Palm is still my favorite mobile OS ever invented. It was a joy to use, whereas my iOS and Android devices annoy me on a regular basis.
A few of the apps live on in emulation on my Android via StyleTap. One is the best astronomy map app I've ever used, another a favorite game (from back before platforms like Google turned us into product and incentivized developers to fill their stores with so much low-quality ad-infested in-app-purchase garbage).
I held onto a few models over the years which I kept as backup devices (eg. Palm V, Treo, an Enfora Wifi sled) and local copies of all the software to make 'em work. Quite confident I could bring them back to life for posterity (though secretly wish I could bring them back to life as a daily driver).
One thing I loved about Palm was the reliability of the handwriting input. It forced you to get used to the shorthand alphabet, but once you did it was so easy to take notes without even looking down. For awhile I had an Android mod that let you scratch notes using Palm script, but I don't have it now (or a phone with a stylus). For me, writing in Palm script is still almost as fast as jotting notes on paper. Come to think of it, I think it actually altered my real handwriting.
The loss of Graffiti to lawyers and patent emporiums strikes me as one of the biggest setbacks to the use of modern phones and tablets. It was an order of magnitude faster for me to use it than anything currently available for handwriting recognition...
I started using Graffiti on my Newtons; under NewtOS 1.x, having it was the difference between usable pen input and not. Under 2.x, the native HWR was so much better than I really only ended up using Graffiti when I was editing an existing block of text -- but it was still very useful. And then, like almost everyone, I shifted to Palm.
I had forgotten about the lawsuit.
The issue for me was that, by the time that was muddying the water, I had moved on to a keyboard-based Treo 650 that I used off and on with sidelines in BlackBerry (about which UGH) and WinMo (UGH UGH UGH) -- until I got my first iPhone.
The Treo keyboard was good enough I didn't miss stylus input, but on the WinMo device I absolutely did. BB was its own thing, but didn't really work for me on any level.
I'm probably faster on my iPhone than I was with Graffiti, but both input mechanisms enabled fast-enough input that I was rarely frustrated at the input rate.
Are you sure thats not just 'looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses'? I loved PalmOS/Graffiti as well back then, but I am way faster nowadays just writing naturally with my S Pen and Samsungs handwriting recognition.
I know this is a bit off-topic... but I'm still, to this day, completely convinced that Palm could of had a solid stake in the smartphone market if the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi were not launched with outdated specs at the time. WebOS was an innovative OS, and they implemented so many things that you now find in iOS and Android, like card/app management and swipe-to-close.
The fact that it's been shoehorned down to an OS for TVs is a bit of sting. I'm glad to see that it's still around, but I can't help but wonder what the landscape would be like if they executed better.
The Palm V I had was pretty cool back then. I had a little nokia phone with infra red, and I would load up a little news reader app before I got on the bus for a commute. The app was managed by the vendor, so the news was curated.
As the article says, the web browser was limited but it was good enough for an internet search if you wanted to settle an argument in the pub.
It also coincided with me wandering around with bulging pockets: palm V, Nokia, an MP3 player and a wallet.
Got all of it now in an old Samsung Galaxy S8, but the infra red internet setup was pretty eye opening for people who had seen nothing like that before.
You can't have a proper pub argument any more, the mobile internet kinda killed the fun of being knowledgeable without relying on an ever present search engine.
Haha I still remember the first time I pulled out my G2 in a pub to settle an argument. It was ironically in a pub with poor reception (even by those days standards) so by the time the page loaded, which I think was just Wikipedia, the conversation had already moved on.
Despite the lack of success that afternoon, I still remember that feeling of how significant a game changer these new fangled devices could be.
I had a Palm V for a while, I think it was the age right before smartphones became a thing - poor student and all. I think I paid €10 on ebay or the equivalent thereof.
It was a cute device, I mostly used it to play sudoku on. I still have it somewhere I think, I wonder if I can turn it back on. Don't think I have the charging cradle anymore though.
I ported the rather nifty Psion 5 app called PhoneMan to the Palm pilots. It allowed managing address books and sending and reading sms messages. I never quite got around to finishing the picture message functionality.
I even had sync working with the Bluetooth module and an Ericsson phone.
