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Palm Before the PalmPilot
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Oct 21, 2007 05:33 PM
from the deep-in-the-mysts-of-the-past dept.
from the deep-in-the-mysts-of-the-past dept.
Gammu writes "SiliconUser has an in-depth history of the Palm, starting with its humble roots. The Pilot (later PalmPilot and finally just Palm) saved Palm Computing. Before the release of the Pilot, the company was subsisting (barely) on revenue from connectivity packages for HP PDA's and a version of Graffiti for the Newton. This was because its first PDA hardware product had failed under the weight of feature creep and design by committee. The first article in a series follows the early days of this company-reforming product."
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I miss Visor (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mind you its about double the thickness of a TX but its extremely useful with its built in hard drive.
Movies and music galore.
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Sent to palm 3 times at my own expense; they claim there's nothing wrong with it.
In addition, there's a lot of noise coming from the amplifier in the unit - using it with 32 ohm headphones (which most consumer headphones are at) is very very noisy.
All in all, I really loved the unit; the web browser worked well and it played divx/xvid movies with ease. Bu
Re:I miss Visor (Score:4, Informative)
It involves changing the touch screen's refresh frequency.
Apparently it works well.
Dont know about the noise from the amplifier. My Lifedrive has great audio.
Parent
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See this note regarding Palm and the screen noise:
http://kb.palm.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,kb=PalmSupportKB,CASE=obj(31651),ts=Palm_External2001 [palm.com]
So they know about it, claim it's a non-issue and won't fix for free. Or for any amount of money.
Defective from the manufacturer.
I have tinnitus in my
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See, she was pissed that I wasn't using the 300$ pda she had bought me. However, now she's in agreement with me that I have a valid reason for not using it. That will teach me to buy new untested technology. The big bummer is that it's a really neat device.... collecting dust in my basement.
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Palm fixed the connection under warranty, apparently by replacing the entire front half of the unit.
Ever since then (it's been about 3 years), it has been totally silent. So, clearly, not -every- unit has this problem, and it can be fixed.
Re:I miss Visor (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, the iPaq 1945 series with an earlier version of Windows Mobile was much, much better. I believe today nobody at Microsoft or HP actually uses PocketPCs. Everything has gone over to cellphones, leaving those of us who still need a non-phone PDA for whatever reason (generally, security policies) almost high and dry. I guess they have to follow the market, but I wish they would at least not advertise and ship stuff that doesn't work.
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Re:I miss Visor (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. To my mind, the Tungsten is a giant step backward. It's particularly stupid that Graffiti is what made the pilot in the first place but in the Tungsten they put Graffiti 2, which is slow, unreliable and hyper-sensitive to small timing variations. I really hope they fired the idiot who thought that was a good idea.
With the Visor and Graffiti, I could take notes continuously without looking at the screen (great for meetings). With the Tungsten and Graffiti 2, I have to keep checking that it read what I wrote or that it hasn't interpreted an "i" as "l." or vice versa. I've never figured out how to get it to consistently read an "r" or an "h". The original Graffiti was fast and sure. Graffiti 2 is so bad that I'll probably be looking for something with one of those moronic little keyboards as my next PDA. I know that is really slumming in technological backwaters, but I don't see much choice.
Parent
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"The primary reason for the change was the fact that in April 1997 Xerox had sued PalmSource, Inc. over its use of Graffiti. After a legal fight lasting a number of years, and despite the dismissal of the case by a federal judge, Xerox won a reversal late in 2001 in the U.S. Court of Appeals."
However, Googling for "graffiti 2 xerox" also gives you this El Reg article [theregister.co.uk] where it looks like Xerox didn't really own Graffiti 1 at all...
Interesting to know this. I (and m
Next PC a casio? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to David Pogue, in his book Piloting Palm, Casio was a particularly difficult partner to work with. Their relative inexperience with software and hardware development (the company's major portable products were digital wristwatches, calculators and inexpensive pocket organizers) made them irrationally intolerant of any bugs, no matter how minor or how unlikely to affect the user.
Can you imagine what IT would be like if Casio had created the PC? Why, it might actually work.
Amazing that IT has managed to train us so well to the existence of bugs in final products that we laugh at a company that seems to think bugs are unacceptable.
Truly amazing how we come to accept that the software we use is not functioning correctly.
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Re:Next PC a casio? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Can you imagine what IT would be like if Casio had created the PC? Why, it might actually work.
I can, it would either be a wrist watch, or one of their incarnations of a PDA. I owned a Casio PDA, it ran Windows CE, and it worked pretty well, but obviously Casio changed their tune as they dove into more complex markets. I think the article is right in noting that to make something as complex as a "computer" is going to allow for a set of bugs to exist, or to spend inordinate amounts of money making sure the entire project is perfect. It's possible, look at the Space program, but its not cheap. Yo
Great thingies (Score:4, Interesting)
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This afternoon I disassembled, resurrected, and reassembled my Palm IIIc with no problems at all, after it sat in a drawer for three years.
Excellent design that the product can be opened and closed, including battery replacement, with no problem at all and using standard screws. Glad to have my IIIc back, and must admit that I should have never dropped in 2meters onto concrete.
