5d ago

Palms were offline devices that only synced with your computer when put on a docking station.

cross-posted from: https://mamot.fr/users/thibaultamartin/statuses/113879452911907737

Palms were offline devices that only synced with your computer when put on a docking station.
You could read and reply to emails offline, book or cancel meetings, and sync with your computer later. The latest versions allowed you to snap pictures and listen to your music.
No servers running constantly. No data spilled everywhere. Days worth of battery on a single charge.
The future stole our cables, and it took our attention span and our privacy with it.
#privacy #offline #data

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They're shockingly useful today as a tool to manage ADHD, since they have a buncha organizational software baked into the OS, with plenty of other productivity apps still available for download off of PalmDB, without the connectivity nor distractions of a modern smartphone. I'm using a Sony PEG-UX50, which uses PalmOS 5, has a built in keyboard, and expandable memory (in the form of Sony Memory Sticks, cause Sony was addicted to format wars at the time.)
- Oh, I remember those sexy boyos!
  
  It's smaller than I was expecting, but in fairness modern smartphones are gigantic. It's perfectly sized for comfortable usage of the keyboard, and is genuinely worth grabbing one if the interest and budget are there for it.

I had the Palm VII, which had a mobile data connection and an antenna you would flip up. I felt like a god. When i “upgraded” to the Compaq ipaq i felt that the world was my oyster!
Now i hate my phone.
- I had the Palm VII, which had a mobile data connection and an antenna you would flip up. I felt like a god.
  The Palm VII was the first device that was even theoretically obtainable by me (I didn't buy one because shit was expensive yo) that could provide mobile internet access in a form factor I considered usable.
  I lusted over it like I'd lusted over no device before.
  
  It feels like i didn’t have the VII for a solid year before the service got turned off. The iPAQ had a docking sleeve for a cf wireless card. That was when i felt like a mad pimp. 🤓

Not to spoil the nostalgia vibes but wanted to share the Palma2, popular enough that they made a second version. Briefly: its an e-ink reader, in the form factor of a 6 inch smartphone. It runs Android for compatibility, no cell data only WiFi and even has a basic camera for document scanning. It's definately not privacy protecting but it is resistant to endless online slop traps, which I think is part of what makes a modern smartphone problematic. I'm not recommending it but just noticed the similarities to some of the classic PDAs, especially the high contrast interface and reduced animations.
- Octacore cpu? That's more than some of the new HP laptops out there, which have gone backwards to dualcore lol
  Edit: cpu, not vpu
- I have a palma, and I enjoy it, but don't use it as often as I should. I had intended it to be what I carry around with me more than my phone, to help restrict myself to mostly e-reader or podcasts/audiobooks. The palma 1 annoyingly would output only when the screen was on by default, so you couldn't lock it and listen to an audiobook. If you muck around in settings you can make it stay on for 1 hour after locking, so you can mostly listen to audiobooks/podcasts uninterupted ifyou turn it on briefly every so often.
  But in my experience, the use of Bluetooth/playing podcasts/audiobooks pretty drastically increased battery consumption. It really brought it back to being a phone battery (e.g. 1 day) with an eink display.
  So I use it almost exclusively as a small e-reader I can always have in my povket or bag, etc. I basically always listen to podcast songs my phone.
  That said, it is actually pretty incredible little device, and you can watch youtube videos or even play games on it of you let its refresh rate go high

I have a IIIXe (very similar to the one in OP) somewhere. Really limited in what it could do, but very cool for the time. I also have a later model Zire somewhere that had enough horsepower (with a mild overclock) to play Quake.

Laptops were offline devices that only synced with any computer when put on a phone cable.
- The good old days of screaming through the house not to pick the phone up, dialing in, downloading emails and usenet messages, cutting the connection and screaming the all clear through the house.
  
  And everything was "federated". You sent email to a local email server and it synced with other email servers. You connected to your chosen Usenet server and it synced with other Usenet servers. Same with IRC for chat. Very few things were centralised.
- The boss already had wifi. But it was a large external antenna and the speeds were terrible.
  
  Yep, I had a B wireless setup in 1999. Poor performance, but I wasn't tethered!
  
  Whoa, that sounds interesting!
  \ (I should have clarified that I meant like the first laptops, at the dawn of computer intraconnectivity)

Got to put a carefully cut strip of scotch magic translucent tape over the stylus square for both protection and friction enhancing
Always practice safe graffiti
- This guy palms

The III had an IR sync as well, but you had to initiate it and it was line of sight with the IR port on your computer.
I had it working with my Rev. B iMac.
Man, I miss my Palm III. Left it in a jacket pocket too close to a wall heater. :(
- If you pointed two of them at each other, you could play multiplayer games over IR. It was pretty janky.

they (or at least the later palm pilot) had a surprisingly robust system for recognizing handwriting! individual characters had to be single strokes, and you needed to write each one a buncha times to calibrate initially so it has something to compare against, but i remember it being notably faster to type with than other contemporaneous tiny keyboards.
- You had to write your letters in Graffiti, but yeah, it worked great.
- I used to be an avid TealScript user, which allowed you to tweak recognition of individual characters and even create entirely new gestures. It was magnificent.
  Went through a lot of Palm devices, from a Palm III to a V to a Tungsten T3 (the most elegantly designed device ever, perhaps save the Mac SE) and eventually a Treo 680. It was a sad day when the ecosystem shut down and I had to downgrade to an Android phone.
  I still miss so many features of those older devices. In fact, I still keep a Palm V in my nightstand because of its comfortably backlog screen and flawless handwriting recognition for those midnight thoughts.

