Palm OS and the devices that ran it
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Unfortunately, it took them too long to acknowledge and figure out touchscreens, and by then they had dwindled their capital to such a point that a buyout was their only hope of surviving at any rate, and their touch screen phone never shipped. HP buying them out was the worst thing that could have happened, they had no resolve to sustain the phone market, which was and is incredibly competitive. I do feel though, with sustained investment and prioritization, that WebOS could have supplanted Android, particularly if they licensed it (which I think was ultimately what Palm needed to do. Their hardware was never the secret sauce).
FireFox OS was also a valiant attempt at something similar, but Mozilla couldn't quite get it where it needed to be, unfortunately.
disclosure: this is a very biased take, very much my opinions, but I look forward to discussion!
EDIT: To clarify, what I mean by 'figuring out touchscreens' is using one as the primary modality of interaction, sans any hardware inputs (like a hardware keyboard). For instance, the Pre had a touch screen, but no onscreen keyboard, so to type anything into it, you had to slide up the screen.
You're perhaps misremembering Palm's webOS hardware. Touch was always part of the platform.
The first device, Palm Pre launched in 2009, had a multitouch screen:
what I mean is they didn't adopt the touchscreen paradigms, such as onscreen keyboards. The Pre required you to use the hardware keyboard, and had no virtual keyboard functionality built in. It lead to some odd interaction patterns.
My recollection - which could be wrong - is that Palm did pivot to pure multi-touch interactions but it was never released, as HP largely gave up on the phone market by that time.
I could bring a couple spare batteries on a trip and never need to charge my phone.
Windows Phone was similar. Superior product (not just technically--in usability testing too), but late to the party and lacking cultural caché considering its parent company.
I'm also biased though. :)
Sadly they never got enough market share (or perhaps investment by MS to pay for third party apps to get developed) to get the pool of Applications needed to attract users, which is unfortunate.
The one side effect of the 'easy to newcomers' UX, was experienced users had to forget a bit about what they knew about how a mobile device was supposed to work to use it - thats not a huge barrier, but I suspect it also made adoption by existing power users a little slower.
Windows Phone was absolutely crushing it with first-time smartphone adopters, but for folks switching it was tougher, because WP didn't use depend on the whole "grid of siloed apps" concept as much. If you'd already used an iPhone, it took a second to unlearn.
And considering anyone making smartphone apps in 2010 was still on the early-adopter side of the curve--they'd already experienced that way of using a phone. There were still a lot of first-timers in the following 5 years, but the folks at the agencies and companies making the software weren't them.
Hate it or love it, skumorphism educated billions on how to use a smartphone -- no one else even came close.
Now what is left is an anemic team trying to push WinUI/WinAppSDK, while pretending all of that didn't happen, and that the developer community is still willing to put up with it.
Though I'm not sure how much users noticed that fiasco (my SO didn't) and honestly, even when WP7 was getting updates and looked healthy it was pulling teeth to get companies to make a 3rd app.
It was a more usable, and actually usable NewtonOS.
Lots that can be learned from it today still. When horsepower wasn't cheap, the device and OS had to focus on something and that was actually assisting with productivity.
WebOS still might be ahead of it's time depending on how it's looked at.
An entire mobile, responsive, offline first operating system which was almost entirely HTML/Javascript based. Running a phone and a tablet.
In 2009. [2] It was too bad they missed the window when iPhone launched, a good case study in missing the timing when the product was actually pretty good. Palm had the headstart on touch screens.
In 2012, the open version of webOS ran as an Android. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat%C3%ADas_Duarte
[2] https://www.fastcompany.com/1653488/palms-lead-webos-designe...
[3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/matiasduarte/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS
[5] https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141855-open-webos-can-now...
On the Treo 650, for instance, making a call meant hitting Send (a hard key) from anywhere in the UI, typing a name to start a live search - you did not need to focus into a text box first - and hitting Send again to start the call. Likewise, if I wanted to send a text message, I'd hit the SMS button, start typing a name, hit Select to open that conversation, and then start typing the message. The device had a touchscreen, but for the most common activities, you didn't need it.
