The Palm Pilot is one of the most iconic devices in tech history, playing a pivotal role in the development of mobile computing. Released in the 1990s, it revolutionized personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paved the way for smartphones and many mobile technologies we now take for granted.
However, from today's perspective, PDAs can seem like one of the most confusing devices to explain to younger generations. These devices look like mobile phones from the early 2010s, so why not simply add an antenna and create the iPhone a decade earlier?
To understand this, it helps to know what cell phones looked like at the time. Cellular networks weren't as advanced as they are today, and communicating over them required sizeable antennas and batteries. Devices that attempted to combine a PDA and a phone, like
the IBM Simon and
Nokia Communicator, struggled to find success.
Before phones became truly portable, Apple essentially released a smartphone without the phone: the Newton MessagePad. A few years later, the Palm Pilot set a new standard for what a mobile device should be. Launched in 1993 for $699 (equivalent to $1,500 today), the
Newton MessagePad was designed to replace paper notepads, and that's exactly what it looked like.
It had a 336 x 240 monochrome touchscreen, though "touchscreen" didn't mean the same thing back then. Today's capacitive touchscreens can be operated by merely touching them with a conductive material, and they only require a stylus for more precise input.
The Newton had a resistive touchscreen, that required applying pressure to operate. When using a sharp object like a stylus or a fingernail, the weight of your hand was sufficient. But if you used your fingertip, you'd have to press harder.
Battery life was a problem for the Newton even with four AAA batteries. Later models replaced them with bigger AA batteries, which brought the device's weight up to 580g. To add insult to injury, the over-hyped word-based handwriting recognition system wasn't consistent enough to be useful.
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