With the Palm Pre all set to strut its stuff soon, fans of the original PalmOS have gathered in Hong Kong to give it a proper send off, as reported by Palm Infocenter. It seems a fitting end to the career of one of the operating systems that, basically, shaped the world of modern smartphones.
I can remember the days when a PDA was called a PalmPilot, regardless of actual brand, in the same way we often call vacuum cleaners ‘hoovers’.
Arguably, there were two companies who really seriously started off the touchscreen smartphone revolution: Palm and Psion. Palm started making PDAs in 1996, using their own PalmOS, and it was only a matter of time before they put antennas in them, and made them do phone calls, too. And so, we went from Palm Pilots to Treo smartphones, they were one of the earliest to get in on connected PDAs, as they started life being called, and those, in turn, led to the more business-focused end of the smartphone market, dominated nowadays by Windows Mobile and Blackberry phones.
Oh yes, Psion. Well, now, Psion is an easy one to see the significance of, when you know what operating system they were the first ones to develop. Their operating system, EPOC, is still around today, but under a much more familiar name.
EPOC, you see, was what became Symbian, that powers super high-end phones like the Nokia N97 and Sony Ericsson Idou…
But, anyway, back to Palm. This is the PalmOS’s farewell shindig, after all. So, it’s time to bid that old-timer of the mobile world goodnight. It’s earned its rest, and now, for Palm at least, the world is WebOS-shaped.
And now that I’ve said the fond farewell to PalmOS, I can say, guilt-free, that I hated it my one experience with it, on the Treo 600. You’d have to hunt far and wide to find a clunkier, more unsightly, and slow smartphone! So, as controversial as it may sound, I say, in conclusion, thank god it’s dead, and bring on the Palm Pre…
Were you a Treo fan? Or did you think it needed retiring quicker than it was? Do you think the Palm Pre will recapture what Palms SHOULD have been about all alone? Leave us a comment and have your say!
March 18th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
I have always been a Windows Mobile person. But I would have to say that my current experience on my AT&T HTC Fuze in may ways pales with my experience with my TREO 750. I truly loved that phone but primarily because of the additional features and tweaks that PALM made to the Windows OS. Today my SPB Mobile Shell infused FUZE has some prettiness to it, but dang this thing is slow and still kinda buggy. The keyboard is a lifesaver, but I dont like the fact that I have to slide it out from the side. With that said, if the Palm Pre was available on AT&T, I would not skip a beat to grant an early layoff to my FUZE and move over to experienct the TREO PRE. That’s saying A LOT for this one and only Windows Mobile fan. I would make the switch site unseen because I feel that PALM does know what features we like in our “smart” phones. I’m even seriously considering jumping to Sprint….. but its Sprint. I’m not sure how desperate I am. I hate that Palm did the exclusive thing. So I’ll wait a bit and see what folks say about it. Any guess if this thing will ever make it to AT&T or even Verizon?
March 19th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I know what you mean, I’m a recent Windows Mobile convert, and even I’m going “Want. Palm. Pre. Now.”
However, since you’re clearly in the USA (Sprint, Verizon, and all that), it depends, for the other networks, whether they release the GSM version over there, which is the one we’re getting in the UK.