4 ms·

The iPhone is a progression of PDAs more than phones. There are plenty of interesting devices to look at including Apple's own Newton, the Sony Dynabook, the Pa

The iPhone is a progression of PDAs more than phones. There are plenty of interesting devices to look at including Apple's own Newton, the Sony Dynabook, the Palm Pilot and all its versions up through Sony Clie as well as Windows CE and its many devices. My 1998 Casio CE at some level is very similar to a modern iPhone. Both have a home screen with a gird of app icons to tap to launch them.

imglorp 7y ago
I think the Palm Treo, predating the iPhone by years, deserves the nod for the historic, mass market successor of PDAs. The first Treos were around 2002 and were horrible Palm devices duct taped to a cellphone, but they were enough to light the future. That integration got better and by 2004, the Treo 650 was a very capable machine. The iPhone hit the street in 2007.
- wazoox 7y ago
  I had first the Visor Phone, in 2001 or 2002, and it was a revelation. After that I had a series of Treos (270, 600, 650, 680) and finally a Pré Plus.
  - imglorp 7y ago
    I had a Pre also, spectacular device, very usable. Super tiny by today's standards, with inductive charging, and running WebOS. One of the best apps was X-Plane, very smooth. In many ways, we have lost ground and not regained it.
    - compsciphd 7y ago
      the problem with the pre was a few fold 1) it was ahead of its time in terms of writing apps in javascript and having them run in a web browser context. The hardware was not up for it and the programming environment wasn't up for it (i.e. no webasm and the like) 2) no ability at the start to write apps in native code. This severely limited one's ability to have graphical games. people use their phones to casually game, and if those games don't exist, the phones wont sell. 3) as forward thinking as it was, they missed some things. It was just too small physically for what it was supposed to be. I was a big believer in it, but it was just too small for my fingers to use effectively to type and the like. It would have been interesting to see what a pre in a modern size phone form factor would have been like. with all that said, I have fond memories of it, especially being part of the group of people the jailbroke (and I made it happen without even having physical access to one at the time. thanks god for its debian (or really ipkg) roots, made it easy to reverse engineer and get code onto it. The touchpad, on the other hand, was way ahead of its time. I still used mine till about a year ago when it finally kicked the bucket.
      - imglorp 7y ago
        Yeah I was going to mention the touchpad too, own two. Been meaning to repurpose them as small monitors. I should probably thank you and the other jailbreakers and hackers for the two platforms for your contributions making them more useful machines. Also worth pointing out WebOS lives on! https://www.webosose.org/blog/2019/11/20/webos-ose-2-1-0-release/ https://www.webosose.org/blog/2019/11/20/webos-ose-2-1-0-rel...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
technofiend 7y ago
I had a Palm V with a cell modem on it. It sort of worked- you could surf the web such as it was at the time, but nothing was integrated into the OS/app stack. Blackberry was probably the best example of making a network-aware device that fully integrated the network, os and application suite. It took Google a really long time to get Android on par with what a Blackberry could do.

imglorp 7y ago

I think the Palm Treo, predating the iPhone by years, deserves the nod for the historic, mass market successor of PDAs. The first Treos were around 2002 and were horrible Palm devices duct taped to a cellphone, but they were enough to light the future. That integration got better and by 2004, the Treo 650 was a very capable machine. The iPhone hit the street in 2007.

wazoox 7y ago
I had first the Visor Phone, in 2001 or 2002, and it was a revelation. After that I had a series of Treos (270, 600, 650, 680) and finally a Pré Plus.
- imglorp 7y ago
  I had a Pre also, spectacular device, very usable. Super tiny by today's standards, with inductive charging, and running WebOS. One of the best apps was X-Plane, very smooth. In many ways, we have lost ground and not regained it.
  - compsciphd 7y ago
    the problem with the pre was a few fold 1) it was ahead of its time in terms of writing apps in javascript and having them run in a web browser context. The hardware was not up for it and the programming environment wasn't up for it (i.e. no webasm and the like) 2) no ability at the start to write apps in native code. This severely limited one's ability to have graphical games. people use their phones to casually game, and if those games don't exist, the phones wont sell. 3) as forward thinking as it was, they missed some things. It was just too small physically for what it was supposed to be. I was a big believer in it, but it was just too small for my fingers to use effectively to type and the like. It would have been interesting to see what a pre in a modern size phone form factor would have been like. with all that said, I have fond memories of it, especially being part of the group of people the jailbroke (and I made it happen without even having physical access to one at the time. thanks god for its debian (or really ipkg) roots, made it easy to reverse engineer and get code onto it. The touchpad, on the other hand, was way ahead of its time. I still used mine till about a year ago when it finally kicked the bucket.
    - imglorp 7y ago
      Yeah I was going to mention the touchpad too, own two. Been meaning to repurpose them as small monitors. I should probably thank you and the other jailbreakers and hackers for the two platforms for your contributions making them more useful machines. Also worth pointing out WebOS lives on! https://www.webosose.org/blog/2019/11/20/webos-ose-2-1-0-release/ https://www.webosose.org/blog/2019/11/20/webos-ose-2-1-0-rel...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

technofiend 7y ago

I had a Palm V with a cell modem on it. It sort of worked- you could surf the web such as it was at the time, but nothing was integrated into the OS/app stack. Blackberry was probably the best example of making a network-aware device that fully integrated the network, os and application suite. It took Google a really long time to get Android on par with what a Blackberry could do.