9 ms·

The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

104 points by WoodenChair 4y ago

zwog 4y ago
I was still in school in the first half of the 2000s and spent a lot of my hard earned money on more or less useful and smart hardware, especially smartphones (mostly called PDA-phones in the pre-iPhone era) and with hardware keyboard. I think my first device was the HTC Blue Angel. I also had a Treo 600 and the Palm Abacus. Those were really nice devices, PalmOS was way better than Windows Mobile and worlds better than Symbian UIQ. Fun times.
- LightG 4y ago
  Right there with you. Palm was fun to use. To be fair, by the time HTC started releasing cool looking PDA's, Microsoft did ok, just slow and buggy. Symbian was cobblers ... the worst. I miss that primordial soup of those times. Weird laptops, crazy PDA ideas, etc. Utterly boring now, despite being exponentially more useful.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  I do nostalgically miss the one PalmOS and one Windows Mobile 6 device I had of each. That might be mostly nostalgia though. Not sure. My love for webOS OTOH is still being sad it didn’t become a distant 3rd mobile OS. I’d likely be rocking a webOS phone. Possibly tablet right now. Instead of going from Windows Mobile 6 -> iPhone -> webOS -> Windows Phone 7 -> Samsung Galaxy Note -> iPhones since then. I used to mess up or break my phones frequently so some of the switches were because of that. —- Related. I have a lot of nostalgia and actual usefulness from jailbreaking iPhones too. That seems like it may barely be a thing now with iOS 15 changes. Even an M1 Mac won’t run iOS/iPadOS apps if any of the SIP securities are disabled.
- spiffytech 4y ago
  Through middle school and high school I lived on my Palm devices. I carried them to class, broke out the portable keyboard, and did all my notes and assignments on them, then spent the breaks between classes beaming Strategic Commander game turns between my friends. My teachers loved that I did this, because when you printed out notes from the Memos app it put a big white-on-black header at the top of the page. So teachers put my assignments front-of-line in their paper stacks and treated them as dividers between assignments. Working this way was great for my ADHD brain. My elementary school gave me an AlphaSmart, speculating that I performed poorly or acted out in class because I got bored in the time it took to handwrite a sentence. Using Palm devices worked great because I could capture more of what was in my brain, and could edit and reorder my scattered, disorganized thoughts. Those devices were excellent for what they were. I like what modern devices can do, but Palm devices felt like an extension of myself in a way modern smartphones don't.
blenderdt 4y ago
When I read articles like this one I always have to think about companies like Apple and Tesla. Apple didn't invent smartphones or touchscreens but they started the revolution. Tesla didn't invent EVs but started the revolution. What they have in common is that they pick the best of existing technologies and combine that into a product that is ahead of the competition. They don't invent new things but invent better things. For me that means you can create better products than the competition by even using old (but good) tech. What matters most is how you apply the tech.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  IMO, the original Nintendo DS made the concept of touch truly mainstream, but wasn't multitouch.
  - grapeskin 4y ago
    Yeah, touch was a total joke when the DS came out. It was ridiculed as a useless concept. Just a few years later and people are more confused when their device has buttons instead of a touch screen.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    It had a resistive touchscreen. What made you touchscreens truly mainstream were capacitive screens
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    I'd say the Apple Newton in 1993 made touch screens mainstream quite a bit earlier. And things like PalmOS were clearly based on the excitement that came from the Newton. The Newton itself wasn't that successful due to its reliance on writing recognition that didn't work that well (at least in the initial versions of NewtonOS) but that ironically added to its place in pop culture. Like in The Simpsons where one of the school bullies has a Newton and is trying to take a note reminding him to beat up the annoying teacher's pet Martin, only for the system to interpret "Beat up Martin" as "Eat up Martha".
- jollybean 4y ago
LeoPanthera 4y ago
So I actually had one of these. I kept it for about a year. The theory was good, but the screen was hard to read, required a stylus (a tiny one was hidden in the strap), and there's only so much you can do without a data connection. I used to HotSync news stories to it every morning but realistically a better source of up to date news was still a radio.
lr 4y ago
I’ve started referring to my “phone” as a “palm pilot” because, well, it’s hardly a “phone.” Long live the PalmPilot!
hacker-brews 4y ago
The mention of the IR port brought me back. As a kid I'd get hand-me-down palm pilots and find programmable remote apps to control the TV and other things with.
Ir0nMan 4y ago
Pebble shutdown almost 8 years ago now and there does still not to be a replacement or alternative that can: last up to a week of battery life, do basic things like allow you to get and read notifications, and be a watch.
- Markoff 4y ago
  Amazfit Bip lasts 4-6 weeks on single charge with always on transreflective display with readability improving with more sunlight (opposite of useless OLED power hungry displays) and I use it exactly just to check time and read notifications, I also use it to track my sleep, step counts and heart rate, plus one of the most used features in my night apartment is using display backlight (necessary only in dark) as flashlight it's also very small, light and thin, pretty much impossible to find such compact watch since I don't want to carry bulky brick on my wrist (so no thanks expensive Garmin bricks with shorter battery life) I'm now on my 2nd one, first I had brand new, it fell apart just before end of 2y warranty (basically the body inserted in frame without gluing, it felt outside, I could put it back and connect, just display colors were reversed but since it was in warranty I just used warranty to get money back, they improved gluing with newer versions), then went for OLED watch and gave up after maybe half year, gave new OLED watch which need to be charged at least twice a week to wife, it has unreadable AOD in sunlight (beause you need full brightness in sunlight or very least B&W AOD display instead other useless color combinations) and just bought second hand Bip for 20USD and I couldn't be happier, I'm thinking I could stock few of them into drawer in case something will happen to this one plus for people with too much spare time Bip firmware is somewhat hackable with extended functionality
  - teekert 4y ago
    I ordered a Bip U, they just sent me a Bip U Pro for the same price stating it is better and the Bip U is discontinued. I cried a little because the Pro has an lcd screen. Are there really so little people that want a Pebble like experience? BTW TBH I don’t really like Amazfit/Xiaomi, their terms tell you they can get basically all your data. With Pebble I felt a sort of trust, which I also have with Apple (but sleep tracking on a 1 day battery smart watch is bit of a bad joke). I used the Bip U Pro on Android with GadgetBridge which is really amazing and perfectly privacy focused. Sadly when I switched to iOS I found nothing equivalent. I want Pebble back.

