S.P. Stenton

The first wave of change was ushered in by the Palm Pilot. To date this most successful appliance-like PDA, has sold around 4m units since its launch at Demo 96. As a brave experiment in cut down functionality and pen input it was launched into a market littered with failed attempts. Its success has prompted Microsoft and partners to launch the PalmPC in an attempt to build on the acceptance of this form factor. For these devices the keyboard has already been relegated to an optional accessory. Freed from the dominance of the keyboard interaction designers can contemplate more exotic forms of I/O in the hope of hitting the right balance of affordance and value, as Palm computing did in 1996.

Speech as an interaction mode has promised much but has been restricted to cameo roles on PCs. Where it has taken center stage has been on voice only devices such as the telephone or dictaphone hybrids. Eyeglasses are, like CMOS imaging, coming of age and ready to take their place. Position sensing along with other contextual information will usher in a third wave of appliance PDAs based on situated computing to provide context dependent services. The days when the only input to the processor in your pocket was the keystroke from a keyboard or the selection of a mouse will be left behind along with the days when PDAs were simply electronic organizers. This presentation describes work on portable appliances and the ecosystems within which they are emerging.