It really is too bad that commercial solutions for true privacy focused syncing and wireless backups will only get worse if they were ever good at all. I think of products like the Ring Doorbell where there's no reason the doorbell itself can't be it's own local server. The only reason to tie you to a cloud is to implement monthly fees while also harvesting your data. The idea of an open standard where multiple devices could connect to any cloud service (self hosted Next Cloud or commercial solution etc) will likely disappear with the direction we're going. It's a sad time for tech and an even more sad time for society worldwide.

On a single charge? The Palm Pilot used 2xAAA batteries. You could use rechargeables, I suppose, but they would have been NiCads, not Lithiums, in the 90’s. More likely you were using disposables.
- My Zire71 had a LiIon battery that did require charging.
- I don't recall for sure with all of them. Mine was 2 AAA, my boss had a rechargeable in 1999. I still have this one.
  About 2005 I picked up a Treo, almost positive that one was lithium (it was a cell phone). Though it may have been NiCd.

My palm treo 650 was the most badass phone ever
- Yep. While Android can do far more, the Treo keyboard kicked ass.
  
  Sick ringtones too
  http://onj3.andrelouis.com/phonetones/unzipped/Palm/Treo-650/

I wish I still had the dock for mine, I still have my Palm pilot.
- I still have the dock, but it's got a serial port, and I can't manage to connect it even with a serial to USB adapter. Doubt the software would run anyway, that was under Windows 3.11 I think? 95 at best.
  
  I just want to be able to charge mine. I love to occasionally reminisce on old devices.
  
  Would be neat if there was Linux software for it based on reverse engineered protocol.

My t5 tungsten didnt have wifi, but there was bt and ir. and you could buy a wifi card.

Loved my Palm III. Simpler days.
- I used to take notes on paper in graffiti cause it was kind of a pseudo shorthand.
  
  My handwriting went from perfect block lettering (engineer/draftsman) to unintelligible scrawl when I learnt graffiti.
  I still try to use graffiti when I try to “type” on my AppleWatch.
  
  Me too!
  I tried using a Graffiti keyboard on Android, without a stylus it doesn't make sense.

I miss my Newton. :(

Those were cool! I inherited my pop's old one when he upgraded.

PalmTops need to make a serious comeback

I still have my m100
- I think the Palm m125 is the best case scenario for running a PalmOS device nowadays because it was the last one that ran on AAAs. The m100 does as well but it has a quarter of the RAM and a slower processor, plus no SD card slot, though it's REALLY hard to find SD cards small enough to work in a Palm anymore.
  Also, they made a USB sync cable for the m100 but I haven't been able to track one down, there's a guy on eBay who has a pallet of their RS-232 sync cables but virtually none for USB. The m125 came with a USB docking cradle so it's a lot easier to sync with a PC, though good luck finding 64-bit drivers.
  
  You should be able to get a generic RS-232 to USB cable that will work as an adapter. They're still used for microcontroller and old hardware.
  As for drivers, run the software in a VM with a 32 bit OS. That may work.

Smartphones are nothing more than gentrified PDAs...
- Smartphones are nothing more than gentrified PDAs…
  Less any semblance of privacy? We can still have the impression we've some control over what it does but for how long?
  My last PDA was a Palm Tungsten T5, liked it a lot ;)
  
  I had the tungsten E. Loved it.
  Also. Airplane mode on a smartphone and the. BAM. New age palm pilot.
- Literally the first phones labeled "smartphones" were things like the Handspring Treo that ran PalmOS.

Holy crap, I have the exact same model still somewhere in the basement. It was so incredibly cool at the time. I felt like I was living in the future. Until I got my first mobile that is. Carrying two gadgets was just too much.
- Carrying two gadgets was just too much
  Which is why the Treo was such a game-changing big deal

I had a handspring visor and I miss it. Fold out keyboard dock that fit in one shirt pocket, and the visor in another, I was set for the day
- This was college life for me. Took notes on it because I could type faster than I could write. Bitter sweet memories as I have a love hate relationship with my current always connected phone.
  But for phones the BlackBerry keyboard is what I really miss. That and the sliding form factor of the palm pre. Then there was windows ce devices. This were cool, but were huge and guzzled battery power.
  
  Oh man I miss my BlackBerry Pearl, those were awesome devices. And the company BES server delivered email faster than anything. I always got notifications a couple of seconds before my iPhone colleagues who had made the switch.

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