I had a couple of Palm devices and then a Handspring Visor, but it was HTC Typhoon which first felt like magic to me. Phone, web, email, MP3s, podcasts, RSS feeds all in a tiny device with what was a pretty big screen for a phone in those days. I had a pretty punishing commute, 2+ hours each way by train, but it became my favourite time of day.
If you ever want to bring your old PalmOS device online and can't find the rare wifi cards, is to just use PPP over Bluetooth. You can also do PPP over the hotsync cable of IR.
Palm went well into the 2000s mostly as a smartphone with the Treo, which was a superb device for its time. I remember that I was one those strange people with a giant smartphone at a time where everybody wanted the smallest cell phone possible (which makes a lot of sense if you're using the phone only as a phone).
I have a Palm Centro, still functioning as a phone, but I'm a bit puzzled as to how to update the cryptographic root certificates. Probably a really bad idea too, because it must be using some very outdated code to talk to IMAP servers over SSL.
The Palm Pre is much less troublesome in that regard - and WebOS is a pretty nice mobile OS too. I was very curious when I saw it running on a PinePhone.
I used to love these PDAs. I had an Acer N30, but at the time, these devices couldn't do that much.
I guess the relative unpopularity was given the fact that wifi or 4G wasn't ubiquitous, like it is nowadays. But oh boy did I love searching random little games for that thing and playing around with it.
Readit News
A few of the apps live on in emulation on my Android via StyleTap. One is the best astronomy map app I've ever used, another a favorite game (from back before platforms like Google turned us into product and incentivized developers to fill their stores with so much low-quality ad-infested in-app-purchase garbage).
I held onto a few models over the years which I kept as backup devices (eg. Palm V, Treo, an Enfora Wifi sled) and local copies of all the software to make 'em work. Quite confident I could bring them back to life for posterity (though secretly wish I could bring them back to life as a daily driver).
I had forgotten about the lawsuit.
The issue for me was that, by the time that was muddying the water, I had moved on to a keyboard-based Treo 650 that I used off and on with sidelines in BlackBerry (about which UGH) and WinMo (UGH UGH UGH) -- until I got my first iPhone.
The Treo keyboard was good enough I didn't miss stylus input, but on the WinMo device I absolutely did. BB was its own thing, but didn't really work for me on any level.
I'm probably faster on my iPhone than I was with Graffiti, but both input mechanisms enabled fast-enough input that I was rarely frustrated at the input rate.
The fact that it's been shoehorned down to an OS for TVs is a bit of sting. I'm glad to see that it's still around, but I can't help but wonder what the landscape would be like if they executed better.
As the article says, the web browser was limited but it was good enough for an internet search if you wanted to settle an argument in the pub.
It also coincided with me wandering around with bulging pockets: palm V, Nokia, an MP3 player and a wallet.
Got all of it now in an old Samsung Galaxy S8, but the infra red internet setup was pretty eye opening for people who had seen nothing like that before.
You can't have a proper pub argument any more, the mobile internet kinda killed the fun of being knowledgeable without relying on an ever present search engine.
Despite the lack of success that afternoon, I still remember that feeling of how significant a game changer these new fangled devices could be.
It was a cute device, I mostly used it to play sudoku on. I still have it somewhere I think, I wonder if I can turn it back on. Don't think I have the charging cradle anymore though.
https://palmdb.net/
I loaded up a bunch of games on my CLIÉ NX70v. Warning: The nostalgia hits hard.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/User:Jeffmikels/Bluetooth_P...
Once I learned this, I just did all of my Hotsyncing over the network.
And well, you still have IRC clients for Palm, they work great with Bitlbee.
Lots of people use Gopher under Palms, too. They are praised a lot on the Gopher universe.
And you can read HN and lots of sites such as CNN, Reddit, blogs... under Gopher.
The Palm Pre is much less troublesome in that regard - and WebOS is a pretty nice mobile OS too. I was very curious when I saw it running on a PinePhone.
I guess the relative unpopularity was given the fact that wifi or 4G wasn't ubiquitous, like it is nowadays. But oh boy did I love searching random little games for that thing and playing around with it.
And as others have mentioned, you could tether over cable or irda.
I used to check my email like that in the middle of nowhere when I was traveling in Australia.
Some less fortunate people had Windows CE PDAs. Bigger, heavier, clunkier battery eaters (well before rechargeables were ubiquitous).