The Palm Foleo Disaster: Part Two

September 12, 2007

In Part One I reviewed the disastrous introduction and abysmal marketing of the Foleo. In this part, I think it will be instructive to delve into the history that’s been shared by Hawkins, Dubinsky, and Colligan for three reasons:

1) It’s affected Palm for the worse

2) They previously experienced what happened with the Foleo

3) They should have known better

pilotpalmcover.jpg

On pages 272-273 of Piloting Palm:The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring, and the Birth of the Billion-Dollar Handheld Industry by Andrea Butter and David Pogue, we find this about the beginning days of Handspring:

Yet Colligan and Dubinsky held off on revealing the company’s [Handspring’s] new [and first] product until it was ready; they had no interest in hurting Palm’s sales. Furthermore, “we had this mantra of ‘Underpromise, overdeliver,'” Dubinsky says. “We really didn’t want to come out as our first introduction to the public with vaporware.” When, in June, a Wall Street Journal journalist pressed especially hard for details of the product Handspring was working on, Dubinsky replied, point-blank: “Look . . . this is a market where there’s been lots of hype, where people are announcing things and not delivering. We want to deliver a real product, not hype.”

Emphasis added by me.

Given that Ben Combee, a programmer and insider to the Foleo project, stated that “[w]e weren’t ready to go to market with this,” why then did Palm permit the Foleo’s premature introduction?

It’s been rumored that Palm learned “other companies” were going to announce “similar devices.”

So what?

As far as I can see, the only other product that’s been compared to the Foleo is the Asus Eee PC. It’s no Foleo. And although it’s very competitive at face value on both price and features, no one has had much hands-on time with it. In fact, there’s still wild speculation about its final hardware. Plus, the highly-publicized $199 price has disappeared and the lowest-cost model to be sold in the U.S. is $259. It could very well have a short durability lifespan and be the world’s first disposable computer.

It can’t be that Microsoft has found a sucker new licensee willing to put Windows Mobile in a Foleo-like form factor. That was tried years ago by several prominent manufacturers — Hitachi, NEC, LG, and HP among them — and it failed. It would fail again today. The more-capable viral-marketed UMPCs haven’t yet replaced many notebooks.

Even if Nokia were to go irrevocably insane and come out with a Foleo-like device running Maemo, it’d flop too. No one looks to Nokia for anything other than phones. It has no clout in other market segments and hardly any presence in America.

Intel announced with a huge fanfare its Mobile Internet Device (MID) initiative and displayed several different prototypes. But there hasn’t been a single manufacturer who has committed to building and selling them. No one knows what such a product would be priced at, either.

Currently, the only Linux device that’s been on the market has been the Pepper Pad 3. And judging from the near-invisible owner presence it has on the Net, it can’t be taken seriously as any threat to Palm. (Besides which, it looks like the two stores that were carrying it in New York City — J&R and DataVision — have both stopped.)

(If Nokia and the Pepper Pad 3 have done anything, it’s the degradation of mass-market Linux. Anyone contemplating a Nokia device will find this on the Net. As for the Pepper Pad 3, some reading of owner comments are enough to dissuade potential purchasers.)

It will probably remain a mystery what prompted Palm to pull the trigger on the Foleo. If it was the need to meet the Mossberg conference deadline, Jeff Hawkins could have simply gone to it with the Foleo and framed it as a technology demonstration preview. After that, Palm could have shut up about it and let the Net bubble over in anticipatory speculation about what flavor of Linux it was using, how much storage, etc, etc. Palm could have also solicited features potential customers wanted through polls on its website and blog (their blog would have finally had a useful role!)

The above strategy worked well for Steve Jobs and the iPhone in January!

The next part of the history Hawkins, Dubinsky, and Coligan shared has to do with the first PDA ever created and marketed: the Casio/Tandy Zoomer, which Hawkins helped to create.

zoomer3a.jpg

What they learned from Zoomer owners has carried over to Palm and overshadowed the way it develops devices. On pages 56-57 of Piloting Palm:

Dubinsky had grasped early on that, as a company that wrote software for other companies’ products, it was crucial for Palm to have a good mailing list of those products’ customers [the initial Palm company created software, not hardware]. She had therefore insisted in the contract negotiations not only that she’d have the right to use the list of Zoomer’s registered users, but even that Palm was to receive the Zoomer’s registration cards directly as they were returned by Zoomer buyers. This issue had been a contentious contract term with Casio to the very end.

Now, however, a package of registration cards arrived at Palm each week, revealing a startling fact to the Palm executives: Most Zoomer owners declared that they owned a PC.

When Palm began advertising PalmConnect directly to them, orders for PalmConnect began pouring in. Nearly half of the Zoomer owners bought the PC connection package. [PalmConnect was a program to transfer data between a Zoomer and a desktop computer.]

Jeff Hawkins, and with him the rest of Palm, was learning firsthand a crucial lesson: People didn’t necessarily want to own a second computer. They want an accessory to their PCs, some means of carrying around the data that were also on their hard drives. All the PC functions that Palm and GeoWorks had painstakingly built into the Zoomer did nothing but clutter the screen with options that the customer didn’t need.

Emphasis added by me.

That was the seed of thinking that was to retard the growth of Palm’s devices for many years.

On page 61 of Piloting Palm there is more to the story:

Ed Colligan commissioned in-depth surveys of Zoomer buyers and, with the other Palm executives, pored over the data. The good news: Only 10 percent of customers had returned their Zoomers, a surprisingly low number for an expensive gadget. Nearly 75 percent were satisfied with their purchase, which boded well for a much-improved Zoomer II.

In his original product concept, Jeff had assumed that adding many small applications (e.g., the language translator, games, a dictionary, America Online, etc) would enhance the customer’s enjoyment of the machine. Even as they labored over these features, the engineers had known that nobody would use them all — “but everybody will find three or four things they love,” they had said. However, Ed’s survey showed that, in fact, Zoomer owners almost never touched those other programs. Instead, they used the $700 computer almost exclusively as an organizer: the date book, address book, and memo pad. Buyers couldn’t have cared less about the other nifty features that Palm had painstakingly built.

Another finding: Almost no one printed from the Zoomer. So much for the premise that a handheld should be, at its core, a scaled-down PC.

Emphasis added by me.

These user surveys defined the scope of what would eventually become the first Palm PDA. And afterward it was this framework that would work against Palm as Microsoft continued to hone Pocket PC and begin to chip away at Palm sales.