104 points by WoodenChair 4y ago

zwog 4y ago

I was still in school in the first half of the 2000s and spent a lot of my hard earned money on more or less useful and smart hardware, especially smartphones (mostly called PDA-phones in the pre-iPhone era) and with hardware keyboard. I think my first device was the HTC Blue Angel. I also had a Treo 600 and the Palm Abacus. Those were really nice devices, PalmOS was way better than Windows Mobile and worlds better than Symbian UIQ. Fun times.

LightG 4y ago
Right there with you. Palm was fun to use. To be fair, by the time HTC started releasing cool looking PDA's, Microsoft did ok, just slow and buggy. Symbian was cobblers ... the worst. I miss that primordial soup of those times. Weird laptops, crazy PDA ideas, etc. Utterly boring now, despite being exponentially more useful.
skinnymuch 4y ago
I do nostalgically miss the one PalmOS and one Windows Mobile 6 device I had of each. That might be mostly nostalgia though. Not sure. My love for webOS OTOH is still being sad it didn’t become a distant 3rd mobile OS. I’d likely be rocking a webOS phone. Possibly tablet right now. Instead of going from Windows Mobile 6 -> iPhone -> webOS -> Windows Phone 7 -> Samsung Galaxy Note -> iPhones since then. I used to mess up or break my phones frequently so some of the switches were because of that. —- Related. I have a lot of nostalgia and actual usefulness from jailbreaking iPhones too. That seems like it may barely be a thing now with iOS 15 changes. Even an M1 Mac won’t run iOS/iPadOS apps if any of the SIP securities are disabled.
spiffytech 4y ago
Through middle school and high school I lived on my Palm devices. I carried them to class, broke out the portable keyboard, and did all my notes and assignments on them, then spent the breaks between classes beaming Strategic Commander game turns between my friends. My teachers loved that I did this, because when you printed out notes from the Memos app it put a big white-on-black header at the top of the page. So teachers put my assignments front-of-line in their paper stacks and treated them as dividers between assignments. Working this way was great for my ADHD brain. My elementary school gave me an AlphaSmart, speculating that I performed poorly or acted out in class because I got bored in the time it took to handwrite a sentence. Using Palm devices worked great because I could capture more of what was in my brain, and could edit and reorder my scattered, disorganized thoughts. Those devices were excellent for what they were. I like what modern devices can do, but Palm devices felt like an extension of myself in a way modern smartphones don't.

