[img src="http://www.jr.com/images/promos/audible/devices.jpg" caption="" credit="" alt=""]
Philip Greenspun had put up an excellent article which asks: will the mobile phone become our home computer? I recently posted about how mobile phones could become a single, converged device and replace our PCs. I also spoke about connecting these phones to "docking stations" with keyboards, big screens and maybe some storage. Philip seems to be thinking along the same lines - he refers to the docking station as "The Appliance" and explores how we might develop such a product. This is all getting very, very interesting...
What would you call a device that has a screen, a keyboard, storage for personal information such as contacts, email, documents, the ability to play audio and video files, some games, a spreadsheet program, and a communications capability? Sound like a personal computer? How about "mobile phone"?
This is a plan for building an appliance into which a mobile phone plugs and that extends the phone's capabilities without requiring the consumer to become a system administrator or be aware that he or she owns more than a phone. In the rest of this document we will call the new device "The Appliance"...