I contend that this long-obsolete view of the handheld/portable-device market — from a sample of Zoomer owners that simply cannot in any way be deemed scientifically valid — also fed into the design of the Foleo. Hence, no built-in ability to print from a Foleo. No video. And an overall perception of Lack.

Until Hawkins, Dubinsky, and Colligan discard this history, Palm devices will never have the basic and sweeping imagination needed to compete against ones that weren’t developed under such a constraining and antique vision.

Palm could have never developed the iPhone. Because it didn’t fit into what they were taught so long ago. Zoomer owners wound up creating a sort of design religion that’s hardened into a crust of fundamentalism at Palm. It explains why Palm has been so hard of hearing towards its users: we are like infidels and they are like Muslim clerics! Only they know the Truth.

On pages 54-55 of Piloting Palm we encounter a lesson Jeff Hawkins learned but apparently never passed on to Ed Colligan:

Only Jeff Hawkins saw the flaws of the product he’d helped design. A few weeks after CES, at a talk at a swank computer industry conference, he demonstrated the Zoomer onstage. After his presentation, the moderator turned to the audience and asked, “Would you buy a Zoomer for yourself?” Three-quarters of the audience raised their hands.

“I sat there thinking, ‘This is going to be a huge hit!'” Hawkins remembers. “On the other hand, when I personally used the product, I felt it was usuable, but a lot lacking. I learned a lesson from that. You can’t be swayed by public opinion about a product that people haven’t had a chance to use.”

Emphasis added by me.

But when it came to the Foleo, Palm was!

Even worse, Palm has now created a barrier in people’s minds that will be very hard to overcome. Again, it’s something the three have been through before. On page 55 of Piloting Palm:

The Zoomer arrived in stores in early October. Early adopters snapped up 20,000 units during the first two months. Then sales slowed to a trickle. The Palm executives believed that Apple had poisoned the market. In the aftermath of the Newton fiasco, how could anyone — in the press or in the computer store — keep an open mind about the Zoomer?

Let me revise that for today:

The Palm executives believed that the Foleo had poisoned the market. In the aftermath of the Foleo fiasco, how could anyone — in the press or in the computer store — keep an open mind about the Foleo 2?

Ed Colligan stated he was canceling the Foleo. He chose the wrong word. He should have used postponing. It’s the difference between saying something will never come back and saying something still needs work. What’s the tagline Palm will use if they do produce a Foleo 2?

Back From the Grave and Better than Before!

You Thought It Was Dead. Not Yet!

We Never Killed It. We Just Hurt It A Little Bit.

Don’t Worry! It’s Been Fixed!

The general public, which is not known for careful reading or listening, got the message that Palm introduced something that turned out to be so bad they had to pull it back before it ever reached store shelves. All the news headlines they glimpsed — a form of viral marketing in itself! — said CANCEL, not delay or postpone. Beyond that message, people don’t care.

When Foleo 2 arrives in stores, people will wonder why they have a visceral reaction of dread towards it. No one likes to think they’re buying a lemon. Or a zombie. (“Maybe they brought it back just to try to get some money out of their losses?.” “If they killed it once, maybe they’ll kill it again?” “If they didn’t think people would buy it the first time, will anyone buy it now?”)

What makes it all even worse: Palm has given Apple a glimpse of how future computing could be.

Apple has succeeded in creating a version of OS X for portable devices. It’s in the iPhone and iPod Touch (probably in all recent iPods too). To think that version of OS X will stop there is foolish.

I can easily see Apple developing a Foleo-like device that would trump Palm’s creation. Apple has its own sync program: iSync.

isync.jpg

Apple could expand it into a sync-anything program that would transfer many kinds of files between an iPhone, a desktop Mac, and a Foleo-like Flash RAM-based “satellite Mac.”

Where the Foleo concentrates on email sync, a “satellite Mac” would not be so choosy. Apple’s iSync could be a sync slut, permitting anything — text, spreadsheet, photo, audio, maybe even short video — to move seamlessly between Bluetooth and WiFi-capable Apple devices.

Plus, just as it did with the Safari browser, Apple could develop and release — for free! — a PC version of iSync.

Also, unlike Palm, Apple owns a suite of productivity programs: iWork. That code can morph into a ready-made light productivity suite for a “Mac Foleo.”

iwork.jpg

And if Apple were to develop such a “Mac Foleo,” you can bet Steve Jobs won’t stumble in selling everyone on his vision for mobile computing. If he were to give a technology demonstration of such a device — an iBook 2? — at January MacWorld Expo and then, iPhone-like, tell people it wouldn’t arrive for another six months, he’d freeze the market for portable computing and, without spending a single marketing cent, exterminate Palm’s Foleo 2.

Palm’s squandering of its market lead and its alienation of power users through the years could come to this. The full magnitude of the Foleo disaster has yet to be discerned.

Let me close this part of the series with the words of Ed Colligan, from page 54 of Piloting Palm:

Palm watched the unfolding Newton drama intently. Apple’s mistake was right out of the marketing textbook. As Colligan summed it up to his colleagues, “They over-promised and under-delivered.”

foleo-top.jpg
Over-promised and under-delivered. Thanks, Ed! Love from Steve Jobs.

In Part Three, I will examine the Foleo specs in light of the real world (that is, outside Palm’s Zoomer-created dogma) and reveal a better marketer of the Foleo than Palm.

In the final part of this series, Part Four, I will outline how the Foleo could have been saved before Ed Colligan hit the Cancel button on it and the possibilities for bringing it back from its premature grave.

Click here for Part One of this series.

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Did you just read this post? Now click here.

