Michael - I want to print out the whole NYT thing, in case someone is reading this a year (?) from now, and the link has expired (worthless?).
January 4, 1999
WIRELESS COMPUTING
Still Waiting for a Computing Vision to
Materialize
By JOHN MARKOFF
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- In Silicon Valley there is perhaps no greater
mystery than why it has taken anytime-anywhere wireless computing
so long to arrive.
Wireless data, after all, is not a new concept among the computer cognoscenti
who frequent the coffee bars, restaurants and bookstores that line the avenue
leading to the Stanford University campus.
Indeed, the idea was sketched out
clearly as long ago as 1972 by two
Xerox researchers, Alan Kay and Adele
Goldberg, in a never-realized concept
for a portable computing device they
called the Dynabook. From the start, the
Dynabook was intended to allow its
owner to compute and retrieve
information while sitting under a tree in
a meadow.
For many years, the more enterprising
of Silicon Valley's hardware hackers
have built their own experimental
wireless systems.
There are even some promising signs in
the consumer marketplace. For
example, two-way pagers with tiny
keyboards have recently gained some
popularity, and the widely popular Nokia
6160 PCS phone being offered by
AT&T Corp. has the ability to receive
short e-mail messages.
Wireless computing is, in short, a
universally shared vision. Yet, in the
immortal and slightly skeptical words of
the former Byte magazine columnist
Jerry Pournelle, its realization is still
scheduled to arrive "real soon now."
The problem, depending on whom you
ask, is either that a number of barriers
remain, ranging from low bandwidth to the lack of compelling applications, or
that the Valley's visionaries have simply been out of step with consumers.
"We're still in the snooping-around phase of wireless data," said Jerry Purdy,
president of Mobile Insights, a Mountain View, Calif., computer and
communications consulting firm, who is one of those with the former view.
"We're still trying to get it right."
Others are more pessimistic.
"This is a zero-billion-dollar industry," said Geoff Goodfellow, founder of
Radiomail, the first wireless electronic mail company. Goodfellow left
Radiomail after failing to create a broad consumer market, and the company is
now owned by Motorola Inc. Renamed Blue Kite, it is attempting to offer
specialized wireless services for corporate applications.
For evidence that wireless data may be a harder sell than the industry's
optimists believe, consider the travails of Metricom, the wireless Internet
company that has deployed an innovative network in the metropolitan areas of
Seattle, San Francisco and the District of Columbia.
Now owned by Microsoft's co-founder, Paul
Allen, Metricom offers unlimited access to the
Internet for $30 a month via its Ricochet radio
modem, which is the size of a deck of cards
and offers a speed of 20 kilobits a second.
Though that is much slower than today's
fastest modems, which transmit data at more
than 50 kilobits a second, the Ricochet's
dependability and wireless convenience have
earned it wild praise from many of Metricom's
subscribers.
Yet this high satisfaction and three years of
aggressive marketing have netted Metricom
only about 20,000 subscribers nationwide, and
Allen will soon be forced to inject more cash
if the company is to survive.
Even so, despite the disappointing markets for
Radiomail, Metricom and even AT&T's
cellular digital packet data network, which
allows data transmission over telephones,
there is no shortage of fresh initiatives to bring
on the wireless digital future.
Earlier this month, Palm Computing, the
division of 3Com Corp. that makes hand-held
computing devices, introduced, with great
fanfare, the Palm VII, a shirt-pocket-sized
product that will offer instant access to Internet data and e-mail.
Scheduled to be available sometime this year, the device will sell for about
$800, and data access will cost about 30 cents for 1,000 characters.
Its backers argue that the Palm VII will succeed for the same reasons the
original Palm won a devoted following -- instant access to information, in this
case via the Internet, without the hassle of having to boot up a full-scale
personal computer.
"The ability to get information without waiting is really important," said Donna
Dubinsky, a Palm co-founder who left the company early last year to found
Handspring Inc.
Palm's announcement is likely to be followed soon by a similar wireless
Internet data announcement from Steve Jobs, founder and interim chief
executive of Apple Computer. The computer industry is keeping a careful eye
on Apple's plans because the company has a demonstrated knack for coming
up with user-friendly software and services.
Several industry insiders said they believed that Jobs had struck a deal with
AT&T to use its wireless data networks to connect portable and desktop
computers to the Internet. Neither company will comment.
Still, even Jobs, who is widely admired in Silicon Valley, may have his work
cut out for him.
For one thing, the proverbial "killer application" of wireless appears not to be
e-mail. Anytime-anywhere messaging is essential for a few on-the-go
high-technology workers but apparently not for the average consumer, who
has steadfastly ignored any wireless text messaging system larger or more
expensive than a pager.
Still, the optimists insist that the realization of wireless is only a question of
time and that all the drawbacks will vanish with the advent of third-generation
broad-band wireless data networks scheduled to go online in 2002.
In an industry long accustomed to successfully marketing technologies that
people didn't know they needed, the optimists are gambling that the ability to
send megabits of data to a hand-held gadget each second will eventually
generate the elusive killer app.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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