The 650 did not have built-in Wi-Fi, but with the Enfora Wi-Fi Sled and Opera Mobile, Web browsing was actually a decent experience. Likewise, I had some basic networked apps like AIM on there.
Before the 650, I had a Handspring Visor and the VisorPhone attachment. The VisorPhone was way ahead of its time, but what finally killed that for me was a side effect of Palm devices not having memory protection. If someone sent me an MMS message, the entire thing would immediately freeze (it had no MMS support, and didn't handle receiving one gracefully). I'd have to take the batteries out to reset it. As more and more people did this, it became a more frequent occurrence.
I remember sending ICQ messages to friends while sitting in traffic on I-635. It was kinda unbelievable to be online in a car
This was at a time when folks I knew were getting XM radio, but for the cost of the data plan I was already paying for (only a $10/mo addon for unlimited!) I could listen to hundreds of stations. I even ran a Shoutcast server from home so I could listen to my music collection on shuffle as a sort of bespoke radio station.
GPRS not so much! It did give a taste of the future and a good headstart to think about things to learn to recognize the iPhone/App Store moment.
The integrated calendar and todo list that was Datebk6 is simply unmatched on any platform, and I looked for a long time.
One of the key benefits of it was using a hard key to instantly open the calendar, with the cursor in the to-do list. The hard key was so good that you could almost entirely capture tasks on a phone in realtime while walking around.
If it sounds strange to talk about to-do's and calendars in the same app, a todo is just a task that happens to occur at a point in time on a calendar. Some don't have that time pre-scheduled. Having a list of to-dos that followed you every day if not completed wasn't a common task.
My initial guiding instinct is roughly the same, hard to word without inviting caveats, but: todos/calendar are the same thing as I'm going about my day. Either I'm doing something, or I want to know what I should be doing.
> Having a list of to-dos that followed you every day if not completed wasn't a common task.
This bit went over my head: is the idea that it was rare to have a todo _without_ a date, so it wasn't a common thing to have ex. 20 todos without dates rolling over day to day cluttering up the UI?
Let's say I find a PalmOS emulator, pirate a system image, pirate Datebk6, put in some dummy data.
Could that explain what the post meant re: commonality of having todos rollover?
I don't think so. That's not a function of the software, that's a function of a particular use of the software.
Would using it be the same as getting the wisdom from a passionate user?
I don't think so. Living with PIM software is such a different beast from demoing it.
Emulator to run Palm apps on your smart phone https://cloudpilot-emu.github.io/
Just asking somebody is a very minimum effort approach. Reach higher!
It’s hard to know where the currents in the water might be and how to navigate them.
Experiencing todos that roll over would show up pretty quick in using DateBk6 in an emulator. Install it and try to use it every day. There might be a video on YouTube.
After PalmOS, for a while I actually bought any mobile device I could get a PalmOS emulator on to for DateBk6 while I looked for a replacement. It was only so good on an emulator though for day to day use.
I’ma product person. Getting “wisdom” from a “passionate user” likely rarely is the same as also experiencing it yourself and ensuring you have more than than a passing interest in the space.
I had the problem of a really busy period in my life in my 20’s that this helped with. It almost was an unfair advantage.
From time to time, I meet other folks who like this topic deeply, only because it helped them learn to not accomplish so much, but maybe have been really effective with their time at a period when it really mattered.
The main thing most task or calendar apps have failed on for me is when tasks and calendars are completely unaware of the other.
It’s fair that all software has an origin story and resulting product arc, and solves a problem in a certain way. Still, a calendar that integrated tasks and calendar well is elusive.
Honestly, trying the app is the best way as another post has said. The author may still be pretty accessible, I still remember my interactions with him I becoming a customer.
My belief is everything is a todo. Including calendar bookings. It becomes a task when it’s scheduled and completed. From a calendar view when you check a task becomes the date and time it would have been listed on a. Calendar.
Happy to chat offline, maybe there’s something here now.