Previously in this blog:
Quote Of The Day: Flashback To iPod Introduction
Blog Notes: Brain Fever
You Still Make Me Want To Bleed To Death
Foleo: The Beat Goes On…
Asus Eee: Increasing RAM Possible
The Palm Foleo Disaster: Part One
What Was Your ROS*, Palm?
Blog Notes: Yes, I’m Working On It!
Dumbass Of The Year: Ed Colligan
I’m So Bad, I’m Good
If We Can’t Have Momentum On This, Can I At Least Get An Amen, Brother?
Newsflash! Pictures Of Corpses Left In Wake Of iPhone Price Cut!
Palm Kills Foleo
OK, Now The Foleo Scares Me
Ugh. Backlogged. Still.
Poor Ed Colligan. Ascared Of Me.
Engadget Snags The Attention Of Autistic Palm, Inc.
iPhonespotting
Oh Look! I Get To Bash Palm And Nokia At The Same Time! It’s Two Two Two Hits In One!
Palm Flogs Blog, Flails, Fails
iPhone Vs. Palm Treo: You Can’t Fight A Corpse
Microsoft, Palm, And Nokia: You Better Be Freaking Out!!
Failure Has A New Name
Treo-Skimming. A Post-iPhone Craze?
Record Blog Traffic: Apple iPhone Vs. Palm Foleo
Earth To Palm: Change The Foleo’s Browser To Safari
What Foleo 2.0 Needs
If FSJ Says It, Then It Is So!
Oh My God! What Did We Buy?!!?
Prediction: Palm To Drop All Handhelds
LifeDrive Notes: Should Palm’s Software Engineers Be Beaten With A Spiked Bat Or Tied Up Together And Dumped In The Ocean From 30,000 Feet?
Palm’s Flopeo, Uh, Foleo: Best Other Name For It
A Picture Of Two Tech Devices That Should Have Never Been Released
My Reaction To Palm’s New Foleo Device
On A Day When Palm Gets Everything Wrong, Apple Gets It Right


LifeDrive Notes: My Innate Fekkin Idiocy

September 6, 2007

So, I see that many of you are clicking through to investigate the Chinese Bluetooth keyboard I have (let me be clear: I call it the Chinese Bluetooth keyboard not because it types in Chinese — but because I had to frikkin order it from there, via ebay!).

Well, I clicked through myself to see what you were all looking at, and my eyes fell on something I had never even considered: that the keyboard was compatible with PalmOS 5!

I bought to work with the Nokia 770. And then just put it away for some later time, never thinking to even try it with the LifeDrive since it didn’t come with any driver.

Anyway, I just tried to make it work with the LifeDrive.

Hit a speedbump.

The Bluetooth on the LifeDrive asks for the Passcode of the keyboard to make it a Trusted Device.

The keyboard came with no documentation.

I’ve tried:

1) Putting a passkey on the LifeDrive prompt

2a) Typing the same on the keyboard

2b) Typing the same on the keyboard while holding the button underneath the unit (that turns on the radio)

No joy.

I just sent an email to the manufacturer.

Oddly, the support section offers a driver that is for their previous wired keyboard. I don’t see how that would work with this unwired one. Maybe I am missing something. But this driver seems very old and I don’t want to have to wipe my LifeDrive as an accidental consequence of trying it.

I tell you, if I can get this baby to work, it would give me hours more writing time each day. I wouldn’t mind the weight and the bulk compared to the Palm Universal Folding Keyboard because I can really type like hell on this Bluetooth baby. It’s joy to my fingers.

Stay tuned.


Today’s Episode Of The Steve Jobs Show, Plus More

September 5, 2007

Well, he went thermonuclear today. With that $200 price drop on the iPhone, he clear-cut the jungle of phones and made himself a new home. See previous post.

I was hoping for an iPhone/iPod SDK announcement, but I guess this will come with the big Leopard intro next month. I sincerely hope that such an SDK announcement will happen — and along with it, the ability to pair a Bluetooth iPhone with a Bluetooth keyboard (again: mine!). Well, such an ability would probably have to happen via that rumored Death Star Upgrade of the iPhone’s guts. Again, something I hope will be announced next month.

Uh, everyone out there did notice that the new iPod Touch models lack Bluetooth, right? So if you want something that is capable of keyboard work in the future, the iPhone is the only thing to buy. Let’s not forget too: the iPhone has a built-in camera. Future Mobile Blogging Machine!

While I have your attention, I want to dispel two myths about the iPhone from witnessing an everyday person using it last week.

This was a woman who wasn’t any sort of techie. She had an iPhone at last week’s South Street Seaport free concert. I was standing on this pillar and she was sitting in front of me. Basically, I was able to get a good view of her using it, peering over her shoulder.

First, I could not make out what she was typing even though as they’re hit, the on-screen keyboard enlarges each letter. So much for privacy concerns. I think someone would really have to be right next to you in order to effectively spy.

Second, she was fast on that on-screen keyboard — and she was doing it all while holding it in her right hand, bopping on those virtual keys using her thumb! She was doing SMS with it. And she was doing it with more than one person. She would keep popping out of one balloon-filled SMS session to Contacts to open another person’s session and type something in. I was impressed. She made an occasional typo, but she didn’t seem at all frustrated by it. Interestingly, I never saw her choose any of the suggested words from automatic word completion. She was merrily moving that thumb along quickly. So much for all the objections about the lack of a Treo-like hard keyboard!

I fondled an iPhone again last night, before typing this post. I was very interested to see how the iPhone would handle this blog now that I’ve gone from 320-wide photos to 440-wide. I was also interested to see how it would handle the pages here that have a ton of pictures on them.

Well, Safari crashed several times. Just went Poof! Back to that Home screen with no warning.

Now, the Nokia 770 did that a lot on me. The main difference is, with the 770, one of two things would happen: the unit would totally freeze, requiring me to hard reset it, or it would spontaneously hard reset on its own. Restarting the 770 took well over a minute. You cannot imagine the frustration and aggravation of that unless you’ve been through it the several hundred times I’ve been through it.

So what happened with the iPhone and Safari crashing?

I’d immediately get that Home screen. I’d hit the Safari button — and within two seconds Safari would be up reloading the very page it had crashed on. Did I feel the same frustration and anger I felt with the 770? Not at all! In fact, once the page it had crashed on was reloaded, it didn’t crash on that same page again. The 770 usually did!

Another thing: the iPhone has a 320×480 screen. So does my LifeDrive. But absolutely nothing on my LifeDrive looks as sharp and crisp and as vibrant as on that iPhone screen. (As for WiFi on the LifeDrive, forget that! I tried it again last night and it crashed and rebooted on a WAP-formatted page! How pathetic is that?! Also, the LifeDrive takes about three minutes to reboot. Worse than that 770.)

Anyway, it’s clear today that Apple and Steve Jobs intend to keep their foothold on top of the media and smartphone mountain. I don’t see how any company can compete with them. All the rest had years and years and years — and churned out the same crap year after year. Even if they stole outright from Apple, violated all their patents, they would still miss a key ingredient: The iTunes Store.

Now, Steve Jobs, I hope you’re working on adding ebooks!

