Hi folks. When I wrote my last post about the iPDA rumor, it seemed a little iffy but I liked the prediction and hoped it was true. However, now that some time has passed, I've noticed that no one else is writing about it and one of my dear readers, Rich, suggested in his comment that Mr. Manzione doesn't have a lot of credibility. Rich referred me to a sort of *poison pen* post about Apple and its future that Mr. Manzione had written last Spring two weeks after Apple wouldn't provide a free replacement for his 17" Powerbook whose screen had broken too easily from his point of view (the matter seems to have resolved in John's favor later).
I'm not a regular reader of Mr. Manzione, so can't comment on his credibility in general, but he is still to this day an avid Mac user having just bought a new 15" Powerbook and blogged it enthusiastically today. He was awfully mad last Spring but still hangs in there and devotes himself to writing about the Mac.
Right now, this is a just one rumor with one person putting it out there and not giving any evidence except his word to support it. I recommend that you not have your hopes up too high on this rumor until some of the major rumor sites like Think Secret or MacOS Rumors have specifics that match up with Mr. Manzione's.
The PDA market is shrinking (17% in unit terms last year) but then the smartphone market (which is a PDA within a cell phone is increasing). My arguments and analysis in my last post still stand. I think it is inevitable that we will have palm-sized or slightly larger computers with at least 640x480 resolution in the next year. I hope Apple is one of the players. I like the idea of a hard drive inside such a device. We'll see how it plays out.