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The Pocket Goddess Goes to Redmond
September 10, 2001
I’ve just returned from a special Microsoft Mobility Group conference entitled Mobius 2001. Approximately 50 people were invited, including such luminaries as Craig Froehle of MemoWare, Joel Evans of Geek.com, Jeff Kirvin of Writing on Your Palm, Jim McCarthy (the PalmGuru), as well as lots of those “PocketPC people.”
Let me be perfectly clear from the beginning: as with the PocketPC Wireless & Beyond conference last year (which I did not attend), the purpose was NOT to try and talk people into switching over to the PocketPC platform. The focus was much larger- mobile technology, including handhelds and wireless, with a lot of interaction and discussion on where we’re headed in the future. We were treated not only to a look at the new PocketPC 2002 software and a demo of the upcoming smart phone, we also got the chance to
- hear a keynote speech from the head of the MS Mobility Group, Juha Christensen, formerly of Symbian;
- demo some jaw-droppingly amazing new speech recognition technology that really works;
- learn about innovative web text-to-voice applications that bring the internet experience to any standard telephone (not necessarily wireless);
- discuss new business models created by the explosion of SMS in other parts of the world, most notably Europe;
- learn about tools that make it possible to develop one web site that is automatically optimized according to the client viewing the content, be it a mobile phone, a handheld device, or a desktop PC;
- get some insight into the history of networking and the Internet, as well as see how history is being made today with such concepts as Napster and the SETI project, which are changing how we think about networks;
- visit the Microsoft Museum (the entire concept of which amuses me greatly!);
- and play games on the new XBox before it is available to the public (WOOHOO!!! Yes, the Pocket Goddess is also a gamer at heart).
In fact, the PocketPC was a relatively small part of the entire weekend, though we did get to see PocketPC 2002 a month before its launch. From what I saw this weekend, it is obvious that Microsoft is actively soliciting feedback about its PocketPC product and improving it in many ways. I haven’t investigated all of new features and problem fixes fully yet, but I like what I see in that attitude. While I haven’t been one of them, a lot of people on the mailing lists I am a part of have been complaining about the same shortcomings in the Palm OS for almost three years now— the 15 category limit in the Address Book, the 4K limit on Memo Pad items, and the ability to have only one address per contact, which forces the user to choose between the work and home address and put the other one in the note field, among other examples. I am however concerned by the fact that I don’t use a single one of the built-in applications anymore, as they simply don’t meet my needs. And why hasn’t Palm done anything to address any of these complaints and shortcomings, some of which are quite old? If I had so many problems with another company’s product (be it a new car, a stereo, or a contractor remodeling my home), I certainly wouldn’t still be waiting after that much time— I would have taken my business elsewhere. It seems that the situation here has been reversed, with Microsoft, the one that was playing catch-up to the Palm juggernaut, suddenly becoming the one to watch and to innovate at a much faster rate than Palm.
We’ve often said in the Palm OS community that competition is a good thing, but we seem to apply it only to the few companies playing in our own backyard, such as Palm, Handspring, Sony, and HandEra, without realizing that the market is much, much bigger than that. I have not been converted by the “evil empire” or lured away by the “dark side”— I realize now that way of thinking is simply wrong. If you’re a Stephen Covey Seven Habits fan, you’ll see the scarcity mentality at work here— but this isn’t a zero-sum game. My Palm m505 is still my primary handheld, and will be for the forseeable future. But Microsoft is trying to create a great mobile experience, one that is as close to what you can get on a desktop PC as is possible. And I’m interested in seeing where that leads in the future.
For that reason, I will be writing a series of feature articles that detail my personal experiences with the PocketPC. I took one for a spin last year and simply found it impossible to use, for a variety of reasons. Now that a new version is out that promises a better user experience, I’m willing to try it out again. I hope that you’ll join me on this new adventure.
