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I was a Palm holdout into close to 2013. They weren't capable of the same range of things that a modern Android smartphone is, but it genuinely felt that someon

I was a Palm holdout into close to 2013. They weren't capable of the same range of things that a modern Android smartphone is, but it genuinely felt that someone had put time and effort into making the absolute best experience out of what they _could_ do. On the Treo 650, for instance, making a call meant hitting Send (a hard key) from anywhere in the UI, typing a name to start a live search - you did not need to focus into a text box first - and hitting Send again to start the call. Likewise, if I wanted to send a text message, I'd hit the SMS button, start typing a name, hit Select to open that conversation, and then start typing the message. The device had a touchscreen, but for the most common activities, you didn't need it. The 650 did not have built-in Wi-Fi, but with the Enfora Wi-Fi Sled and Opera Mobile, Web browsing was actually a decent experience. Likewise, I had some basic networked apps like AIM on there. Before the 650, I had a Handspring Visor and the VisorPhone attachment. The VisorPhone was way ahead of its time, but what finally killed that for me was a side effect of Palm devices not having memory protection. If someone sent me an MMS message, the entire thing would immediately freeze (it had no MMS support, and didn't handle receiving one gracefully). I'd have to take the batteries out to reset it. As more and more people did this, it became a more frequent occurrence.

lou2ser 2y ago
Wow, never thought I'd see Enfora mentioned in a thread in 2024. I worked there for a year or so, supporting those early GPRS cards. I remember sending ICQ messages to friends while sitting in traffic on I-635. It was kinda unbelievable to be online in a car
- soylentcola 2y ago
  I never had the WiFi sled, but I remember feeling this way when I used my 650 in the car, plugged into the aux audio input, to stream 128kbps music from Shoutcast servers via some media player I've since forgotten (it aped the Winamp interface, but wasn't a port if I remember correctly). This was at a time when folks I knew were getting XM radio, but for the cost of the data plan I was already paying for (only a $10/mo addon for unlimited!) I could listen to hundreds of stations. I even ran a Shoutcast server from home so I could listen to my music collection on shuffle as a sort of bespoke radio station.
- j45 2y ago
  Enfora was great. GPRS not so much! It did give a taste of the future and a good headstart to think about things to learn to recognize the iPhone/App Store moment.
- rkagerer 2y ago
  I had the Enfora too (well, still do). I really miss Palm, in my opinion the UX was far superior to what we have on smartphones today.
j45 2y ago
PalmOS still does a few things much better than any smartphone does. The integrated calendar and todo list that was Datebk6 is simply unmatched on any platform, and I looked for a long time. One of the key benefits of it was using a hard key to instantly open the calendar, with the cursor in the to-do list. The hard key was so good that you could almost entirely capture tasks on a phone in realtime while walking around. If it sounds strange to talk about to-do's and calendars in the same app, a todo is just a task that happens to occur at a point in time on a calendar. Some don't have that time pre-scheduled. Having a list of to-dos that followed you every day if not completed wasn't a common task.
- steve1977 2y ago
  DateBk6… Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.
  - steve1977 2y ago
    Homepage is still up :) http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/datebk6details.htm http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/datebk6details.htm
    - j45 2y ago
      While I remember DateBk6.. I totally forgot about Pimlical their replacement for DateBk6! https://pimlicosoftware.com/ https://pimlicosoftware.com/
- refulgentis 2y ago
  I'm curious if you could speak to this a bit more, I've had an itch to build something like this on the backburner for many moons. My initial guiding instinct is roughly the same, hard to word without inviting caveats, but: todos/calendar are the same thing as I'm going about my day. Either I'm doing something, or I want to know what I should be doing. > Having a list of to-dos that followed you every day if not completed wasn't a common task. This bit went over my head: is the idea that it was rare to have a todo _without_ a date, so it wasn't a common thing to have ex. 20 todos without dates rolling over day to day cluttering up the UI?
zoeysmithe 2y ago
So I had one of these and loved it so much, but then I switched to an, early-ish, iPhone, perhaps the 3G one, after playing with a couple early-ish androids. The iPhone was just so much better, generally, even if I lost the parts of the Treo that appealed to the more "nerdy" or tinkerer parts of me. I think this was a lesson for me on how important UI is to mass-market devices. The Treo had so much going on for it, but most of the things you describe, most people would describe as awkward to use. Worse, the hardware keyboard meant the screen would always be smaller than an iPhone. I think the earliest Androids were marketed as "still has a keyboard" and that didn't really last. No one cared other than die-hards. Downloading apps from random websites wasn't fun either. The app stores make a lot of sense in general, but moreso in mobile. I also learned most times I'm forced to be a "tinkerer" by the industry, when most times I just want stuff to "just work" so I can choose what to tinker with. Oh, my win10 wont update to win11 because I need to redo the boot type and install a TPM chip on my old motherboard? That's not fun tinkering, that's annoying. The same way all the little things about the Treo or other less polished tech were like that. The game or novel I'm writing? That's fun tinkering. It was also a lesson for me on how if you want to sell a mass-market product, the geeky, super-efficient, nerd-culture wisdom, etc stuff is a liability, not an asset. A lot of Apple wins is because someone said "this is too nerdy, get rid of it, abstract it away, make it easy, pretend you're a stressed out executive in a hurry." That model just gets sales and then that becomes our new default. Apple is trying this in VR too, but Meta seems to already Apple-ized its current gen of headsets. Its a very Apple-like experience. I think that's hurting it. Ignoring the price issues, I can get "apple" from Meta already. They're several years too late. Apple, reportedly or rumored, cancelled its electric car program probably because groups like Tesla and others have already "Apple-ized" the car. I'm not sure what areas Apple can attack now. We've all learned Apple's lesson.
- philistine 2y ago
  I don't think Apple agrees with you that Meta has made headsets Apple-ized. Apple's idea with headsets is that you're basically never in a black VR void. Nobody has done that except Apple. You're probably right about cars to a point, but I believe there the main problem is that Apple no longer believes self-driving cars under all situations that are safer than humans are achievable with current tech.

