The Convenience of Convergence

I love my iPod, but if I had to give away either iPod and my Treo, the only hard part would be deciding who to give my iPod to.

There has been a lot of speculation about an iPod phone, but then again there’s been a lot of speculation about a Mac Tablet and a new Mac PDA (let’s pause here to give a shout out to the Newton users) so let’s not hold our breath.

I don’t think there’s much of a chance that Apple will take such a risk with its beloved iPod. I do think that they might add Bluetooth, both for syncing (although it would be slow) but more for headsets.

But where was I? Oh yes, why I would take my Treo over my iPod. It’s actually the same reason that I chose a Treo -- because it works with my Sprint PCS account.

Case in point: a few weeks ago I was driving back on the highway. It was about a 4 hour trip. I had an audiobook playing through my iPod. “Huh? Why?” you ask. Because I was using my Treo for GPS navigation and for occasional calls, and it was just easier to use the iPod.

BUT, and this is a big one, here’s the thing. I realized about 30 minutes into the trip that I was going to run out of book to “read”. If I just had the iPod, that would be it, I’d be stuck.

Instead, I pulled over and fired up AudibleAir. Then I realized that I didn’t have anything in my library that I wanted to “read” so I launched Opera Mini, logged into my account and purchased a new book. Then I went back to AudibleAir and started the download.

Convergence, thy name is Treo. And to me, the Palm has always been about the convenience of convergence, from the first time they said ”Hey, here’s this nifty piece of plastic you can use that holds both your addressbook and your calendar together.” What do people complain about most about the Treo? It doesn’t have WiFi. And it’s a good critique, especially because WiFi is all about convenience. It’s not that we couldn’t do networks with wires, it’s just that it’s easier to do networks without wires unless you need absolute top speed, faster than most people really need.

I got my first Treo and it replaced my cell phone and my old Palm IIIxe. No longer did I have two phone books (the big one on the Palm and a few that I had bothered to enter into my cell phone) or two devices to be sure were charged and not lost.

I expect the future will only get better.