Killer Apps for PDAs

One of the criticisms often levelled at PDAs is that they are just gadgets, or toys for boys. Which if they don't offer a reasonable degree of utility, is a more than fair criticism. Using the old Psion II as a mobile phone book could be quite an exercise in futility unless you were very gadget minded, although it found its own ideal application when attached to a bar code reader in any British supermarket.

Which brings me on to the one important rule for technical innovation: it is impossible to guess what the killer app for a new product will be until you look back and find that everyone is doing it. Anybody associated with a new product spends a lot of time trying to guess what the killer app for the platform might be, and yet there have been remarkably few true killer applications. Looking back, it now seems obvious that the first real killer app was VisiCalc running on an Apple II with a Microsoft Gold Card; although at the time, MicroModeller, a financial forecasting package that we have all now forgotten about, seemed to be a better candidate. People bought Apple II's just to run these apps. Then Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC was the big killer app; as a spreadsheet, not as the integrated spreadsheet/database/charts application that Lotus thought it was. The last true, across the board killer app was probably DTP on the Apple Macintosh, running PageMaker with an Apple Laserwriter. I don't think that

There have been killer apps in very small niches, like the barcode reader for Psion in the supermarkets, or like Rapid Application Development using NeXTSTEP in the Fortune 500 financial community. But being great for a very short time in a very small market doesn't seem to meet the definition of a true killer app. At the gadget level, the most obvious runaway successes have been the laser pointer, and possibly now the Tamagochi; and no one is going to tell me that either of them have any kind of useful application that could be squeezed into the definition of a killer app: although perhaps with a lot more power, the laser pointer could have a different sort of killer application.

Based purely on personal observation, I would say that PDAs are more widely used in the UK than they are in the States. There are other seemingly inexplicable differences in usage patterns, where certain gadgets have enjoyed a remarkable success on one side of the Atlantic, and have been almost ignored on the other. Mobile phones were almost universal in the UK several years ago, and they are just starting to reach that same level of widespread use in the States, whereas pagers were the almost universal accessory in the States for several years. In the UK, if you wear a pager it almost certainly means that you have a job where you are on call. But pagers in the States would relay your email, tell you the news, weather and sports headlines, and generally had far more useful applications than pagers over here. They are still stalls in every shopping mall that sell nothing but pagers.

Another popular gadget in the States recently has been the solid state voice recorder. If you take a dispassionate look at their specifications, they aren't so great - what use is 20 seconds total recording time? The answer is a lot, especially now that current models can record for a couple of minutes, and all for less than 100 Pounds. Recording details of a meeting, or noting a phone number, can take less than five seconds, and a well designed user interface make access to these recorded notes very easy. The size of these recorders makes them far more compelling than the, relatively speaking, big and bulky microcassette recorders: another case where, as with the Pilot, size is far more important than power or features. A modern solid state recorder is comparable in size to a key chain, and sits happily in a trouser pocket wearing a hole alongside five pounds in small change.

So it seems more than reasonable to build in voice memo facilities to the latest crop of PDAs. The Newton 2000 has a recording feature as part of its Notes application, the Philips Velo Windows CE machine has one, the new Psion Series 5 features recording buttons on the case, and MemoVoc, from Estuary Technologies, has been available for the Psion 3 series for some time. If anything, this is such an obvious application for a PDA that it is surprising more manufacturers haven't taken it up. Modern and expensive computer technology should mean better recording times, and if you are going to lug a PDA around with you, adding voice memo recording doesn't waste any more space in your pockets or briefcase.

Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: July 30, 1997