10 Years Ago…

… March, 1996, the world was introduced to the Palm Pilot.
Alexander over at Mobileread, posted a nice little comment about it, including some images gakked from the original advertisements.
I originally poopooed the Palmpilot. Something that had no removable media, no ports (the original units had no IR ports), and no expandability seemed a step backward in computing. But (then) US Robotics did things right, with a hotsync mechanism that worked very well, and a simple, fast GUI for the device. That, combined with an easily adopted development platform, made the Palmpilot a success.
I’ve commented before that I think the Palm line is dying. I have a Treo 650, and enjoy using it a lot, but as computing power grows in the handheld, the old Palm platform is looking long in the tooth. Where optimization and conciseness was necessary to get a stable, fast application into limited hardware, today’s hardware platforms allow for so much more. The Palm event-driven OS is showing it’s age.
Yes, I know there’s Cobalt palm’s mythical next generation platform, but as I’ve said, I feel it’s too late. Windows Mobile wil be the next generation handheld platform.

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A wandering geek. Toys, shiny things, pursuits and distractions.

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