Previously in this blog:
Newsflash! Pictures Of Corpses Left In Wake Of iPhone Price Cut!
Tomorrow’s iPod: The Beginning Of Bliss?
A Post-iTunes Fable For NBC
Nokia’s Upcoming Fake iPhone
Should Apple Turn iTunes Into A Platform?
iPod Price History: Will Apple Fight Or Lose?
Quote Of The Day: Nokia’s Innate Ineptness
iPod Touch Coming Next Week?
SanDisk Announces The Sansa Clip
jWin MP3 Player Needs Replacement
Another Argument For eBooks On The iPhone
Apple Wins The Internet Video Wars
Reference: Installing Native Apps On An iPhone
iPhone: AT&T Bill Delivered In A BOX!
iPhonespotting
eBooks On iPhone: HarperCollins Kicks In
China’s Ferocious iPhone Clones
Safari For Windows: Still Sick!
iPhone More Popular Than Zune And Harry Potter
eBooks On iPhone: Well, There Are Magazines At Least!
The eBooks On iPhone Campaign: Steve Jobs Loves Books! Hey, Steve, So Do We!!
eBooks On iPhone: The Clamor Continues!
eBookery For iPhone?
eBooks on iPhone: Another Person Who Won’t Wait For Apple
eBooks On iPhone: Not Waiting For Apple!
iPhone: First eBook On It?
iPhone Death Star Upgrade Coming
Mucho Namaste To FSJ!
Will Apple Steal The eBook Limelight From Sony And Create Another Mass Market?


Microsoft, Palm, And Nokia: You Better Be Freaking Out!!

July 4, 2007

I’m still basking in the afterglow of today’s earlier extended iPhone Web Fondle.

Look at Microsoft with all of its alleged brains and, especially, money. Steve Jobs was quoted in the first PBS Nerds series as saying, “Microsoft just doesn’t have any taste.” The iPhone only emphasizes that.

And then there’s Palm, which has been living on the corpse of old ideas. That Treo has not simply gotten long in the tooth, it has died and has been rotting! Palm has been a maggot on its corpse. Palm, which started out wanting to revolutionize pocket computing, lost its direction, lost its will, lost its imagination, and now will ultimately lose its life as an independent company.

As for Nokia… Nokia! This has to be the greatest embarrassment of the three. They started out with a completely blank slate, tabula rasa, to design the next generation of web device. The result was that absolute garbage called the Nokia 770. It’s sequel, the N800, is no better. Both reveal the deranged thinking that is the bedrock of Nokia. What do they produce when given all possible choices? The same damned desktop-like UI that’s been around for ages and ages and ages! Including the horror of pull-down menus! This on a pocketable device! It’s become evident to me that Nokia has gained its global dominance not because its products were so good — but because its competitors’ products were just so damned bad! In the face of the iPhone, the creative bankruptcy of Nokia has been displayed for everyone to witness.

I’ve been reading a lot about the iPhone online. Many posts are it’s blah-blah-blah missing this blah-blah-blah missing that. Oh stop it already! Start concentrating on what its competitors are missing and the lists would go on forever.

The iPhone has started out fantastic and it will only get better from there. Its competitors are now revealed as worthless crap — and there is no way they will ever be able to match the seamless, smooth experience of the iPhone. (The HTC Touch and its TouchFlo interface? It’ll be sued out of existence for patent infringement. Beside that, it’s nothing but a shoddy makeup job on the underlying hideous face of Windows Mobile.)

I have to wonder about everyone who’s been compiling these lists of features missing from the iPhone. Do they really think Apple doesn’t already know these things? It’s clear what Apple has done: they’ve gotten the iPhone in basic framework form, without apparent major bugs. Adding everything that’s missing in its first iteration would have increased the probability of bugs and delayed its release. They now have the time to work on everything that’s missing — and I’m sure they have been for months. They can wring out the bugs, test the improvements, and then release an update that will leave all competitors even further behind.

Those of you who say you don’t want an iPhone right now — trust me, you will!


I Don’t Think You Understand Just How Incredible The iPhone Really Is!

July 4, 2007

I’m typing this at the Apple Store on a MacBook.

I just did an extended Web Fondle of the iPhone. I went and visited everything listed in my Blogroll.

It was quite breathtaking!

The Girls Don’t Cry site was down(*) and their MySpace page seemed to be burping too, so I couldn’t get to those. (I’m experiencing the same thing right now while trying on this MacBook.)

Everything else I could get to — and that included twittervision! Yes, it actually works! Now, it’s not perfect — the screen scrolls too slowly to catch all the tweets. I know that even on my desktop the scroll is slow too. But that it worked at all just floored me!

I was also able to go to the WOR Joey Reynolds Show page and listen to a podcast from it! (The one in question was with Gabe Kaplan as guest.)

I also went to The Signal and could listen to their podcast too.

In neither case could the podcast be saved to the iPhone, however. An upgrade that I’m sure will be forthcoming.

I was also able to see a video at Mark Bilingham’s site. It was a QuickTime-encoded ad for his new book.

I didn’t try to log into this blog to post, however. That will come later.

But I was able to post a Comment on David Bamford’s blog.

I also posted a Comment on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. But for some bizarre unknown reason, the Blogger software would not recognize punctuation from Safari!

The rendering speed of Safari just blew me away. Honestly, none of you have any idea just how incredible this baby is. Go out and buy a Nokia 770 and use it to access the web. Then you’ll see!

At one point, Safari did crash on me. It just disappeared and I was back at the Home screen. But I tapped the Safari button to relaunch it and bam! I was back at the page that choked it. And that second time it didn’t crash at all!

Safari loaded with aplomb a page that choked the hell out of Blazer on my LifeDrive.

My overall experience of using Safari on the iPhone was, Goddammit, this is how everything should work. It was just so smooth, so flowing, so relaxed. No other device I’ve used can compare to the experience, to the feel of it.

On today, July 4th, I think the “i” in iPhone stands for “independence” — from all the prior sluggish, clumsy crap that came before it!

Update: * The Girls Don’t Cry site wound up changing the entry URL, so mine was outdated. The site was up, but I didn’t think to trim the URL back to just the domain name. (Which I now have to do in previous posts about the Girls herein!)


