your self in a time machine and pretend you have just came back from Europe 10 years ago and now are facing a bunch of brilliant american engineers who say SMS is just a fad, no viability, etc.

I thought different, in fact I thought the whole Leo One effort should have renamed themselves to “Global SMS”, thats how big I thought this was going to be.   Yes, SMS was a technical term, specific to GSM networks in Europe.  One that many here tough was not viable.  So here I am trying to promote a broader SMS technically, but also “Global SMS” as a marketing term.  I thought it was obvious, still is today (even without satellites).

Oh well, eventually years later, the US phone systems began to market “text messaging” and the companies began to understand the need to standardized it among themselves.  Now finally, we can SMS someone easily in Europe without much thought to it.   Also, finally “SMS”, as a marketing term is taking its place here, thank you iphone.

Why is SMS an important technical marketing term?  Because it goes so much farther beyond simply “text messaging” between humans.

Anyway, attached here are PDFs of one of my original papers

global-smsdoc1

and presentations I wrote at the time:

globalsms1

Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPod touch customers have downloaded some 300 million software apps since Apple started selling them in July. We estimate that Apple has booked $50 million to $100 million in revenue so from those sales.

So my comment is one way or the other its a growing number. Think of “Touch” as an evolving platform for many products now. Not just for iPods, or iPhones, but hand held gaming, netbooks, etc…its the iTunes model gone bonkers…it’s possible when all this recession smoke clears Apple will own the internet device world.