Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Personal Digital Assistants like the Palm Pilot or Pocket PCs or even Apple’s Newton were usually not very useful unless you regularly synced them with your "real" computer. They ranged from very simple and cheap to very expensive — and almost all of them were pretty slow. The most powerful PDAs tried to do way too much and had fairly awful battery life.

Sound familiar?

No, no it doesn't sound familiar at all. Syncing with my desktop was a nice luxury, but not a necessity. More of a back up than anything, the Palm Pilot and Newton were useful as a standalone device (Pocket PC? Eh, not so much).

Slow? Is the author too young to have used such devices and just looking at CPU clock speeds? For the tasks for which it was designed, a Palm Pilot would run rings around any device I use today. Check my task list? A button on the front of the Palm. iOS or Android? Unlock device, search for app icon that hopefully is on the front page. Tap icon, wait for it to load and then go find it's "cloud store", bunch of back-and-forth while the two sync, then you can use the app. Now, the difference is pretty small on modern mobile CPUs and LTE, but the Palm still wins and certainly is not comparatively slow.

Awful battery life? Now the author is just making shit up. A Newton would run for weeks on some AA batteries. I've got one on my shelf that hasn't been turned on in a year. I'd bet a paycheck that I could grab it today, hit the button and it would power up. Try that with your iXuslaxy 12 in 12 months time. Don't recall good numbers on the Palm, but I can guarantee you that I wouldn't abide putting a new pair of AAs in it on a daily basis, so I'll assume it would run for multiple days or weeks on some batteries. Pretty sure early Pocket PCs needed to be charged daily...just like modern mobile devices, so that's a wash and a long way away from "awful battery life".

No, I didn't finish the article with that opening salvo.

The Palm with the color screen, and Internet access was great! Forget the name, but it still works, and sitting in a drawer. Too lazy to walk over.

It was around $300.00

It saved me so much money. I used to go to liquidation sales. In one instance, I needed to find what 900 units of Halo III The collector's edition were selling for on eBay. They were going for $40-$50 bucks. I bought all the games at $5 a piece. The other buyers thought I was crazy.

No one had smart phones. I really thought I finally had a tool to get ahead in life. Libraries offered free internet access without logging in, and it seemed wherever I was, someone had an open wifi I could connect to. This little Palm always had internet access, or though it seemed? I remember thinking about a smart phone, and couldn't bring myself to pay for data?

I blinked, about 9 months went by, and it seemed like everyone was on a smart phone. It was nice while it lasted.

As to the device, I don't think they marketed it the right way.

I still think the Palm, all of them, were great little devices. I remember hooking one up to a gps. I took it down the Rogue River, so I could be prepared for any rapids greater than 3. It kinda worked, but need fine tuning. It wasen't Palms fault; I didn't have the right maps loads.

Just looked for the devise, and can't find it.

Palm products were great. They, along with the accessories were make well. It's ashame what happened to that company.

Amusingly enough he then praises the Palm later. I think if he replaced that opening bit with "early smartphones, like windows 6.5 smartphones" it would be dead-on. Well, except the syncing thing. That's still bs.

So I went back and finished the article. The problem with his opening paragraph is that it is his premise for the rest of the article. And the truth is not "smartwatches are too slow/battery-hungry/useless", it's that they try to do too much. The author does use the Pebble as an example, and that's what he should have gone with. The Pebble is the Palm of smartwatches: simple, good battery life, pretty snappy, and doesn't try to overreach (much). I'm happy with mine, and the reason this Apple "fanboy" doesn't have an Apple Watch is because: battery-hungry, slow, and tries to do too much for too much money.

From where I sit, most companies are trying to put a "computer on my wrist" when I'm really quite content with a "display on my wrist" (Pebble, mostly) until we can sort out the power management and optimizations needed to make "computer on my wrist" a workable product.

Precisely this. You summed up why I love my Pebble too. It's a watch first and foremost, with a few handy gadgets. Rather than a smartphone on my wrist fashioned like a watch.

The original Pebble seemed interesting. This new one with the whole timeline concept seems over-designed.

Poses the general question, which approach is "better"? The focused tool is more efficient and easier to understand, but things tend toward convergence of previous separate functions.

Is it the way of the world that we start with focused tools to introduce a concept, and turn it into a feature of another product to gain mass acceptance? What then pushes the gravity of convergence toward one device or another?

I have a Palm IIIxe and it lasted months on a pair of AAA (not AA) batteries. (Still have it but don't use it. Can't believe I used to keep it in my pocket. It's huge by today's standards.)

I can't shake the feel that Verge is basically a lifestyle magazine for "geeks". Thus self-expression and entertainment is valued way above utility.

And the mentioned devices were utility first and foremost (aka "nerdy").

Agreed. When The Verge first started, I was impressed with their content. It seemed generally well thought out and researched. Since Joshua Topolsky left, a lot of what (and who) had made the site great has disappeared, replaced with half thought out opinion pieces and trendy fluff.

I do also miss 90 seconds on The Verge.

(Off topic: other then Ars Technica and Anandtech, are there any sites people recommend for good tech writing and news?)

I don't get why people hold Topolsky in such high regards.

And i have given up on Ars technica these days.

I still have my Handspring visor edge. I vaguely remember writing some software for it, but I clearly remember it running for more than two weeks on a single charge. Desktop sync probably would have been a higher priority if it had needed to be recharged more than twice a month.

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