Status Symbols are devices that transcend their specs and features, and become something beautiful and luxurious in their own right. They're things that live on after the megapixel and megahertz wars move past them, beacons of timeless design and innovation.
This might come as a surprise to younger readers, but there existed an age before smartphones. The 1990s and early 2000s bore witness to dozens upon dozens of so-called PDAs — personal digital assistants, a term famously coined by ex-Apple CEO John Sculley upon the introduction of the ill-fated Newton — and Palm Computing was one of the PDA Age's superstars.
Today, of course, Palm is little more than a footnote in mobile history, but 1998 was a heady year for founder Jeff Hawkins and his brainchild: the company had already captured throngs of believers with the Pilot and PalmPilot series. In March, the Palm III was introduced, a moderately sleeker incarnation of the PalmPilot Professional with upgraded specs.
But none of these devices were built with design truly in mind. Not Palm's, not anyone's. They were strictly utilitarian, a way for businesspeople to quickly check a phone number before thrusting this impossibly boring, boxy, gray gadget back into their suit pocket. They weren't pretty, they didn't capture the eye. Even Apple, now considered a benchmark for industrial design worldwide, was producing dark gray rectangles.
Palm saw an opportunity, collaborating with famed design firm IDEO — which had previously worked with Hawkins during his time at GRiD — on a new PDA that would be viewed as a "desirable accessory." And what a desirable accessory it was: at its launch in 1999, no PDA looked anything like it. It wasn't just functional, it was beautiful — and more importantly, it was beautiful at a time when gadgets simply weren't. It featured ID cues commonly associated with Apple like aluminum construction and an internal sealed battery more than half a decade before they gained widespread popularity. And at roughly 10mm thick, it was reasonably thin even by today's standards.
The V was later succeeded by the Vx, the m500 series, and eventually the Tungsten line. By then, though, the smartphone writing was on the wall: the Treo models, which Palm had originally acquired from Palm OS licensee (and Jeff Hawkins startup) Handspring, clearly represented the future of mobility. The PDA's reign was ending just as quickly as it began, but the philosophy pioneered by the Palm V — the idea that a mobile device can be both functional and desirable — lives on.
Sean Hollister contributed to this report.
Comments
I have mine in a box somewhere. They were great little devices. I’ll have to dig it out next time I’m hunting in the loft.
By Phil Lee on 10.02.12 12:05pm
Ditto for me. I come across it from time to time when searching for things in my closet.
By reson8er on 10.02.12 12:06pm
Mine is in the same box as my Handspring Visor and Clie Wsomething.
Looks like I was a Palm fanboy before I was an anything else fanboy.
By toomuchcoffee on 10.02.12 1:30pm
I had a couple of Clie models, the first monochrome, the last in color. Even at the time, I found it frustrating that they were so “dumb”. You couldn’t connect to the internet to read your mail even, let alone browse the web. All your data came across from your computer when syncing, a convoluted process in itself. It was good (great, actually) as an appointment book and contact list, but not much else.
By Captain Megaton on 10.02.12 7:14pm
I had a handspring, totally bought into the entire “expansion slot” routine. I probably bought one, and it was extra memory or something not fun.
I have a box of V’s somewhere from an old ad agency i used to support. Got a newton 2100 too. Dual PCMCIA expansion in a 20 year old PDA? yes please.
By JesseDegenerate on 10.03.12 12:56pm
I also had a Handspring as well. I was dumb enough to buy the camera (and I use that word loosely) attachment for it also. I think it was like $99 or something outrageous. I took about 10 pictures with it and returned it to CompUSA. It was an absolutely horrid camera. I think it was something like 320×200 resolution. Awful. I loved the Handspring, even though mine ate batteries like candy.
By BenjiS on 10.08.12 4:05pm
I had to do it – the reviews on Amazon for the camera are “so sad it’s almost funny”
http://www.amazon.com/Eyemodule2-Digital-Camera-Springboard-Handspring/product-reviews/B000059Z4N/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
By BenjiS on 10.08.12 4:07pm
I won a Palm IIIc in High School my senior year for building a popsicle bridne that weighed less than 200grams and held over 1800lbs of load. Still have and wear the TShirt I got that day too. As for the Palm, it wont turn on anymore. :(
By Athlon on 10.02.12 7:26pm
HOW THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT?
By rafoolik on 10.03.12 3:35am
Yeah, we need answers.
By robotsongs on 10.03.12 4:42am
It’s a common project done in Physics class. In AP Physics you do it with dry spaghetti.
By ThePredatorElite on 10.03.12 2:44pm
Some AP Physics called, not the one in my high school.
(Or at least not 4 years ago)
By zap2 on 10.03.12 7:04pm
My AP physics class was writing a practice test every day.
By csdheeraj on 10.05.12 12:49pm
I notice it has a grid of icons and 4 separated dock icons at the bottom. And this is before the iphone. Kind of contradicts the idea that Apple invented the grid of icons with a dock.
