Palm Pilot: The Tablet That Schooled Apple

[Amir Shoam]

The Palm Pilot, released in the 1990s, revolutionized mobile computing and digital assistants (PDAs). It paved the way for smartphones, shaping many of the mobile technologies we now rely on today.

Read the full article here.

Palm Pilot: The Tablet That Schooled Apple

 

[waclark]

I had one of the original Palm Pilots. I loved it. The company I worked for was big in to the Day Timer system, but I hated it as my handwriting is not that great. The Palm allowed me to track my appointments, take notes and manage my business contacts.

I never really like the Palm Treo phones. Once the iPhone hit, the Palm was retired.

 

[Ecurb]

Palm pilot was brilliant and I too had been using a Daytimer written record. However, my Palm pilot would periodically glitch up (static electricity I suspect) and lose everything I had entered. Not too big an issue as I could sync with my PC and get everything back except for that day's info. However, the last sync my Palm pilot did before I pitched it into the garbage thought I had deleted everything and so in syncing, deleted everything from my PC Palm pilot data. Could never trust Palm pilot again.

 

[p51d007]

I never had the palm pilot, but I had 2 of the handspring visors though. Got pretty good and writing using the graffiti method of writing. Heck, even to this day, I write my number 8's backwards, which is how you had to do it on the Handspring.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Loved my Palm V… bought the m500 for one of my client companies and they loved them… switched to a pocketPC and never looked back (until reading this article!).

Once the iPhone 3G was out, retired my pocketPC as well - but I still miss it

 

[Hom3r]

I remember them. Never actually used one for more than 1 minute.

They no internet?
If lost, then what?

 

[jlivens]

I was working for 3Com when this came out... a very nifty and lightweight device... and the 'palm' writing didn't take long to get used to! Great memories... still have one laying around here at my house

 

[BTRDAYZ]

You missed a very important Palm Pilot in your historical overview. The Palm VII.

Before smartphones, Palm took one of their handhelds and inserted a wireless transmitter in it. It connected to a Mobitex 900 mhz band. Slow, but decent for the early Internet. On this Palm VII, they also developed the first mobile App Store. You could download “web clipping” apps. These were essentially little browsers that could query a website and just get the relevant text minus all the graphics… provided the web developer modified their site to work with this web clipping app. So one could read various news sites, blogs etc. You could even access Mapquest, so long before Google’s arrival, a Palm VII user could download maps as needed on the fly, to have driving directions getting them where they needed to go.

You couldn’t talk on the Palm VII, but Windows Mobile smartphones and then Palm phones like the Keyocera soon followed. Once faster networks became a thing with a more rich web experience, Palm VII quietly went away. But it was a fantastic development at the time!

 

[toooooot]

I loved their round phones so much.

 

[Megalomaniac]

I had a Palm Pilot IIIa when I worked in the WTC (right up till 9 -1-2001).
It was an interesting little device for storing phone numbers but ultimately it was more like one of those Tiger Game Coms for functionality. Very tedious to use. Later I replaced it with an HP Jornada 525. I even got the modem for it. I was hoping to get the HP Jornada 928 but it never surfaced in the US and by the time it did the iPhone was out and demolished all the competition.

 

[Megalomaniac]

"In fact, many of the gesture-based controls in modern smartphones can trace their roots back to Palm's webOS".

The swipe up gesture where apps turned into "cards" to be swiped away to shut them down...specifically from the Palm Pre.

 

[jungleexplorer]

You are somewhat right. Palm released the Palm TX in 2005, two years before the first iPhone. The Palm TX was an amazing device that was way ahead of the rest of the market. It had Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. You could connect a GPS to it as well. It had a beautiful full color touchscreen. It even had a full size SD card slot to add storage to it. And guess what, it also had an App Store where you could download apps for it.

When Apple released to iPhone and was spamming the world with misleading ads about how it was the FIRST of it's kind, I was laughing my butt off at the whoppers Apple was telling. Accept for having phone abilities, the first iPhone was a massive step down from the Palm TX.

One of the great features of the Palm TX was its energy conservation. When I finally moved to an Android smartphone, I kept my Palm TX. I picked it up over a year later, and it still had 75% battery life, after sitting in a box for a whole year in Standby. Palm TXs had Instant on and used almost zero power in standby mode.

Apple did not invent anything. They just stole ideas from the Palm TX and added a phone to it, and then lied and took credit for being the first.

 

[dalpilot]

I remember "getting along" with Pocket Planners for years (couldn't get on board with the larger ones) and copying over my contact data from year to year. When the US Robotics PalmPilot debuted in 1995 @ $299 I couldn't put in my order fast enough. That PalmPilot served me for years as nothing comparable came out until the iPhone (I was about as anti Apple as there was at the time) and didn't get my first Smart Phone until the Palm Pre (which was awesome in a very small form factor and just enough storage to add my podcasts to it manually) which never moved past 3G. I picked up a number of them cheap and used them for years as music/podcast players. They never really moved past their their graffiti roots until LG purchased them to use as the basis (WebOS) for their TV OS. Was decades ahead of its time and it really deserved a better ending than just LG TV OS.