Some iPhone Links

July 2, 2007

JOEHEWITT.COM
iPhone Tips: Look Ma, no toolbar!
Firebug for iPhone
iPhone JavaScript Experiments: Day One

There’s a bug in iPhone’s calculator

iPhone: Poor Compatibility with Web Apps
Aw, shit! So much for my dreams…

For instance, in the Web 2.0-based office suite iZoHo, you can’t actually enter or edit any text, as the iPhone doesn’t trigger its virtual keyboard when users click in a WYSIWYG Editor control. We ran into the same problem with Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet, though those sites aren’t designed for the iPhone. The new, flashier AJAX-based Yahoo! Mail interface also doesn’t work, though the old-school Yahoo! Mail page does.

And this might account for the PC version of Safari stealing blank lines (although it doesn’t do it in the Mac version!):

The Web 2.0-based IM client Meebo.com runs into another problem: the iPhone seems to send a different “return” key code than desktop browsers. The result: while Meebo.com loads, you can’t send any IMs.

Your cunning plan seems to have a flaw… — embedded YouTube video

A lady brings $16,000 to an AT&T store, buys a kid’s spot in line for $800 and then tries to buy the entire stock of iPhones in the store. Hilarity ensues.

— I think he might be the only actual person who was paid cash to be on line — and he got it by coincidence. I think the hype of people being paid to stand on line was just that: hype. I’m still in awe of how fast the Apple Store Soho processed those 1,000 people on line. Wow.

Kudit
The missing iPhone applications

iPhone Application List

iStyles
Fugly stickers to deface the iPhone. Paris Hilton would use this shit.

Will the iPhone Affect the Mobile Web? How?

iPhone Javascript and spec benchmark

Butterfingers: Apple iPhone Spills and Thrills

Why iPhone May Really Matter
— it’ll matter a hell of a lot more than Nokia’s Anti-Internet Tablets have or ever will!

After a Weekend with the iPhone: Web-Based Programs that Work Well

Watch out new iPhone users – anyone can listen to your voicemail

Library in Your Pocket — Flickr

iPhone – Part I

iPhone Javascript and spec benchmark

A few iPhone Safari notes

Bandwidth testing on an iPhone

So after my post about javascript and safari I received a bunch of Q and A about the Edge network. Right now at home I have FiOS (20MB down and 5 MB Up) fiber service which is amazing! Anyway, it took me a bit to find a NON FLASH bandwidth test, normally I used Speedtest.net. I found bandwidthplace to be able to run a test. With full coverage I got 120.1 kilobits per second with a 14.7 kilobits per second for storage. I was able to download 1MB file in 1.2 minutes. This speed is broadband and pretty solid. I also wanted to note that I jumped on my wifi and did see a 3MB connection, so if you have wifi, JUMP ON IT!

As for people complaining, I used to have a MDA from TMobile and it took for a while just to load IE and Google something. The iPhone passes a lot of the “problems” with mobile browsing but making it more efficent. I can have multiple webpages open at once, I have quick access to Google and keys like .com (although I suggest other keys like .html and www.). The Google Maps is built in so I do not even need to open safari, and I can also save locations which is great for quick browsing.

Video of iPhone Benchmark — embedded YouTube video
— well, it’s slow. It looks like in some cases it’s like the Nokia 770 with WiFi! However, this is EDGE, so I could get the Net everywhere.

Ready, Set, Launch!
Introducing LaunchPad for the iPhone.

iPhone Tips: Tap and Hold


Why Does The Truth Always Come Out Too Damned Late?!!?

February 26, 2007

Verdict Out on Apple’s Cell Phone, But It’s Uphill for Nokia’s Computer

The N800 is an overhauled version of the 770 I reviewed last year. That model, priced at $360, was so underpowered as to be almost useless. […]

Emphasis added by me.

Then:

But, like the 770, the new N800 is a good example of how hard it is for a company that grew up in one business to migrate successfully to another. I can’t imagine many people carrying around this device. […]

And:

More importantly, the N800’s software seems unpolished and unfinished. […]

And:

Nokia is hoping that open-source developers will help polish the N800’s software and add functions. This is an idealistic goal, and has won the hearts of some techies. But mainstream consumers expect complete functions on the device, out of the box. Third-party software is a great thing, but it isn’t a substitute for strong software from the manufacturer.

Damn right!

And finally:

We won’t know until June whether Apple has been able to successfully invade Nokia’s turf and make a decent cell phone. But so far, Nokia is struggling to go the other way.

Apple is gonna kick Nokia’s smug and incompetent asses. Welcome to the tar pit, baby! Join the rest of the fossils, Nokia! Your death spiral began January 2007. Good riddance!


A Variety Of Writings About The iPhone

February 12, 2007

More Questions than Answers

What does the iPhone mean for AdMob?

The iPhone does, however, beg the question: What does this mean for AdMob and mobile advertising in general? It can’t be good, right? The argument goes like this: The iPhone has a full featured web browser. If people are experiencing the full featured web, they’ll be experiencing full featured web ads. Therefore specialized mobile ad networks will no longer be relevant. Even if Apple only achieves their stated goal of 1% market share, other handset manufacturers will quickly begin to include similar functionality on their devices and soon enough the need for mobile ad networks will disappear.

Finally, the iPhone

The internet functionality looks pretty slick, as do the widgets. But my concern in this area is how open the device will be to third-party development. That struck me as odd, since Apple and Jobs usually go to great pains to play up to developers. Pretty much all he said along these lines was that the iPhone runs OSX — what what’s that mean, particularly for external applications? I’m also concerned that the iPhone won’t fit in to the existing ecosystem, and will be essentially closed off to mobile developers.

Can Apple revolutionize the mobile industry? Part I

Both the carriers and OEMs are trying to figure out how to create a device that generates the level of allegiance, enthusiasm and evangelism that Apple seems to create with every product release. When was the last time someone loved their phone so much that they insisted you hold it, try it, then get one for yourself?

Can Apple revolutionize the mobile industry? Part II

Apple has the hardware, software and content down to a science. They have a proven track record for combining great hardware and software engineering, plus the critical user insight needed to get it right.

The Apple iPhone: a revolution for mobile user experience? Part I of III

At the end of his keynote this morning, Steve Jobs summed up Apple’s mobile strategy saying, “There’s an old Wayne Gretsky quote I love — ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it’s been.’” Which felt apropos given the product they had just announced. But, is the Apple iPhone announcement truly a “revolution of the first order?”