blenderdt 4y ago

When I read articles like this one I always have to think about companies like Apple and Tesla. Apple didn't invent smartphones or touchscreens but they started the revolution. Tesla didn't invent EVs but started the revolution. What they have in common is that they pick the best of existing technologies and combine that into a product that is ahead of the competition. They don't invent new things but invent better things. For me that means you can create better products than the competition by even using old (but good) tech. What matters most is how you apply the tech.

hammyhavoc 4y ago
IMO, the original Nintendo DS made the concept of touch truly mainstream, but wasn't multitouch.
- grapeskin 4y ago
  Yeah, touch was a total joke when the DS came out. It was ridiculed as a useless concept. Just a few years later and people are more confused when their device has buttons instead of a touch screen.
- colordrops 4y ago
  It had a resistive touchscreen. What made you touchscreens truly mainstream were capacitive screens
- jhbadger 4y ago
  I'd say the Apple Newton in 1993 made touch screens mainstream quite a bit earlier. And things like PalmOS were clearly based on the excitement that came from the Newton. The Newton itself wasn't that successful due to its reliance on writing recognition that didn't work that well (at least in the initial versions of NewtonOS) but that ironically added to its place in pop culture. Like in The Simpsons where one of the school bullies has a Newton and is trying to take a note reminding him to beat up the annoying teacher's pet Martin, only for the system to interpret "Beat up Martin" as "Eat up Martha".
jollybean 4y ago

LeoPanthera 4y ago

So I actually had one of these. I kept it for about a year. The theory was good, but the screen was hard to read, required a stylus (a tiny one was hidden in the strap), and there's only so much you can do without a data connection. I used to HotSync news stories to it every morning but realistically a better source of up to date news was still a radio.

lr 4y ago

I’ve started referring to my “phone” as a “palm pilot” because, well, it’s hardly a “phone.” Long live the PalmPilot!

hacker-brews 4y ago

The mention of the IR port brought me back. As a kid I'd get hand-me-down palm pilots and find programmable remote apps to control the TV and other things with.

Ir0nMan 4y ago

Pebble shutdown almost 8 years ago now and there does still not to be a replacement or alternative that can: last up to a week of battery life, do basic things like allow you to get and read notifications, and be a watch.

Markoff 4y ago
Amazfit Bip lasts 4-6 weeks on single charge with always on transreflective display with readability improving with more sunlight (opposite of useless OLED power hungry displays) and I use it exactly just to check time and read notifications, I also use it to track my sleep, step counts and heart rate, plus one of the most used features in my night apartment is using display backlight (necessary only in dark) as flashlight it's also very small, light and thin, pretty much impossible to find such compact watch since I don't want to carry bulky brick on my wrist (so no thanks expensive Garmin bricks with shorter battery life) I'm now on my 2nd one, first I had brand new, it fell apart just before end of 2y warranty (basically the body inserted in frame without gluing, it felt outside, I could put it back and connect, just display colors were reversed but since it was in warranty I just used warranty to get money back, they improved gluing with newer versions), then went for OLED watch and gave up after maybe half year, gave new OLED watch which need to be charged at least twice a week to wife, it has unreadable AOD in sunlight (beause you need full brightness in sunlight or very least B&W AOD display instead other useless color combinations) and just bought second hand Bip for 20USD and I couldn't be happier, I'm thinking I could stock few of them into drawer in case something will happen to this one plus for people with too much spare time Bip firmware is somewhat hackable with extended functionality
- teekert 4y ago
  I ordered a Bip U, they just sent me a Bip U Pro for the same price stating it is better and the Bip U is discontinued. I cried a little because the Pro has an lcd screen. Are there really so little people that want a Pebble like experience? BTW TBH I don’t really like Amazfit/Xiaomi, their terms tell you they can get basically all your data. With Pebble I felt a sort of trust, which I also have with Apple (but sleep tracking on a 1 day battery smart watch is bit of a bad joke). I used the Bip U Pro on Android with GadgetBridge which is really amazing and perfectly privacy focused. Sadly when I switched to iOS I found nothing equivalent. I want Pebble back.