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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Several years ago, I put Apple Newtons in the hands of my company’s 55 top executives.

No, it wasn’t my idea, just my project. Yes, it was an exercise in futility. My partner and I did our best to make the experience rewarding and the technology compelling. Its lack of integration with personal computers, unresponsive interface, and extremely hard-to-read screen led many of the executives to ask me, “Why is this better than my pocket calendar and a pad of paper?”

“It probably isn’t,” was my answer. “You may find having your whole Rolodex with you is pretty convenient, though.”

I shared our dismal results with Apple (two executives continued using the Newton throughout the two month trial) and our conclusions regarding its fundamental weaknesses. Apple responded that new Newton users had to be prepared to invest two months adapting to the technology.

And you wonder why Apple is in trouble.

I do see a big future for personal digital assistants (PDAs), though. Why?

Because people still want personal computers, and we’re busy taking them away!

Sure, we give them Intel boxes running Windows. We gripe about it, though, and we make them as impersonal as we can. We lock down the settings, forbidding users to change screen resolutions and wallpaper, and banning software of the users’ choosing. These are Enterprise Resources, we proclaim, and users have to recognize that these are the company’s machines, not theirs. In fact, we’d prefer to chuck PCs altogether and replace them with the much better NC — better, of course, because users won’t have any control over at all over an NC.

Microsoft doesn’t help, either: Although easier to use than DOS, Windows is so devilishly hard to fix when it fails that we’ll do anything to keep it from breaking.

Nonetheless, there are lots of us in the world of business who liked the freedom PCs gave us and want it back. One way or another, we’ll get it, too, because as Jeff Goldblum pointed out about life in Jurassic Park (it will “… find a way”), the market has a way of satisfying demand.

PDAs can thrive for the same reason PCs thrived: Users can sneak them in the side door, hiding them in their office-equipment budgets and using them as they please, not as we insist.

The successful PDA will supplant the laptop computer. Here’s what it will need to succeed:

  • Fast boot: When I turn it on, it had better be ready immediately. At most I’ll give it 5 seconds.
  • External keyboard: When I pull it out of my pocket, I’ll use what’s built in. When I’m in my office or hotel room, I want a full-size keyboard.
  • Streamlined but file-compatible word processor and spreadsheet: Compatible file formats allow guerilla computing. The word processor must read and write Microsoft Word files; the spreadsheet must read and write Excel. (Note to Lotus and Corel: convert to Microsoft Office file formats immediately. You’ll sell lots of copies to power users and renegades, and you’ll be positioned for the PDA market.)
  • Harmless customization: Let users have fun personalizing it. Give them back autoexec.bat.
  • E-mail integration: PDAs must synchronize directories and message stores with the desktop system every time they’re docked. As a side note, the directory must, Outlook-style, serve as e-mail directory and name-and-address book. Bad as Outlook is, Microsoft got that right.And the most important feature for the future PDA: No way to put it on the LAN. If it’s on the LAN, IS will control it. Give it a PC docking station and quit.

Now tell me I’m not promoting Windows CE. Please?

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Everybody reacts to certain sounds in ways that range from cringing to anaphylactic shock. It may be chalk squeaking on a blackboard, fingernails scraping a screen, or even two pieces of corduroy rubbing together.

For me it’s the fingernail/screen combination. If I’m ever captured by an enemy bent on learning all of my secrets (both of ’em!), all they’ll have to do is brandish the screen in front of me. I’ll cave in an instant.

Sometimes whole sentences can cause just as intense a reaction. Many InfoWorld readers react to various examples of ManagementSpeak like those that begin this column. (Me too.)

Another source of acoustic chafing: People who tell you what you’re thinking and feeling (“Don’t get defensive,” is the perfect example, requiring extraordinary self-restraint and conversational dexterity in response). Deal with what I say and do, pal. I’m in a better position to describe my thoughts and feelings than you are.

There’s a new kid on the block that puts the others to shame. It goes like this: “The technology is the easy part.”

I hear people say this all the time these days. These people have never written a line of code in their lives, of course, and that may explain why they’re so comfortable saying it while calling programmers “bit-heads” and “nerds.” For them, technology is the easy part. They get to toss out high-level, fuzzily stated requirements. Then they sneer at programmers who bug them with questions, using the popular put-down: “Clearly you’re not comfortable dealing with ambiguity.”

There’s not much point explaining that it’s C++, not you, that’s uncomfortable dealing with ambiguity. These characters are so busy being self-important that they don’t have the time to deal with a mere technologist, who after all gets to deal with the easy part of the problem.

With a little less arrogance and a bit more patience, these important businesspeople would learn that they do indeed have a very difficult job, which they often shirk. That’s the process of clearly and unambiguously defining what the business needs. Usually, this means creating a detailed picture of a business process that doesn’t exist, along with every resource that process will need to be put into practice.

That’s hard. It requires, time, thought, and patience, so it usually goes undone.

Yes, when business planners do their jobs well they make the job of the technologist easier. Not easy, but easier. Somebody has to take the big picture and refine it into the kind of detail a data designer can translate into a schema and a programmer can translate into code. Too often, the people who end up having to do the refinement are the programmers and data designers, who collar the business planner in the hallway to ask annoying questions.

I’ve known IS programmer/analysts who have been assigned to a new business unit to “create the technology” and instead have designed every key business process along with defining the technology, up to and including the invoice design.

(Which, by the way, points to a solution. Place a programmer in a business area, actually doing the work. That puts the programmer in a great position to envision, and immediately build, efficient, technology-centered work processes. Try making this an endorsed system-design methodology.)

The devil is in the details, of course, and the ultimate level of detail is the actual code. It takes talented programmers to write good code that gets the job done. I guess it’s because the devil is in the details that so many businesspeople simultaneously denigrate and demonize the technologists who translate their “important concepts” to reality.

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