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There are two broad approaches to delivering handheld communications devices.

One approach extends a familiar metaphor -- the virtual desktop -- and its business model. The other approach will establish a new metaphor and a new business model.

Extending the desktop

Apple, Microsoft and NeXT are taking the first tack. We cover them in the Desktop section, page 12, but we mention them here because their direction has much in common with GO's. GO's chosen metaphor is the notebook, not the desktop, yet its basic business model is that of a desktop operating system vendor. In contrast, Apple's Newton project is an effort to design a new market dynamic, not Just a new handheld consumer product.

This approach starts with the familiar desktop metaphor. To turn the desktop into a unified messaging platform, the vendors offer drivers and viewers that bring messages together behind a common interface as multi-media mail. Some, such as Apple and GO (but not Microsoft), make messages look like other documents on the desktop; the features dovetail nicely, with minimal disruption of the original concept. Messages and documents alike are kept and found in a consistent manner. The action to delete a text file will also delete an e-mail message or voicemail note. The "send" function extends beyond printing to include faxing and other forms of messaging. The address book that once contained only e-mail names now holds fax numbers, software preferences (for viewing or file conversion) and even personal data.

The desktop metaphor has an economically attractive business model, too: There is a solid base of third-party software developers, a working channel for getting products to market, and other necessary components for incrementally growing an existing market. But it will be difficult for anyone but the top few companies to make money.

A mobile platform with an extended desktop metaphor and compatibility with desktop systems will appeal to experienced users of pcs who want mobility and integration, particularly corporate buyers looking to mobilize their work forces.

Such a platform will have limited appeal to new, less sophisticated audiences. Especially for those unaccustomed to it, the desktop metaphor still has its failings and inconsistencies. For one thing, people typically lack the discipline to reverse the desktop's tendency toward entropy: Files get lost; documents get messed up. Reinventing the business

The other approach, much riskier, posits a new metaphor, a better way of representing interaction. One example is Apple's Newton, with its endless roll of smart paper; there will be others, such as General Magic's. Personal electronics devices are supposed to sell at lower prices than traditional pea. Apple is betting that the software model must change, too, so it is designing not only a new software interface, but also an information market appropriate for Newton-style devices. This approach requires different alliances (across industries), hardware distribution (the mass market; consumer electronics), software development (third parties? one party?). content development (D&B? Mom & Pop?), and software distribution (vending machines? subscriptions? wireless downloads?). Each component must be rethought and tuned to make financial sense.

Properly designed. such systems can complement desktop systems -- or work without them altogether. Not everyone needs a full-fledged pc. (Also. many functions can be shared with a more intelligent network, which we will address in the next issue of Release 1.0.) Reinvented systems will appeal to people who feel they don't need a computer, but just want help getting organized or keeping in touch.

At its most ambitious. this approach redefines the act of communicating. It's about fighting the law of entropy by introducing mechanisms to preserve some order and minimize human effort. More on that in a moment-first a closer look at PenPoint as a unified messaging platform.

Gonna do it all

Although GO's audience is clearly the portable pen-system buyer, PenPoint is a model for how desktop operating systems are evolving. GO has built a highly configurable, scalable, device-independent, polymorphic, standalone operating environment.

PenPoint avoids a profusion of overlapping windows (which don't work on small screens anyway) by using a notebook metaphor with tabs as navigation aids. PenPoint also manages messy stuff that users have to do in other OSs, such as making sure messages are received intact. In fact. rather than define new network protocols. PenPoint can map to different protocol stacks, and can switch between them transparently and automatically.

Closer to the application layer. GO provides PenPoint with serviceable, bare-bones implementations and encourages third parties to differentiate themselves by providing better functions. Commonly performed tasks are eventually generalized and become a part of the PenPoint environment, either as dynamically linked applications (which become available to all documents) or as parts of the core operating system. As a result, there is little redundant code; applications are smaller and better suited to portable environments.

Recently, GO engineers added more messaging functionality to PenPoint with the GO Message Center, now in beta testing, which handles a variety of mail services. The first such service interface, to be bundled with all PenPoint systems, is AT&T Mail. This is a new channel for AT&T; conversely, it opens new avenues of distribution for PenPoint software. For example, AT&T Mail can become a transport for software upgrades delivered over a wireless network, then automatically installed. Other additions include GO Fax, a deferred-fax driver, and a Dialing Location Sheet that lets users register their current location so PenPoint can add prefixes or drop area codes as appropriate.

PenPoint's Address Book Protocol is a linchpin for its unified messaging, and a model that other vendors should emulate. The Protocol specifies methods for the exchange of simple. loosely structured information such as business cards, to-do items and calendar events. Without APIs for the interchange of such items, we would be doomed to rekey and reenter this stuff forever. Avoiding redundant work is central to the success of personal information management, and therefore to personal electronic products. Without APIs to let people with dissimilar platforms exchange event and object information, the whole infrastructure grinds to a halt.

The Address Book Protocol GO is developing will communicate with many other directory services through agreed-upon APIs. (We will deal more with directories and address books in next month's Release 1.0.) Eventually, calendar events from PenSoft's Perspective might be posted to Microsoft's Scheduler+ (in Windows for Workgroups) or on a Macintosh network. Also, the Address Book will have automatic synchronization capabilities and interfaces to host directories, though not in its first release.

The business-card API alone is a powerful concept. Far more than a person's name and phone number, the card object could contain the person's e-mail addresses, fax numbers, picture, office hours, itinerary (tied to different phone numbers) and allergies (well, if you wanted to publish them). It could have a voice print for authentication. With the API, PenPoint applications can exchange semantically rich information. Communication with external applications will necessarily be more limited. GO is interested in such integration, but is not devoting resources to it now; a third party would do well to develop APIs that help make this initiative interoperate with others (see Apple's OCE, page 13).

GO's mission is not to invent the best interface, but instead to provide licensees with an independent, stable and efficient platform, sharing functions across applications as its object-oriented nature supports. The visual user interface is thus secondary. GO is betting that independent software vendors will come up with useful new ideas, including new interface technology (licensees can strip the Notebook User Interface out completely if they wish to, replacing it with their own). This is where things could get sticky: Even if some of the ISVs' interface ideas are great, many are likely to get lost in the fray. Buyers will see many different faces on PenPoint machines, which could make it difficult for one particularly brilliant one to reach broad acceptance.

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