I don’t know if it’s an instinct thing. Entering thousands of tasks and completing them in lots of different apps helps though. I get the feeling I may not be the only one who’s tried to find something.
DateBk6’s todo feature was a little sublime, and configurable.
If you had a task today you didn’t complete it would push over until tomorrow. This was entirely uncommon. It could be placed at the top of the list the next day, etc.
Practicing GTD to DateBk6 remains the most productive combo I’ve ever used. Android, iPhone, Windows mobile has never come close. Too many taps ands magical pageantry filled gestures just to open an app and add a task. With palm it was just a button. I had set mine to press was fn+Calendar.
Maybe someone can built a phone case with a few shortcut buttons on it. For a while I used an Android app that detected fingerprints on the back. Different finger to launch different apps was handy.
Todos without a date could be just batched/contextualized work you have to do, gtd style during a time block. For example longer emails.
There is an app called Motion you may have seen ads for that is starting to do some interesting things in this area.
Another app that is really decent is 2Do.
I think this was a lesson for me on how important UI is to mass-market devices. The Treo had so much going on for it, but most of the things you describe, most people would describe as awkward to use. Worse, the hardware keyboard meant the screen would always be smaller than an iPhone. I think the earliest Androids were marketed as "still has a keyboard" and that didn't really last. No one cared other than die-hards.
Downloading apps from random websites wasn't fun either. The app stores make a lot of sense in general, but moreso in mobile.
I also learned most times I'm forced to be a "tinkerer" by the industry, when most times I just want stuff to "just work" so I can choose what to tinker with. Oh, my win10 wont update to win11 because I need to redo the boot type and install a TPM chip on my old motherboard? That's not fun tinkering, that's annoying. The same way all the little things about the Treo or other less polished tech were like that. The game or novel I'm writing? That's fun tinkering.
It was also a lesson for me on how if you want to sell a mass-market product, the geeky, super-efficient, nerd-culture wisdom, etc stuff is a liability, not an asset. A lot of Apple wins is because someone said "this is too nerdy, get rid of it, abstract it away, make it easy, pretend you're a stressed out executive in a hurry." That model just gets sales and then that becomes our new default.
Apple is trying this in VR too, but Meta seems to already Apple-ized its current gen of headsets. Its a very Apple-like experience. I think that's hurting it. Ignoring the price issues, I can get "apple" from Meta already. They're several years too late. Apple, reportedly or rumored, cancelled its electric car program probably because groups like Tesla and others have already "Apple-ized" the car.
I'm not sure what areas Apple can attack now. We've all learned Apple's lesson.
You're probably right about cars to a point, but I believe there the main problem is that Apple no longer believes self-driving cars under all situations that are safer than humans are achievable with current tech.
The bigger issue is that the Meta is just a gaming device while the Vision Pro is being marketed as a productivity device. I think this is where Apple can have success. They could, predictably, be the Apple // to Meta's Colecovision.
This snippet highlights the focus on UX (beyond the look and feel!), and as creators I think many of us can relate to (and maybe remind others...) how great products require deliberate care in design AND implentation.
> The user interface received particular scrutiny. Hawkins set firm limits that any slow operation be reworked instead of showing a busy indicator, and explicit error messages should be avoided. Graffiti was a given because handwriting had to work, as no physical keyboard would have fit at the time. Mindful of how unusual such a device would be to many users, Ed Colligan declared that Touchdown should “delight the customer,” and developer Rob Haitani established a design theory he grandly christened the “Zen of Palm"
I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail with my Palm TX, dutifully logging my thoughts and ideas on the two thousand mile walk from Georgia (USA) to Maine, saving them to a tiny SSD, then beaming them all to a journal when I hit a wifi spot in a town library or somewhere.
I still think back on that thing, and the absolutely AWESOME folding keyboard I had for it (2 oz, smaller than a pack of cigarettes folded up, folded out into a rigid keyboard that had a tray for the Palm, really useful typing on your elbows on the floor of a tent). It was a full commodity computing environment: calculator, cached wikipedia, word processor, email, pdf maps/guidebooks/almanacs. Honestly, if you added Maps to that thing, I would still use it today, no question.