The Apple iPhone: a revolution for mobile user experience? Part II of III

There are a few elements of the announcement that fell short in my mind. First, I was surprised that Steve did not mention third party development, especially while referencing OS X’s power to create a world-class application environment, and showing off Widgets. With over 2,500 Dashboard Widgets available on the OS X desktop, that’s a lot of eager developers to leave out in the cold.

The Apple iPhone: Music phone or smartphone? Part III

Apple’s foray into mobile reminds me of Apple’s iPod launch. In 2001 they were not the first music player on the scene by any means. But when they released it they blew away the competition — the click wheel, the price point for massive 4GB storage compared to the 48MB competitors reset the pricing across the category and they nailed PC syncing.

The Business of the iPhone

Whether the iPhone is revolutionary, expected or somewhere in between, the discussion has focused primarily on the device’s features and interface. Much less has been said about the implications of Apple’s iPhone business strategy. Since the iPhone was announced on January 9, my thoughts have turned to the decisions that Apple has had to make in order to enter the wireless market and what may come in the wake of the iPhone’s June 2007 launch.

Music phones finally overtake iPods?

iPods sold at a brisk pace over the 2006 holiday season, which would seem to end the recent iPod sales slump. However, Tomi Ahonen aims to blow away any speculation that the iPod is still holding on to the music player throne. The barrage of evidence from Asian, European and UK studies he presents is pretty compelling. In a nutshell, he says that while iPod sales grew 45% that music phone growth has boomed to 243%, which means that though iPod sales are growing, the iPod market share has been long overtaken by music phones and is shrinking by comparison. (SonyEricsson alone shipped 60 million musicphones compared to Apple’s 46 million iPods).

iPod iPhone iGetSuedForTrademarkInfringement

They’d better make it splashproof and wipe-clean else there will be some disappointed fanboys in July after their initial surge of excitement when their preorder pops through the door. The case looks fairly sexy (before the fingerprints arrive). The UI looks very sexy.

And:

Just hope it’s not Nokia 770 underpowered.

God Almighty, me too!!


Sony Reader: Part 3 (of 4)

October 25, 2006

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2

My Personal Enthusiasm

The main problem I have always had with ebooks is having to “turn on” a book and to use electricity to read it.

I don’t have to do either with a real book. I don’t have, in the back of my head, the sound of an electrical meter ticking away, reminding me that, in effect, I’m paying an additional “toll” each time I want to read. I don’t have to carry an AC adapter or worry about being near an AC outlet. These things are distracting. They’ve prevented me from ever truly enjoying an ebook.

Ebooks. I tried to read them on a monochrome Palm III screen and on a similar Sony S320. It just didn’t work out. MobiPocket was OK, but with the limited RAM and CPU power of these PDAs, it just wasn’t worth the effort. I hated Peanut Reader and every other Palm OS reading program of the time.

The first ebook I completely read was on my (now-dead) Toshiba GENIO Pocket PC, using Microsoft Reader. It was a free ebook from Blackmask Online. My pleasure — already tempered by my electricity objection — was entirely shattered when I discovered at least one, if not more, sentences or paragraphs were missing in the text. (An email to Blackmask Online received no reply; neither was the ebook ever fixed.) I loved Microsoft Reader; it offered a good book-like experience. I went on to read another ebook of the many I’d downloaded. Then the PPC OS crashed. And my Notes and Bookmarks went to Electron Hell. That ended ebooks for me.

Until the Nokia 770. I decided to give FBReader two chances. The second chance clicked and I began to read The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. But guess what? The issue of using electricity came back with a vengeance. The 770 is primarily for web access. Every minute of battery life I use for ebook reading is at least one less minute available for being on the web. There was no contest here: No more ebook reading.

I’d like to say the same for RSS on the 770 too. I have 92 feeds. I’d have more, but even getting those onto the 770 was a hellish process, and trying to read those feeds is even more hellish. Scrolling through a feed with the included RSS news reader program is just slow; irritatingly, apoplectically slow. And yet I still use RSS on the 770, stealing browser minutes, because I’ve become addicted to RSS.

When I first encountered the refresh flashing on the Sony Reader, I didn’t think I could get past that. I think, like many people who love to read fiction, it will be a distraction. Some Reader owners have said they’ve gotten used to it, but I don’t know if I could. I tried reading Nineteen Eighty-Four at SonyStyle, but that’s not a reading environment to begin with. So, I remain skeptical when it comes to fiction.

But as for non-fiction, I think it will do very nicely, especially in two areas: RSS feeds and transferring reference Memos I have on my CLIE (and on my desktop PC, stranded in Palm OS 5-compatible Palm Desktop).

RSS: The included Sony software is already acknowledged as being worthless. But other solutions have already been developed, both of which transfer RSS feeds to PDFs sized for the Reader’s screen. See this thread at mobileread. See the news about RSSOwl at Teleread.

With so few Readers out there, this is an auspicious beginning comparable to the quick freeware and shareware developments that followed the introduction of the original Pilot PDA from Palm Computing.

And I don’t think that analogy is a stretch, either. See this forum at mobileread which lists the kind of hacking of the Reader that’s already begun.

As stated in Part Two, the Reader runs Montavista Linux Professional Edition over which software at least partly developed by Kinoma rests.

While the Linux-based Nokia 770 has not set any sales records (unless the metric is for Disappointing), hackers devised ways to gain root access to its Linux OS and bring additional (mostly Linux-y) functions to it. I think Linux afficionados will also make short work of the Reader’s OS too. I expect syncing with Linux to happen (and if that happens, syncing with Mac OS X will follow too).

So I’m sold on the Sony Reader just as a great way to read RSS. I’ll have a larger screen than the 770, my choice of text size, and I can dump as many feeds as I want into it via my desktop PC. And I will even use it at home! No more being stuck at the desktop to catch up on feeds. I can dump them into the Reader and lounge on the couch. And notice: I’ll be able to do that with a device that’s $350, not the $1,000-plus of a UMPC or notebook!

The second point that makes me enthusiastic about the Reader is its ability to accept PDF, RTF, and plain text. In Part One, I described trying to read most available PDFs as a disaster. But this is so only for currently available PDFs. You can bet that PDFs specifically for the Reader screen dimensions will be published. And they will look gorgeous. I wouldn’t be surprised if the creators of many of the extant PDFs start reformatting them very soon. In fact, if Adobe wants to do itself a favor, it would see about providing a special section on its website for creating Reader-compatible PDFs. (Although Adobe recently announced new software for handling PDFs, it would be foolish for it to ignore the Reader.)