lou2ser 2y ago

Wow, never thought I'd see Enfora mentioned in a thread in 2024. I worked there for a year or so, supporting those early GPRS cards. I remember sending ICQ messages to friends while sitting in traffic on I-635. It was kinda unbelievable to be online in a car

soylentcola 2y ago
I never had the WiFi sled, but I remember feeling this way when I used my 650 in the car, plugged into the aux audio input, to stream 128kbps music from Shoutcast servers via some media player I've since forgotten (it aped the Winamp interface, but wasn't a port if I remember correctly). This was at a time when folks I knew were getting XM radio, but for the cost of the data plan I was already paying for (only a $10/mo addon for unlimited!) I could listen to hundreds of stations. I even ran a Shoutcast server from home so I could listen to my music collection on shuffle as a sort of bespoke radio station.
j45 2y ago
Enfora was great. GPRS not so much! It did give a taste of the future and a good headstart to think about things to learn to recognize the iPhone/App Store moment.
rkagerer 2y ago
I had the Enfora too (well, still do). I really miss Palm, in my opinion the UX was far superior to what we have on smartphones today.

j45 2y ago

PalmOS still does a few things much better than any smartphone does. The integrated calendar and todo list that was Datebk6 is simply unmatched on any platform, and I looked for a long time. One of the key benefits of it was using a hard key to instantly open the calendar, with the cursor in the to-do list. The hard key was so good that you could almost entirely capture tasks on a phone in realtime while walking around. If it sounds strange to talk about to-do's and calendars in the same app, a todo is just a task that happens to occur at a point in time on a calendar. Some don't have that time pre-scheduled. Having a list of to-dos that followed you every day if not completed wasn't a common task.

steve1977 2y ago
DateBk6… Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.
- steve1977 2y ago
  Homepage is still up :) http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/datebk6details.htm http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/datebk6details.htm
  - j45 2y ago
    While I remember DateBk6.. I totally forgot about Pimlical their replacement for DateBk6! https://pimlicosoftware.com/ https://pimlicosoftware.com/
refulgentis 2y ago
I'm curious if you could speak to this a bit more, I've had an itch to build something like this on the backburner for many moons. My initial guiding instinct is roughly the same, hard to word without inviting caveats, but: todos/calendar are the same thing as I'm going about my day. Either I'm doing something, or I want to know what I should be doing. > Having a list of to-dos that followed you every day if not completed wasn't a common task. This bit went over my head: is the idea that it was rare to have a todo _without_ a date, so it wasn't a common thing to have ex. 20 todos without dates rolling over day to day cluttering up the UI?

zoeysmithe 2y ago

So I had one of these and loved it so much, but then I switched to an, early-ish, iPhone, perhaps the 3G one, after playing with a couple early-ish androids. The iPhone was just so much better, generally, even if I lost the parts of the Treo that appealed to the more "nerdy" or tinkerer parts of me. I think this was a lesson for me on how important UI is to mass-market devices. The Treo had so much going on for it, but most of the things you describe, most people would describe as awkward to use. Worse, the hardware keyboard meant the screen would always be smaller than an iPhone. I think the earliest Androids were marketed as "still has a keyboard" and that didn't really last. No one cared other than die-hards. Downloading apps from random websites wasn't fun either. The app stores make a lot of sense in general, but moreso in mobile. I also learned most times I'm forced to be a "tinkerer" by the industry, when most times I just want stuff to "just work" so I can choose what to tinker with. Oh, my win10 wont update to win11 because I need to redo the boot type and install a TPM chip on my old motherboard? That's not fun tinkering, that's annoying. The same way all the little things about the Treo or other less polished tech were like that. The game or novel I'm writing? That's fun tinkering. It was also a lesson for me on how if you want to sell a mass-market product, the geeky, super-efficient, nerd-culture wisdom, etc stuff is a liability, not an asset. A lot of Apple wins is because someone said "this is too nerdy, get rid of it, abstract it away, make it easy, pretend you're a stressed out executive in a hurry." That model just gets sales and then that becomes our new default. Apple is trying this in VR too, but Meta seems to already Apple-ized its current gen of headsets. Its a very Apple-like experience. I think that's hurting it. Ignoring the price issues, I can get "apple" from Meta already. They're several years too late. Apple, reportedly or rumored, cancelled its electric car program probably because groups like Tesla and others have already "Apple-ized" the car. I'm not sure what areas Apple can attack now. We've all learned Apple's lesson.

philistine 2y ago
I don't think Apple agrees with you that Meta has made headsets Apple-ized. Apple's idea with headsets is that you're basically never in a black VR void. Nobody has done that except Apple. You're probably right about cars to a point, but I believe there the main problem is that Apple no longer believes self-driving cars under all situations that are safer than humans are achievable with current tech.