Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312160017
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD COPILEVITZ DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But for now, they've got some problems to work out. (Like reading handwriting accurately.)
From the comics to newsmagazines, television to computer bulletin boards, the high-tech buzz this fall has been about PDAs, such as Tandy's Zoomer and Apple's Message Pad, known widely as Newton.
But why?
"It represents a paradigm shift," Apple's Alphie Kilgus explains. "It will do things our computers never could."
"This is going to lead an entirely new group of people to technology," says Tandy's Joe Ratner. "People who have never used computers, or were scared of them, will use these."
"It's just so cool," Tim Haven tells anyone within earshot as he scribbles and taps furiously on a demonstration unit.
Everyone agrees PDAs are something special. They just can't agree why.
PDAs are tablet-size devices that you hold in the palm of your hand. There's no real keyboard. Instead, information is either written on the pressure-sensitive screen or tapped in on a miniature on-screen keyboard.
The first models have been on the market for a few months and sell for under $700.
All use some form of a notebook and calendar system to track information. Some, such as Tandy's Zoomer, come equipped with additional programs, such as Quicken (a personal finance manager). Others, such as Apple's Message Pad, learn to read your writing and clean up your drawings. Accessories for both types allow users to send faxes or print from their PDAs.
According to the high priests of technology, PDAs are just taking their first tiny steps on a long revolutionary road in the world of consumer electronics.
To hear the evangelicals talk about it, within five years people will reach for their PDAs just as they do their wallets before leaving home. PDAs will let us keep track of our time, our expenses, our lists, record our random thoughts, organize the mass of information we receive daily and open new vistas of personal power not yet imagined.
Travelers will find their way in strange cities by tapping on the little screens. Doctors will use them to instantly pull up a patient's records, record symptoms and fax a prescription to the pharmacy. They'll become an electronic mailbox that travels where we do. Students will get their notes beamed to them by teachers. And in conference rooms everywhere, legal pads will give way to the little black boxes.
Some day, that is.
Although PDAs are made by computer companies, are sold in computer stores and can even run computer programs, don't call them computers. They're a new breed of technology, much like VCRs were different from televisions.
And when it comes to the Apple PDA, it's not a Newton, it's a message pad. Newton is the brain inside the box, Kilgus explains. Newton is a program that will open new capabilities for message pads, computers, cellular telephones and anything else that people use to gather information, he says.
Apple coined the phrase "personal digital assistant" early in the development of Newton. Tandy executives, working on a similar project, tried other phrases, but PDA won out. For both companies, the emphasis is on assistant.
Throughout the day, we have to keep track of hundreds of pieces of information. We scribble notes on notebooks, backs of envelopes, napkins and the omnipresent Post-it note.
Every so often, one of those notes spurs us to action, such as making a meeting or firing off a letter. Other times, we gather all the notes and compile a master list, or enter some of the data into our computers or organizers.
PDAs offer one-stop note-taking that goes wherever you do. If the information is an appointment, the PDA will make an entry on the daily calendar. Notes go on a notepad ready to be printed, faxed, electronically mailed or "beamed" to other PDA users.
Beaming information from one PDA to another is as easy as using a remote control. Anything on one screen can be sent wirelessly to another nearby unit with a couple of taps of the stylus.
Initially, Apple touts the feature as a way to share thoughts or reactions among people across the boardroom table, or in an office. Business users would no longer have to exchange their cards, just aim and beam at each other.
Already, halfway serious jokes are being made about beaming rendering notes among school students obsolete, not to mention providing a new means for sharing test answers.
The Newton program differs from others by linking all the information a user enters. So when you write, "Meet Ron for lunch Tuesday" it can take that note and block out the noon hour next Tuesday and offer you a list of the Rons it has on file.
"The problem with computers has been that we have lots of data in different places, some in an address book, other in a database," Kilgus says. "Newton puts all your information in a digital soup. Then it can pull up whatever you need, regardless of what you're doing."
Much of the early hype has focused on how Newton learns to read handwriting. Using games and training session, the program begins to guess the word you're writing. If it's wrong, you can try again or pull up a list of similar words to select the right one.
In the drawing mode, Newton straightens lines, rounds curves and moves around text, so that just about anyone can sketch out an idea and make it presentable.
The Message Pad does not look, or act, like a traditional computer. To erase an entry you just scribble across it - poof, it goes up in a cloud of smoke. Used pages of the notebook are crumpled up and tossed in a trash can with a tap of the stylus.
"If our world was like a computer, then we'd move things by clicking and dragging (operating a computer `mouse'). The reality is people don't work that way," Kilgus says. "We want to take computing power into people's lives, not expect them to come to our world."
Tandy's Zoomer uses traditional computer approaches to tracking information. Users can write in the handwriting recognition mode, in which case the Zoomer tries to interpret the characters, or they can tap out words on a minikeyboard. Users can also scribble at will in the electronic ink mode, sort of a digital doodle approach.
But Tandy clearly doesn't put a lot of stock in handwriting recognition. Nor does it care for Apple's flourishes.
"The Zoomers are neat. Unfortunately, they're not as neat as Newton," Ratner says. "We don't have clouds of smoke or pop-up trash cans, because we didn't want to waste our time and resources on things that aren't functional."
High on the list of unworkable is handwriting recognition, he says. Tandy just doesn't see the technology progressing quickly enough that everyone will have a PDA capable of understanding all that they write.
Instead, the emphasis in Zoomer is on versatility and durability, Ratner says. Out of the box, it has more programs than the Message Pad. And, like the Message Pad, users can add programs or storage capability with flash cards, a credit card-sized successor to the floppy disk.
By sticking, at least at first, to traditional programs, such as Quicken and America Online, Tandy hopes to ease the transition from computers to PDAs. But in time, as new programs hit the market, users will find varying reasons for getting on board.
"Ultimately, everyone will be one and everyone will use them a little differently," Ratner projects.
by CNB