If the device is something we make and is developed in a collaborative manner, it does not have a price per se, at least before we market it as such. If the first production batch is given to attendees and sponsors, we pretty much solve the ethical issues that prevented us to give the iPhone to members of the press at the last Office 2.0 Conference.

Regarding the use of Mac OS X on generic hardware, this is impossible unfortunately, for licensing reasons. The only legal way I know one can make a device legitimately running Mac OS X is by repurposing an existing device manufactured by Apple.

Best regards
 -Ismael

At the risk of having missed something, isn’t one of the motivators for this to keep the price low enough to include vendors and the press? If this device is basically a docking case that requires an iPod Touch or iPhone, no matter how cheap you engineer it, you’ll still be at about the same price ($400+ per device) which would be cost-prohibitive and run afoul of the ethical issues you cited in San Francisco. In a later post you talk about sacrificing an iPhone per device — but that’s not going to fly either.

I think some of the other suggestions regarding running Mac OS X on generic hardware are more workable from a cost perspective — and frankly I’d look at OQO or one of the other high-end vendors to see if they’d be willing to assist in design and/or manufacture for suitable consideration.

Anyway, I do look forward to the continuing saga of the Redux.

You’re right, finding the right form factor is difficult, and one single device won’t fit the bill entirely. But the concept of modular/composite devices is more and more appealing to me, especially if one could build them around such a fantastic platform as the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Please keep sending us feedback.

Best regards
 -Ismael

More recently, I made a pattern out of placing abandoned Tablet PCs on top of the PDAs. Same end result, just larger and more expensive. The key to all this is the drawer, their final resting place. None of them hit the spot. My BlackBerry continues to keep itself out of the drawer, but to be perfectly honest, it only does one thing well and falls way short on other things. For instance, how can it be that they still don’t support “view by category” for Tasks? GTD is impossible on a BlackBerry.

But I refuse to give up and I read your posts on this topic with great interest. One of these days someone will totally nail this space. In the meantime, it’s a KRZR, a BlackBerry, and a MacBook for me. Each one good for something, none of them good at everything.