By Zecharixs on 10.03.12 12:30am
Some might argue that the Apple Newton heavily influenced the Palm design.
By Belligerent on 10.03.12 6:08pm
Except the Zoomer, which was Palm’s true first product as an ODM for Casio, that came out about the same time as the Newton:
By dingus on 10.04.12 12:02am
I have mine within arms reach! My uncle gave it to me when he got his first Tungsten. This helped kickstart my love for tech! :) (He also gave me his Tungstens and LifeDrive later on).
By Adriel Mingo on 10.02.12 3:37pm
You had the wireless modem attachment? I truly envy you. Had a VX too, was such an amazing device… I still miss the intant application launch of yesterday´s palms
By Zubiaur on 10.02.12 5:54pm
oh man, When i was a kid, i oggled over my dads Palmpilot. He always upgraded through hid job the the next best one. He gave my brother the T2 (The one taht slide up) and i got the TE. (The one on the left FYI) Made me love palm as a company forever. Iv’e got 3 or 4 of his old ones laying around somewhere, and i charge up my old TE every once in a while. Talkabout a 10/10 device. Almost of of those devices were in my book.
By pcgamer on 10.02.12 6:42pm
wow. Editing is for squares i guess.
By pcgamer on 10.02.12 6:45pm
I’ve never seen a palm device before. I’m not trying to be incendiary, but how can people look at devices such as this and still claim that the iPhone (or mondern smartphones in general) were some revolutionary new thing? The 7 year gap between this thing and the iPhone makes a lot of sense to me..
By straydog on 10.02.12 5:00pm
They aren’t. Smartphones didn’t evolve from phones, but from PDA’s such as these. Smartphones are PDA’s with a phone chip, not phones with computing capabilities.
I worked for Sprint throughout the whole transition through the original Treos, Blackberries, and even the early Windows CE phones in the early to mid 2000’s.
All of these things were good ideas, but as with all things tech the ideas usually come before the tech is ready. When the memory, processors, and touch screens (not to mention cell networks) came within practical and economic reach they just became much more useful.
By EzzyBlack on 10.02.12 5:52pm
I suspect the history books will call it differently. What the iPhone did which was revolutionary, not done by any of those earlier devices, was let ordinary people easily do the things they naturally wanted to do on such a device: Music. Video. Photos. The Web. BB was a messenging platform, a modern pager, WinCE was a glorified pocket PC, And Treos were a PDA + phone fusion.
It also set the trend (touchscreen. apps. app store. music player.) for everything that followed.
Dammit, you are making me sound like a stupid fanboy. I’m not, but its not fair to say smartphones evolved from PDAs. Modern smartphones evolved from the iPhone, and the iPhone came into being as an answer more to what the previous handsets lacked, than what they possessed.
By Captain Megaton on 10.02.12 7:27pm
Revisionist history anyone? If you are basing whether or not the modern smartphone evolved from PDAs on your limited experience with a couple of Sony PDAs then you are sadly misinformed. Sony was not really a player in the PDA space and their products were a horrible mash-up of media player + PDA functions. Your statements from a another post regarding emails and so on were true to a point. By 2006 however there were designs by HP such as the hx 4700 that had WiFi, Bluetooth, a 4" VGA screen touch screen and a touchpad pointing device, all enclosed in a magnesium housing running Windows Mobile. These were the true forerunners of today’s smartphones. They had direct email access and could download and install apps in the form of .cab files from websites like pocketgear.com and several others. Add a cellular radio, had they existed in the proper form-factor and you would have had a robust smartphone. All Apple did was wait until the technology evolved (at the request of OEMs making PDAs, BTW). Thus having access to the better screens, batteries and radio chips which were already in the development pipe, they stepped in, scooped up the technology with minimum investment and delivered what seemed revolutionary to folks outside the PDA community. Apple’s biggest achievement was bringing mobile IP to the clueless.
By BleedingEdge on 10.02.12 8:23pm
“…seemed revolutionary to folks outside the PDA community”
More to your point, PDA users were those in the business and tech. sector who immediately embraced these devices because of what they could do. Apple OTOH, like Sony, is a consumer products company peddling flashy toys to the decidedly non-technical masses. These people choose their products based on fashion and how they believe they look holding it much more than what they actually do with it. No surprise that consumers who never even heard of Palm or Blackberry thought the iPhone was the second coming. Compared to their little feature flip phones, it was. But it was hardly first or unique, just very well marketed.
“Apple’s biggest achievement was bringing mobile IP to the clueless.”
I’d say that Apple’s biggest achievement was — and still is — insulating users from any underlying (and often lackluster) technology with flashy packaging and U.I. candy. Give a Mac user more than one button on the mouse and they become like a deer in the headlights. Or sheep.
And there’s lots of wool to be fleeced from that flock.
By IronicScreenName on 10.02.12 8:50pm