Palm: Gone But Not Forgotten

[David Matthews]

Palm, the inventor of the Palm Pilot, is one of the earliest and most successful personal digital assistants which made the name "Palm" synonymous with PDAs, a leading handheld computing form factor for nearly a decade and the precursor to the modern smartphone.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2083-palm/

 

[neeyik]

I used a Palm III for years, convinced that it would somehow sort my life out for me, do wonders for my career, make me an international playboy, etc. Sadly, it got used for nothing more than storing shopping lists and phone numbers that I would constantly forget

 

[QuantumPhysics]

My first Palm was a Palm Pilot III xe.

When I got it in 2001, I was just a lowly intern working in the WTC. I loved it because it was revolutionary at the time. Of course, this was long before WifFi was prevalent and back then you had to buy your own modem and service wasn't organized or engineered to get your money very well. I didn't have mobile internet till I bought an HP Jornada 525.

there was no one device back then that did it all. Web Browsing, organization, webcamera, MP3 music player...

I look back to 2007 and am so thankful Apple came and literally murdered all of the competition.

 

[Irata]

Still remember my Handspring fondly. Using springboard modules, you could add a lot of functionality - GPS, a camera, Wifi, turn it into a phone, the presenter was great...

But, you had to chose which functionality you needed each time. So either phone or Wifi but not both. Compared to today's smartphones which can do all at once that seems archaic.

One big advantage Palm / Handspring had over the first Windows CE devices was battery life (Had an HP phone with color screen for work). The latter really drained it in no time, even on standby. That was a big issue while travelling.

 

[Waikano]

Sorry, I had pretty much forgot about them until I saw the headline of this article Now let's have a great article about The Amiga ;-) Which is NOT FORGOTTEN.

 

[MaxSmarties]

Wow I almost forgot about it !
I owned two Palm in my early days with PDA, before switching to Windows CE and iPaq.
The firs was a relatively cheap m105 model, that introduced me to the PDA world. Then I bought a much expensive m505, with a color display.
They were fast and reliable, something I couldnt say about Windows CE devices...

 

[psycros]

Kinda surprised the Centro isn't mentioned specifically. It was the most popular Palm phone and could match a Blackberry on sheer usability. Its biggest issue was being too small. Man, how I miss the days when devices were made to be serve the user rather than the other way around.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I used a Palm III for years, convinced that it would somehow sort my life out for me, do wonders for my career, make me an international playboy, etc. Sadly, it got used for nothing more than storing shopping lists and phone numbers that I would constantly forget

Exactly my expectations for my Palm Pilot Pro and eventually what it was used for. But I can tell you why: It's alarm function wasn't loud enough to be heard if it was in your pocket in even a mildly noisy environment. It would actually have been useful if the reminder alarm was loud enough.

A single feature fail, what a disappointment.

 

[Squid Surprise]

I loved my Palm V - used it for ages... eventually went with the iPAQ which ruled... at games

While I love my iPhone, I do sometimes pull my old V out just to look....

 

[p51d007]

My first PDA was the Handspring Visor. Heck, even today, when I write the number 8, I do it "backwards" because of the way the PDA utility required, for writing the number 8. If it wasn't for the scratches (even with a screen protector), I'd probably still use something similar. I could write it on that, MUCH faster than on an onscreen keyboard.
My last PDA was the Dell something or other color PDA running the windows software.

 

[David Matthews]

Kinda surprised the Centro isn't mentioned specifically. It was the most popular Palm phone and could match a Blackberry on sheer usability. Its biggest issue was being too small. Man, how I miss the days when devices were made to be serve the user rather than the other way around.

I won't lie, I totally forgot about the Centro when I wrote this lol. It was tough trying to figure out which stuff to include and exclude from the article. Ironically, I was considering buying the Centro as my first smartphone before the Pre came out.

 

[lazer]

I still have mine, up high in one of my cabinets. Some times I take it out to see an old friends address or phone number. Still works, but no longer in vogue......

 

[cliffordcooley]

I never had one. So for me there is nothing to forget.

 

[Jeff Re]

At one point, Graffiti ruined my handwriting and I had a heck of a time writing "Ks."

 

[valoryea]

My first PDA was the Handspring Visor. There was one day when I lazily used my finger to interact with it instead of the stylus, and my colleague's sister (who was around) commented that was such a "low class" act.

And look where we are now.

 

[Danny101]

I bought one, but never really used it. It'll be in my electronic history collection.

 

[Gromit337]

Did the author bother to proofread his article? Obviously not, otherwise he wouldn't have written "would get acquired" and "spinned off". Palm licensed their OS to other parties too, including Sony, whose devices were utterly gorgeous in comparison to contemporary Palms. I do wish Palm had managed to bring OS6 'Cobalt' to fruition.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Did the author bother to proofread his article? Obviously not, otherwise he wouldn't have written "would get acquired" and "spinned off". Palm licensed their OS to other parties too, including Sony, whose devices were utterly gorgeous in comparison to contemporary Palms. I do wish Palm had managed to bring OS6 'Cobalt' to fruition.

Nothing like criticism 4 months after the article is posted....

 

[jelabarre59]

The thing is, PalmOS had a feature that we STILL don't have with Android and Apple's iOS; the ability to sync ***locally*** without having to depend on some internet service as an intermediary. And this dependence on the snoops at Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc also means that local PDA applications on your computer have ALSO withered away.

We need to return to the ability to keep your data LOCAL-only, but we know the likes of Google will do anything legal and illegal to make sure that doesn't happen.

 

[Squid Surprise]

The thing is, PalmOS had a feature that we STILL don't have with Android and Apple's iOS; the ability to sync ***locally*** without having to depend on some internet service as an intermediary. And this dependence on the snoops at Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc also means that local PDA applications on your computer have ALSO withered away.

We need to return to the ability to keep your data LOCAL-only, but we know the likes of Google will do anything legal and illegal to make sure that doesn't happen.

You can synch your iPhone to iTunes without internet... just can’t synch to the cloud (duh) or update your OS without it...

 

[SRB]

Nice line about HP seeing the handwriting on the wall, too bad that wasn't why they pulled it.
HP's newest CEO, Léo Apotheker, came onboard shortly after the touchpad launch. He wanted to take the company away from hardware, and toward service, a la IBM. He shuttered the webOS projects, purchased a boondoggle software company for a ton more than it's worth, and tried to
scuttle the pc business, which was eventually spun off.