David: at $500, i don’t think anyone will be trying that soon

Ric: a bit, but sentiment seems to be swinging back the other way since Jobs announced that it would be a closed platform. they’re still going to sell a ton of them, but a surprising number of Apple fans i’ve talked to won’t get be getting one.

Brandon: well, i do give Apple the benefit of the doubt, but i’m with some of the other commenters who don’t think you’ll be able to type as well with it as, say, a blackberry.

Mike: good points all around, but i still think there are use case differences w/ the devices that preclude easy conflation of the devices. and even combining funds is problematic for some, as they’ll spend some money on an iPod but very little on a phone and so on. and, as Justin points out it’s not really an adequate audio device for someone like me right now.

Justin: amen. and even more interesting is the recent announcement that a two year contract w/ Cingular is not optional, but a requirement. great point about Exchange as well.

Luis: well, i don’t know that i’d put those constraints on it being successful, because i think it’ll sell very well, but i do believe that you’re correct that in its current incarnation it’s limiting itself.

matt m: similar reservations here. but it is Apple, so i’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Savio: i’m actually most of a pragmatist when it comes to devices. while i choose to use open source on my desktop, for example, i have no problem with the volume of open source folks that choose to use MacBooks and the like. so feel free to buy what’s shiny

Nigel: no worries - glad you got something out of this.

Luis: the short answer is no, i have no hard numbers. but i wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers are even higher than that in favor of MP3 players. consider that when walking during commuting hours in a lot of cities - Boston, for example - nearly everyone has an MP3 player of some sort that they’re listening to.

while on the other hand, i only know a couple of folks that carry PDAs. i don’t really factor in the phone PDAs that Savio mentions b/c most of the folks that i know who have those devices don’t use them as PDAs - merely email devices, nothing more.

Dennis: yeah, AKA a no-selling-waste-of-space

Jeff: i’ll be very interested in seeing what they sell it at come Christmas. price will be a big factor in how well these things sell, methinks.

Probably the most disappointing news (yet understandable for Apple) is that they’ve picked Cingular.

Oh, and I hate Blackberry’s keyboard. I’ve tried to use it now for about a year and a half and I just finally gave it up. I now only read email on my phone and rarely ever respond (forgot even trying to write).

So, even if 1% of 957m mobile phones are ’smart phones’, that’s still a healthy number compared to MP3 players. I know your question was about PDAs but who really has a PDA that isn’t inside of the phone these days

Thanks for the balance Stephen.

Nigel