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Yep, just dug out my Palm Pilot 1000/8M Superpilot and chucked a couple of new AAAs in it. It still works fine, in spite of a full length crack in the case. It's impressive how well it works compared to modern PDAs - just the necessities, fast, stable.
Wish I could have said the same of my WinCE machines, though the Symbian smartphone (Sony Ericsson M600i) I have now seems stable enough, if a little sluggish.
If Palm isn't careful (Score:5, Insightful)
in the meantime the iphone is looking to totally overtake that market (if they start working on bringing out third-party apps). if palm allows apple to start releasing third-party apps palm may as well throw in the towel.
i would like to keep using my palm-based treo. but i am getting so tired of the crashes and horrific blue tooth that it's getting to the point where i might just jump that shark and go the iphone route.
well - i will when a linux app like jpilot can sync with the iphone. if that never happens i'll wait for the open moko. if that doesn't happen i'll just scrap the pda and get a regular ol' phone.
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It's unfortunate. I've owned at least 4 Palm-based handheld, and they've all been incredibly useful. A little fragile (hence my owning so many of them), but I also paid more for each one than the iTouch, anyway.
Re:If Palm isn't careful (Score:4, Insightful)
It might mean a sharp downturn in the number of non Apple PDAs purchased for personal use. That's a far cry different than the wholesale revolution you are claiming it will be, though.
Parent
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That's why Windows wins. Inertia trumps competence. Nobody who already made an investment on Windows Mobile software will be able to run its business on anything else, iPhone, Palm or Linux, and will either have to pay to port the software or enjoy l
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This quote is particularly telling I think:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/gear/2007-09-21-palm-future_N.htm [usatoday.com]
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Once Apple releases a reasonable SDK, it's game over for the entire handheld computer market.
If all Apple does is release an SDK, they're going to wind up giving Palm the biggest PR coup ever.
The iPhone/iPod lacks basic features that are standard in Palm -- copy & paste, an IR-device port, bluetooth, expandable memory, integrated search, being able to schedule a calendar event, etc.
If Palm suddenly knows what they're doing, they'll launch a new Linux-based Palm OS PDA within 3 months of the iPhone SDK, and aim their PR campaign as "don't hack your iPhone -- buy the device that does what you wa
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Try It, You'll Like It (Score:2)
You should try one.
I have not had any problem taking notes, writing emails, entering URLS, and even entering punctuation.
I much prefer this to any other phone keyboard I've used.
SteveM
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Frankly, there's large portions of the smartphone market that won't be satisfied with the iPhone re
Your Men Are Already Dead ... (Score:4, Informative)
if palm allows apple to start releasing third-party apps ...
And what exactly can Palm do to prevent this?
Palm has been dead for awhile. All that's left is for someone to unplug the life support system.
SteveM
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The original Pilot (and later the Palm Pilot) was made by US Robotics and was eventually spun-off into an independent company. Jeff Hawkins and the original Palm team left to start Handspring where they eventually produced the Treo -- the first PalmOS smartphone. Meanwhile a "Palm ecosystem" of companies which licensed the PalmOS had blossomed and Palm split into two companies: PalmOne which continued to make PDAs and PalmSource which was tasked with creating and selling the n
The Zoomer and Pam Vx....mmmmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
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And speaking of the Newton, I certainly hope that Apple's iPhone SDK lives up to the hype. An iPhone with full PDA capabilities (and yes, someone's already made a stylus for it) might just be my third.
Almost like Woz pining for early days... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I do appreciate the greater flexibility of Windows mobile devices, and prefer it over the palm, but the speed, elegance, battery life, and so on, just aren't there. Too bad we can't have the best of both of these worlds...
Awful Article (Score:5, Interesting)
Man, for once I read TFA and what do I get? A barely coherent, unedited swamp of words. Did anyone else find this article a slog to read?
It's never explained what Touchdown is. It's never explained what the "secure feature" is. I'm assuming Touchdown is the orginal name for what was to become the Pilot. But I don't really know. The word is just used suddenlty out without preamble, as if it had been previously introduced.
How about the following:
Perhaps it's just me, but the whole article read like the above excerpt.
Really? Zero to 95% accuracy? That's pretty, uh, fucking awful. Somehow I doubt that's what Macword published.
Wow, spelling mistake and redundancy in the same sentence.
See how the second sentence here should not follow the first? It should have followed the sentence preceeded the excerpt. This kind of construction left me rereading the same few lines several times over.
Guess that woulda bin bad fer bidness.
Hey Silicon User, hire a fucking editor!
Someone missed the point of tagging (Score:2, Funny)
Ah, the Vx (Score:2)
I wore it out. It worked, and Grafitti was just wonderful.
Then I got a Palm III. And a modem. Having HandMail was a blessing. I was much more self-sufficient.
Finally, I got a Vx to replace my tired III... Sleek and wonderful, another modem of course, slick apps, and yes shirtpocket capable.
But I always had a Day-Timer, and used
Palm is still around? (Score:2)
I used my Handspring Deluxe for 6 years, it was good for it's time, and the interface is still pretty good, but it just doesn't have the features I want in a PDA today. When it came time to find a replacement, I didn't even consider Palm. I didn't have confidence that I'd be able to find modern apps to run on a new Palm device.
Re:Lookout! (Score:4, Informative)
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'So? What i's your point?
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