RTF — Rich Text Format — is what opens the Reader to everyone immediately. Without waiting for Sony (or other parties) to issue ebook creation tools, anyone with a text editor — even Wordpad, included on every Windows PC — can publish documents with “good enough” formatting for the Reader. It can be private material — such as the hundreds of Memos I intend to move from Palm OS — and it can be public material too, which makes the posibilities as endless as the World Wide Web itself.

Let me give just a few (mostly geeky) examples:

1) Fan fiction. Take along all those stories written in the universe of Harry Potter, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Andromeda, Firefly, The Prisoner, and more.

2) Fanzines, club/user groups newsletters. Anyone reading this text on a backlit screen might be unaware of the extent to which publishing is still done on paper. Getting things like that onto the Reader will be a lot simpler for the average person than going through the hoops of registering an URL, locating and paying for a host, learning to use an HTML editor, et al, to get it on the net. Any periodical produced with a word processor and inkjet/laser printing is a great candidate for the Reader.

3) (Tran)scripts. Many TV programs are transcribed by their fans. The Reader is an excellent way to collect them in one place to read.

4) “Sitecasting” and “Blogcasting.” I made this one up. But think of it. Imagine, each week or two, blogs issuing a compilation of what they’ve published during that time in Reader format. I don’t know about everyone else, but I’d love to see that done for sites that publish a lot each day, such as JK on the Run, Teleread, and Palm Addicts. For sites that offer reviews (such as The Gadgeteer), a compilation of just that material could be offered. I think “blogcasts” could offer people a better way to sample more blogs than sitting at a PC and flailing away with search engines and links. I always feel pressured sitting at a PC. Sitting back with the Reader will allow me to read sites and blogs more. Along with all of the RSS, XML, digg, and other such icons now on sites, I’d like to see a new one added. One that in effect says, “Put this site on my Sony Reader.”

5) Recipes. Yes! Over twenty-five years ago, when computers such as the Apple ][+, Commodore 64, and Tandy Color Computer were being flogged to an ignorant public, one of the silly suggestions for actually having a computer in your very own home was to keep recipes! Well, guess what? The time for recipes has finally arrived! The Sony Reader is an excellent device for the kitchen! (Better than an iPod!)

6) Forum posts. When I want to research a possible purchase, I find a forum of owners and grab as many threads as I can. In the past I’ve used these two methods:

a) Find Printable Version option
b) Copy All
c) Paste to WordPad (and do font change)
d) Print on paper

or

a) Find Printable Version option
b) Copy All
c) Paste to Palm Desktop Memo(s)
d) Sync to Palm PDA

The Reader will do away with having to print anything I want to read away from the PC. And I can read on a screen that’s far better than any PDA. And I’ll be able to do it without the irritation of using electricty!

What else is possible? Calendar and Contacts. Why not? Both of those are offered on the iPod! Collections of song lyrics. Joke books. The weekly sales flyer from CompUSA (formatted for the Reader, instead of for wasteful printing!). Albums of weird flickr photos (the Reader can also display images, remember?).

Those are just six big(-ish) examples and several “minor” ones. I’m sure everyone reading this can devise more. But don’t just think of them! If you have the ability, go do them. Reader owners will be looking for lots of stuff to read. Give it to them! The early days of the internet made stars; this is another chance to get in on something early.

So, yes, despite my initial horror and disgust at the screen refresh I saw, I’m very, very excited by the Sony Reader.

I’ve read many reports and opinions about the Sony Reader. And I’ve found most of them to be just wrong. This is the “iPod of books.” What did I see that everyone else missed? All is revealed in (surprise!) Part Four. Don’t miss this. It will, no pun intended, open your eyes! Sony’s hardware design is ingenious — and I will prove it!


Sony Reader: Part 1 (of 4)

October 25, 2006

At Digital Life

In my first post from Digital Life, I wrote the following about the Sony Reader:

Sony Reader — Let’s get this out of the way first: you do not want to buy it. As impressive as the e-ink screen is (and it is damned impressive!), it has a fatal flaw: refresh. To move from one page to the next, the entire screen turns black and white — an ugly and distracting black and white that seriously deteriorates the reading experience. This is too bad. I kept wondering for hours afterwards if there wasn’t some sort of clever cross-fade animation Sony could devise to make it better. The Oh. My. God. Moment came in picking it up. This is a masterpiece of design and engineering. It is what a totable computer should be. This is what the Nokia 770 and all UMPCs should be like. Just this exact size and thickness. This is science-fiction come to life. It is worth your time to get to any store that has it just to hold it.

I am now formally retracting that first sentence:

Let’s get this out of the way first: you do not want to buy it.

It’s important for me to put that initial report in context.

(Anyone impatient for a full report about using the Sony Reader can go to Mobileread and read an excellent account here. Of all the reports I’ve read, this comes closest to grokking the Reader.)

I hadn’t expected the Sony Reader to be at Digital Life. In fact, I went to the show to see just one thing: the new Treo 680.

I came across the Reader in a display off to the side of Sony’s large exhibit. It was in a cradle on a display that included brochures about the device. That’s all I saw at the time. I marveled at the screen. When I went to change the page, that full-screen refresh hit me and my visceral reaction is the same as I think many non-tech people will have: horror and disgust. There’s just no getting around that initial reaction. I think it will initially be detrimental to sales. I picked up a brochure and left the show shortly thereafter.

I had no plans to return to Digital Life the next day. But that evening, looking over the show guide, I saw that Pepper Computer had given a presentation. Then I saw they also had a booth (which I had managed to miss!). Seeing the new Pepper Pad 3 was something I wanted to do, so I dropped everything for the next day to return to Digital Life.

Then I read the brochure for the Sony Reader and was brutally assaulted by a “Columbo Moment” — it mentioned the Reader could do RSS! How could I see that demonstrated?

During the course of that second day, I wound up at PC Magazine‘s large multi-part suite where they were exhibiting a great variety of products. One of them was the Sony Reader. And it had some demonstration RSS feeds on it: Lifehacker and Slate. I was warned that I wouldn’t like what I was about to see. These feeds were done by the Sony software bundled with the Reader. There are only two words to describe what those two RSS feeds looked like: absolutely tragic! The formatting was horrible; ads were included that took up a full page, yet which occupied only one-third of the vertical space — with the rest of the space remaining blank! Plus, the Lifehacker feed was over 500 pages! And that was for just a single sampling of one day. My heart was broken.

