> Certainly the idea that there would be billions of pocket computers might as well have been science fiction. There were a lot of people working on the ideas

> Certainly the idea that there would be billions of pocket computers might as well have been science fiction. There were a lot of people working on the ideas behind this kind of portable computing, even then. Just a few examples: * Electronic pocket calculators were a thing back into the early 1970's * HP had a portable almost-PC called the 95LX that was released in '91, and the Newton was also early 90's. * Companies like Sharp were making pocket computers back into the early 80's. Some of these were PDA-style organizers, but there were also some that just ran BASIC on a one line display * PenPoint and Pen windows were also early 90's. Maybe the scale would have seemed incredible, but the concepts were very much in flight at the time.