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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: soup who wrote (8998)	3/2/1998 9:24:00 PM
From: Eric Yang	Respond to of 213173

As far as I know, Apple's next PDA will be nothing like the current MessagePad. As far as we know, it will not run NewtonOS, it will not use StrongARM, it will not be a palmtop or an handheld device. 1)New PDA runs on PPC. If the new PDA due to ship in 1999 runs MacOS Lite, it's reasonable to assume that it will run on PowerPC. I don't think Apple wants to spend the engineering resources to port MacOS to StrongARM at this time. 2)New PDA will be much bigger than MessagePad 2000. Even the relatively energy efficient PowerPC 750 draws about 5-6 watts at 233MHz. This is about 10 times higher than the energy consumption of the StrongARM. Even if more energy efficient version of PPC (running at lower MHz as well) were to be delivered by 1999, with all the peripheral circuits to support the PPC I would imagine the device to be quite power hungry. Thus those AA batteries which can keep a MessagePad running for weeks just won't cut it anymore. The machine will either have to be kept plugged into the wall or come with larger rechargeable batteries. Thus I expect the new PDA to be larger...with the form factor size somewhere between the current eMate and the PowerBook 2400. This new beast will essentially be a sub sub-notebook. Eric

To: soup who wrote (8998)	3/2/1998 9:24:00 PM
From: Musubi	Respond to of 213173

http://www.walletware.com/FutureMessagePads.html Hi Soup, I read that article and many others. The point that I haven't seen addressed is as I wrote, how K-12 educators will ultimately respond. These future MessagePads might be great and be infinitely better than the Newton OS-based products but when it comes to spending money, we will have to justify why the eMates that we JUST bought needs to be replaced with the MacOS-based ones. Its not as simple as some folks seem to think, that better technology automatically justifies a purchase. And as I mentioned, this cancellation will be INGRAINED in the minds of those who hold the purse strings. That they will next time scrutinize an Apple purchase (and by this, I also mean desktop systems and any Apple based solution). Many of my colleagues have about lost faith and have resigned themselves to the fact that they were let down big time. Since I also own Apple stock, I feel this might be a problem.