I’d also remembered from the Reader brochure that it could accept PDFs. It just so happened I had recently dropped close to twenty PDFs onto the 64MB RS-MMC on my Nokia 770 (it has a built-in PDF Reader). And I was carrying the adapter for the card! So we inserted the card and after a few spins of two arrows chasing one another in a circle, the PDFs were listed in the Books menu of the Reader.

Unfortunately, like all PDFs, these were formatted for an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper. The text was very tiny. It also tended to be gray instead of deep black. The PC Magazine people told me it was possible to rotate the screen, but they didn’t recall how to do that. They suggested I go to the Sony exhibit.

Back at the Sony exhibit this time, I saw what I had missed the previous day: an entire row of Sony Readers set up for people to fondle! I was also introduced to someone from the group responsible for handling it in the U.S.

We talked. And talked. And talked. I asked many questions, he gave many frank answers (he was, I think, afraid not to: he’d read my past writings online!). I promised I would not quote him at all nor mention his name or position at Sony. Done.

We popped in my 770’s RS-MMC. He rotated the screen (by holding down the Size button for several seconds). The range of readability varied from one PDF to the next. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I wasn’t excited by what I saw. Unless a PDF is specifically scaled for the Reader’s screen (as its onboard User Guide is), PDFs on it will be just slightly less aggravating to use than on the Nokia 770.

He gave me a light demonstration of the unit. I didn’t intend to bang on it just then. I wanted to digest our conversation.

At home that night, I did some research online, following some of the bread crumbs he’d dropped into the conversation (who can spout full URLs off the top of his head?). I chewed on what he said some more.

I went back for the third day of Digital Life, armed with a bunch more questions. There was a lot more talk. I still wasn’t focused on the Reader, though; the Pepper Pad 3 was still taking up prime real estate in my head (I posted about it the previous night).

I said that I’d seen the SD slot (located at the top left of the “spine”) the previous day, but not the slot for the Memory Stick. It turned out to be one slot for both. That really impressed me: not only did Sony relent and let this group use SD, they also allowed SD to mingle with their Memory Stick! Anyone familiar with The Sony Way understands what a huge concession this is.

I was then told the Reader could also play music. Two sample tracks were already on the Reader. I was given a set of noise-cancelling headphones (the kind with the large cushioned cups) to sample the tracks. The audio jack is at the botttom right corner of the Reader. This is the first time a jack at the bottom of a device has made sense to me: the cord won’t dangle over the screen, blocking the text.

It was, of course, very noisy at the Javits Center, particularly near the Reader area. I didn’t care for the music, so I didn’t pay much attention to sound quality and I didn’t even check the volume level to see if it was maxed (a “Columbo Moment” I had later that night at home!). Music — or any MP3 or AAC audio file — can be played in the background while reading a book. In fact, this is the preferred method if audio must be used at all. Keeping the audio player open refreshes the screen each second as the Elapsed Time counter and Progress Bar are incremented, really eating up the battery. On the left side of the Reader (its “spine”) are two buttons to control volume (+/-); pressing both together pauses. What I forsee happening here are people — OK, maybe just me — eschewing the side buttons and just unjacking the earbuds when, say, a phone rings, and then forgetting that audio is still playing in the background. There is no indication while in a book that audio is playing. I suggested a tiny musical note icon be added to the status area.

Looking at my RS-MMC later that night on the 770 via its File Manager, I saw the Reader left a folder called “Sony Reader,” in which there was a folder called “Database,” inside of which was a 9K file called “Cache.XML.” (I did not have anything on the 770 to open the file.)

I returned for a third day to really test the audio again. This time I pulled my cheapie jWin MP3 player out of my pocket and popped out its 128MB SD and put it in the Reader. I had MP3s of Girls Don’t Cry demo songs on it and was eager to check the sound quality. This time I used the basic necklaced earbuds that came with the jWin; no noise cancellation to get in the way or skew the output. And I made sure the volume was cranked to max. Damn! Not only could I easily hear the Girls above the din, the quality was very fine. My reaction to audio in the Reader is that it’s probably something I’m unlikely to use unless I’m unable to carry the jWin for whatever reason (e.g., not wanting it in an outside coat pocket during frigid weather).

I looked at a full manga installed on one of the demo Readers. Its Info screen revealed it was a wee bit over 60MB(!). The Reader has 64MB of user-accessible memory (most likely Flash). Sony’s brochure, which is designed for non-tech buyers, touts an “80 book” capacity. Not when those books are manga! (Fortunately, manga afficionados tend to be tech-savvy otaku.)

Another wise move — if not yet another concession — by Sony is that the bottom port to link the Reader with a PC is a standard mini-USB connector (CLIE owners will tell you of their frustration due to Sony’s affection for proprietary ports!). And I do mean PC: like using the iTunes Store, using the Sony Connect online service to buy ebooks requires a Connect host program in the vein of the iTunes media manager. It will run on PCs only, and requires XP. No Mac, no Linux (and I don’t know if it can run on a Mac running XP, although in theory I see no reason it wouldn’t work). I think the lack of Mac compatibility is a mistake by Sony. iPod sales really exploded once Apple made iTunes PC-compatible. I think Mac compatibility, in a likewise manner, would make Sony Reader sales explode. Mac people would buy the Reader like mad.

The Reader can also display photos. Some people might dismiss this, but people have kept photos on monochrome CLIEs (and Palms) — myself included. Photos look surprisingly sharp. No need for another photo album? Then think maps. Or diagrams.

The last thing I wanted to see was the Reader’s AC adapter, Just In Case. It turns out to be one of those practically-weightless adapters Sony also produced for its CLIEs.

Finally, I tried something stupid. Yes, really stupid. I own a pen scanner, the QuickLink Pen, which I usually have with me. About five years ago, one of the then-WizCom Tech people recounted an absurd tech support call they got: A purchaser wanted to know if he could scan text off a computer monitor! Ha ha. Well, that popped to the top of my mind, seeing that paper-like Reader screen! So, I tried scanning. It didn’t work. I did this on the third day. On the fourth day, one of the Sony people was still curious about that, so we brought a Reader outside to try! Still no go. Two things worked against it: the reflective plastic surface of the screen combined with the bright sunlight. However, connect the dots.

I ultimately came away from Digital Life excited by the Sony Reader. But I wanted some uncrowded fondle time with it. I got that at SonyStyle. I discovered some things you’ll want to read about in Part Two.