Palm was - once Elevation Partners sucked all of the cash from the place - hoovered into the giant value-destroying machine of HP, where it promptly died, as do all things that enter HP post-HPUX.
[1] The moral of which: "Do Not Trust Private Equity. Ever"
I miss my Palm Pilot 1000, I miss my Treo 650. I know they don't do a hundredth of what my cheap Android does - but I'm nostalgic nevertheless.
On the social side, we also needed a big shift in usage. When the Palm or Newton designs were being made, wireless networking wasn’t common the way it is now and especially people weren’t used to using software the way we take for granted now. Email was a novelty for most people, business documents were exchanged physically, and mobile gaming was a kid’s pastime. The big thing which made the iPhone 1 so appealing was that everyone had spent the previous decade finding things they wanted to do on the web and then you could take that with you anywhere. People who were looking at the traditional PDA usage thought it’d fail since it didn’t have a Blackberry keyboard.
(I'm bad at cropping YouTube videos. The part in question is [12:53 - 14:30])
Apple does deserve credit for making the best device ever for beginners.
Apple is very good at making things for beginners who are not super technical.
To the article's point, what we do with modern devices today is just another iteration of what these do. For the average modern app/SaaS, there's a very often a Palm app that did the same thing in 2002.
There's also still active exploration in the Palm space (ARM board swaps, new expansion modules for the Visor, apps in-dev from several folks including myself).
Happy to provide recommendations.
I mostly use a few models of Handspring Visor, typically grayscale, so not even the latest OS. Visor Edge for something as thin and sleek as a modern phone. Visor Neo if I want expandability (similar to pg6-7 in the Ars article). There's a fun module that adds both more memory and a vibrate motor for alarms, but I'll swap that out for a camera or mp3 module at times. Charge or swap batteries once or twice a month.
Common tasks:
* Notes, To Dos, Contacts, Calendar (excellent stock calendar, per @j45 above)
* Alarms & Reminders (stock + Diddlebug, which lets you draw/write notes w/ a timer)
* Offline browsing (Plucker can crawl pages and sync them)
* Weather (note: cached on sync because my Palm doesn't have wifi)
* Calorie tracking
* Games (we have a Wordle port!)
* Longform writing - I have a foldable keyboard and usually use plaintext, but there are word processing apps that save to HTML if you want. I also often write on an Alphasmart Neo, which can IR beam back and forth with the Palm and PC.
* Personal project tracking/flows
* Photos (technically video too, but only have 8MB memory for everything)
I have newer PDAs too that can natively handle things like voice recording, cameras, video playback, etc., but I really like the grayscale ones. A late Clié like a VZ90 or some of the others in this thread will have more bells and whistles (even OLED!).
Note also that all of the above is a more manual process than modern phones (and more manual today than it was then, because Outlook supported Palms in 2002 unlike now). If you use Google Calendar I think you can still sync, but if there's an important work meeting that I want in my pocket in addition to the laptop--I do the little ritual of adding it myself.
I did some preservation of Palm stuff, lost SEGA games https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2019/04/24/recovered-forgott..., app hacking, and more.
When browsing the Wayback Machine for old Palm apps, it's so interesting to see pretty much all development stop once the iPhone was released.
The original Palm software and user interface design was heavily inspired by the Macintosh.
"Piloting Palm" by Andrea Butter & David Pogue is a great read.
Here's another from Samsung at the very end of PalmOS's life that probably deserved more recognition as a startlingly effective PDA and phone:
https://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=4840
https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/photos.php?p=187
(great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4J3QREiuJ0 )
I still have my Zire 31. Some day I will take it out of the drawer and savour the remains of my neglected island civilisation in Village Sim, before jumping into a spaceship and trading highly profitable goods in Space Trader. Then I'll enjoy some low bitrate YouTube rips in Kinoma Video, the few I could cram onto the 64MB SD card...
I retired to my own moon a couple of times at least.
