@arstechnica This is what we should have instead of smartphones. Data that we load onto a device and use without that horrible tracking technology called mobile internet. A decent "smartphone" would have been just an evolution of PalmOS instead of integrating every single conceivable technology into it including phones and texting and other crap.
Bring back PalmOS and pay phones and one-way pagers. In other words, privacy.
@arstechnica Actually, US Robotics did.them best. So we'll they changed their name to the one of their product, Palm
Edit: actually, the history is more interesting than that. Read the article! I've used US Robotics Palm pilots in the 90s and just wanted to make a joke stressing my age. I ended up sounding like I wanted to correct Ars' journalist while saying BS.
@arstechnica I’ve had several of the various version of PalmPilots over the years. Even had a Kyocera QCP6035 phone that used PalmOS. Wish I hadn’t sold that years ago. Still use my PalmTX to connect to furnace control boards to get faults and use as a diagnostic tool.
Probably one of the best Palm devices I ever used.
Granted it only had a 4gb hard drive, but it made for a great portable media device. This was back when iPods still had the small screens and touch wheel.
But you could stick 1 or 2 (sd) movies on it or a couple (sd) anime episodes and watch on the go with an app like core player. Core player was nice and could handle avi and h.264 files. But only standard definition. 720p was a thing then but it would stutter or not play at all on the lifedrive.
With the keyboard accessory it made for a great note taking device.
There was also universal remote software called Noviiremote for palm devices. You didn't need special codes, you simply copied IR signals from each button on the remote and you could design your own perfect Universal remote interface for each remote.
The Palm Lifedrive was amazing. I still own mine, along with the keyboard accessory and the dock.
@arstechnica meh, Palm was cool and all, but I had an iPAQ H3835 in 2001 - and still do and it still works - with a foldable keyboard. It was purely awesome. I opened this whole construction on my lap on the bus home from Lyceum and wrote some code in PPL - C-based language some fella developed for the Pocket PC back in a day. Strangers on the bus thought that Matrix has got them 🤣, because I was if not the only one - probably one of the very few people with those things here in Kyiv.
@arstechnica One addition to the epilogue - Palm was zombified under TCL, but webOS was split off and bought by LG and it's the OS that runs their smart TVs.
@arstechnica I owned a Palm pilot. It was great for me. Calendar, contact list and notes allowed me to have what I needed in a pocket and I didn't have to lug a laptop. End of day I would sync up to my home PC anything I added/changed/deleted.