Sunday, February 24, 2002
One way the handheld maturation differs from that of the PC
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THOUGHT" @ 04:20 PM
There are countless similarities in how the handheld device has evolved over the last decade, when compared to the PC. From DOS on the HP 200LX, to the basic GUI of the Newton, to the skinnable Pocket PC of today. From one-time powerhouses of the 16MHz Dragonball in the Palm to forthcoming 400-600MHz XScale processors making their way to the market today. Screens, battery life, weight, etc. As I said, countless.
One way (one of many) though that the handheld is evolving differently than the PC is how the devices are used for access to content. All manner of content. Obviously portability is the key, but today we are in the midst of a digital revolution. Music was the beginning. MP3's began making their way to PC's in the late 1990's, but unless you were one of those with an expensive CD-ROM burner, you were tied to your PC in order to listen to the music, and then you still had to tote around a CD player and a CD for every hour of music you wanted to listen to.
Well, you know the rest. Pocket PCs, Sony Clies and dedicated MP3 players are plentiful today. 128MB of memory and about 4 hrs of music, is common-place with 5GB drives readily accessible. High bandwidth connections will allow full length DVD movies to be viewed on demand in the coming years. PC's will always be a massive repository for our music, books, movies, pictures, etc. But rarely are they going to be used to enjoy that content. That is the difference I was referring to in the title. PC's store it. Handhelds will use it.
But here is the rub. Napster. Like it or not, Napster has made a mess of digital content. Think I'm kidding? Try getting the eBook of your choice on your device. Tolkien, Jordan, Clancy, etc. The list goes on and on. There is at least a chance PeanutPress.com has it. Barnes & Nobel or Amazon might have it, but if you took the collective library of these three and other eBook sites it would only be a drop in the bucket compared to what you can get at Amazon.com in paper format alone.
Napster has struck fear and paranoia into all content providers - music, books and video. So, to combat this, publishers have given us proprietary devices like Rocket eBooks or very restrictive digital rights management like DRM5, although that is far better today than it was as recently as mid-2001. Multiple formats, content that expires, and something that is amazing to me, publishers think we want to read this stuff on our PC. Adobe eBook Reader? What are they thinking? There is a place for eBooks on a PC, but not novels. Textbooks, research material, technical manuals, yes. Clancy's latest? I don't think so. One brief aside: I am afraid the Tablet PC, as cool as it is, will slow the transformation to non-PC based content since the Tablet PC is portable. But it still isn't the carry-anywhere device your iPAQ is.
And what about our content. I can redownload my ebooks I buy from Amazon.com today, but what about tomorrow? What if the .LIT format changes? Will Amazon recompile my ebook for the new format? I use .LIT as an example. The same could be said for content in the Palm Reader, iSolo, MobiPocket, etc. Will these various companies or formats be around in 2 years? 5? 10? What happens to my content then? How do I activate it for my Pocket PC 2010 device - you know, the one with an 8GHz processor, 200 hrs of battery life, full voice recognition and a speck of dust under the screen? ;-)
So, help me out. What is going on in the minds of publishers and content providers? I know that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has some ideas of what is going on, and none of them pleasant for consumers. I would hope there is an eBok format in the works that will work on all handheld devices with screens, be it powered by Microsoft, Linux, Palm, EPOC, or BrandX. I know the Microsoft mantra for .NET devices is basically "any device, anywhere, anytime." Sounds great, and we may see proof if this in the next 18-24 months. Whatever the solution, we are a few years from it benefiting consumers, and that is the bottom line. Until the digital rights management benefits consumers, eBooks will be a niche market, and to a large extent, will affect how the handheld market matures. Something the PC never had to contend with.
I am curious to hear your thoughts on this. Hmmmm.... I think I just broke a record for the longest Pocket PC Thoughts.com post. :-)
One way (one of many) though that the handheld is evolving differently than the PC is how the devices are used for access to content. All manner of content. Obviously portability is the key, but today we are in the midst of a digital revolution. Music was the beginning. MP3's began making their way to PC's in the late 1990's, but unless you were one of those with an expensive CD-ROM burner, you were tied to your PC in order to listen to the music, and then you still had to tote around a CD player and a CD for every hour of music you wanted to listen to.
Well, you know the rest. Pocket PCs, Sony Clies and dedicated MP3 players are plentiful today. 128MB of memory and about 4 hrs of music, is common-place with 5GB drives readily accessible. High bandwidth connections will allow full length DVD movies to be viewed on demand in the coming years. PC's will always be a massive repository for our music, books, movies, pictures, etc. But rarely are they going to be used to enjoy that content. That is the difference I was referring to in the title. PC's store it. Handhelds will use it.
But here is the rub. Napster. Like it or not, Napster has made a mess of digital content. Think I'm kidding? Try getting the eBook of your choice on your device. Tolkien, Jordan, Clancy, etc. The list goes on and on. There is at least a chance PeanutPress.com has it. Barnes & Nobel or Amazon might have it, but if you took the collective library of these three and other eBook sites it would only be a drop in the bucket compared to what you can get at Amazon.com in paper format alone.
Napster has struck fear and paranoia into all content providers - music, books and video. So, to combat this, publishers have given us proprietary devices like Rocket eBooks or very restrictive digital rights management like DRM5, although that is far better today than it was as recently as mid-2001. Multiple formats, content that expires, and something that is amazing to me, publishers think we want to read this stuff on our PC. Adobe eBook Reader? What are they thinking? There is a place for eBooks on a PC, but not novels. Textbooks, research material, technical manuals, yes. Clancy's latest? I don't think so. One brief aside: I am afraid the Tablet PC, as cool as it is, will slow the transformation to non-PC based content since the Tablet PC is portable. But it still isn't the carry-anywhere device your iPAQ is.
And what about our content. I can redownload my ebooks I buy from Amazon.com today, but what about tomorrow? What if the .LIT format changes? Will Amazon recompile my ebook for the new format? I use .LIT as an example. The same could be said for content in the Palm Reader, iSolo, MobiPocket, etc. Will these various companies or formats be around in 2 years? 5? 10? What happens to my content then? How do I activate it for my Pocket PC 2010 device - you know, the one with an 8GHz processor, 200 hrs of battery life, full voice recognition and a speck of dust under the screen? ;-)
So, help me out. What is going on in the minds of publishers and content providers? I know that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has some ideas of what is going on, and none of them pleasant for consumers. I would hope there is an eBok format in the works that will work on all handheld devices with screens, be it powered by Microsoft, Linux, Palm, EPOC, or BrandX. I know the Microsoft mantra for .NET devices is basically "any device, anywhere, anytime." Sounds great, and we may see proof if this in the next 18-24 months. Whatever the solution, we are a few years from it benefiting consumers, and that is the bottom line. Until the digital rights management benefits consumers, eBooks will be a niche market, and to a large extent, will affect how the handheld market matures. Something the PC never had to contend with.
I am curious to hear your thoughts on this. Hmmmm.... I think I just broke a record for the longest Pocket PC Thoughts.com post. :-)