Shameless self-promotion: This New Internet Thing, by the way, will be free to read in serial form! Just search on Amazon for my pen name "Albert Cory" to pre-order the Kindle version. I actually spoke to Donna Dubinsky and got a "job" for one of my characters.
Palm plays a key role for one of the characters. The context is that "handheld computer" was already a tainted category, after GO, Newton, Momenta, Zoomer, and General Magic had all wasted money and failed to catch fire.
Everyone insisted that you had to have wireless communication, and you had to recognize cursive. Jeff Hawkins had the guts to defy that, and focus on the price and the form factor, period. He gave up on cursive and gambled that people would use Grafiti. Saying "no" to features is one of the hardest things in tech.
It's taken sqlite's ubiquity for the benefits of an always-available platform DBMS to become well-known again, but the common tables paradigm has only come back in an ad-hoc way (eg addressbook and calendar in Android).
First, apps had no filesystem available, only a database which they could use as a datastore. It was not a particularly powerful or fancy database, everything had to be done via the C++ API rather than a query language IIRC. But it simplified app development quite a bit and made the apps smaller and more robust.
Second, there was a set of common tables available to all apps that provided the basic PIM data, including addresses, calendar, todo, email and notes. This meant that third party apps could safely interoperate with this data alongside the builtin apps and extend functionality.
And it worked just fine as a Palm OS device. Played video quite well too. It was an excellent machine all around.
I still have my Tungsten E2 with the WiFi SD card, though the WiFi only works with WEP. I kept a crappy old WiFi router with WEP on it as a bridge just to allow the Tungsten to connect for a long time.
However, in hindsight, even more than Palm OS I actually miss Pocket PC.
The revolution part was a smartphone for the masses instead of the super interested. It was so easy anyone could use it, and they sure did.
Don't get me wrong the other devices were (and are!) fun to tinker with, but for something I use every day and depend on like a phone I just want it to work.
Of course web browsing was “inferior” compared to an iPhone, but the Jornada also got released 7 years earlier. You could argue that the web itself wasn’t really useable beyond checking the news and weather back then (not saying it is today, but that’s another story).
Also keep in mind that iPhone OS didn’t even have downloadable apps initially.
We were using the HP-95X before that, and the Tandy 102 even earlier. The Palm was a sexy modern alternative to those clunky platforms.
Then I got a Palm LifeDrive for the fun of it, however I had a smartphone at that time, it was just a retrocomputing device.
I still miss Palm. They were so good.
The then ceo Ed colligan said something to the effect of, "how are the music player people going to make cell phones?"
And the rest is history.
Also I had an uber powerful IR Blaster (that could also learn any remote) that was great for terrorizing my father. Good times.
I was also interested in the Sony CLIÉ's running PalmOS but never tried one. And of course the Psion's also seemed really cool but never landed its way in my hands.
The 5-way navigator on newer devices is still arguably better than anything we have on modern smartphones; you could page through Launcher categories using the hardware button, select an app using up/down left/right and open it with the center button. You could even navigate the menus without touching the screen at all. Much of the UI could be interacted with this way.
There was even a third-party keyboard which was somewhat usable without a stylus (although best in landscape mode).
But the iPhone brought capacitive multitouch to the table and changed everything. Even discounting the multitouch (eg pinch-to-zoom) features, it was lightyears ahead in terms of sensitivity and precision. There was just no comparison!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGjysw9VhIM
Do we have a modern non iOS non Android (Android's app env is a disaster) product?
I'm trying hard to imagine what it could do, but drawing a blank. It wouldn't be meaningfully smaller or lighter than a phone, it would be bigger than a smartwatch, and it wouldn't have any of the apps that people are used to.
If modest cpu, lightweight OS + e-paper screen, for example.
Oh wait... that's e-reader territory. Could make for a nice tablet alternative though, if coupled with a decent library of apps.
The bar for PDA software is considerably higher than in 1997. Even just a calendar needs cloud integrations and instant smart search and whatever. Email is a much bigger can of worms.
Developing that software suite on a non-Android platform seems like a lot of work for something that would still leave many users disappointed to find features missing.