Old Hardware Emulated :POSE Emulating The Palm Pilot (Part 3)
Apps and Games Galore!
Palm was on top of the world by 1999. Their devices have won over the masses. The Palm III and the PDA’s offered by Handspring were critically acclaimed by the tech pundits. Competitors like the Windows CE devices offered by the various OEM manufactures were largely panned. Despite having much more powerful hardware compared to the Palms, they didn't have the best reputation in the market place. The WinCE devices were expensive, lacked software support, and had the reputation of being very demanding on batteries which drained them in the process. As a result, they were generally avoided and the platform didn’t attract the number of potential customers needed to ensure its immediate success. The WinCE platform wouldn't find general success until the early 2000's.
By the tail-end of the 90’s, one could walk into a big-box retailer like Walmart, Best Buy, or Target, and find plenty of Palm titles in the software sections. Often, one could encounter the CD’s that had hundreds of shareware and freeware titles on them ready to be installed on your device. These CD’s were often the optical equivalent to the software libraries and repositories that were offered online from various sites like Tucows for example. These CD’s were of great value to those that still didn’t have the luxury of a dial-up connection.
While the Internet was becoming more common in the late 90’s, it still wasn't mainstream yet. It was a luxury for those that were lucky enough that had a computer with a 28.8K modem and an account with an ISP. For those users with access to the Internet, luck was on their side as the Palm programs themselves were very small. The PRC files, which were the Palm executable, were usually between the file size of 25-100KB. It was rare for them to be larger than that. With those sizes, one could download these programs quickly, even on that 28.8K dial-up modem.
Palm Computing made their SDK easily accessible and affordable. The Palm SDK had all the documentation that a developer needed plus examples, compilers, and the POSE emulator for those who didn’t have an actual device to develop on. These kits were released for both Windows and MacOS with a Linux port following eventually. From a developers perspective, it was simple to develop for these devices as they were very straight-forward to write applications on. As a result, a flood of programs were quickly populating Palms worldwide as the software library exploded.
The genius of Palm was that they touted their handhelds as simple devices that acted as organizers when they were actually much more capable than advertised. If Palm advertised their devices as a replacement for your computer, than people would start to develop unrealistic expectations of the handheld device.
This was what happened with the Newton as that user base quickly became alienated, despite those devices being very capable. Many were led to believe that the Newton were intended as being a replacement for the desktop computer. The price tag on the early devices, which were just as much as a low-end desktop PC, certainly didn't help matters. Thus, many users developed very unrealistic expectations and when the Newton failed to live up to those insanely high expectations due to hardware constraints, several turned on the platform. One could argue that even in 2019, tablets are not cut out for professional computing or content creation, despite them being far more capable now than in the 90's. While it is possible to create content on tablets, the tools are quite lacking in features and usability compared to their desktop PC counterparts. Tablets serve a much better role as content consumption rather than content creation devices, and this is in 2019!
Palm
Computing didn't want to fall into this trap. As a result, the company
took the the opposite approach by selling the Palm as a complements for
the PC, not replacements. This lowered expectations for people who
wanted a simple, no-frills organizers. When many users quickly realized
that there Palms were actually far more capable and software developers
were starting to realize their hardware capabilities more fully; the
platform flourished. The number of applications and games on the Palm
exploded. A healthy ecosystem the likes of which have never been seen in
the PDA realm had become the norm.
Software developers were quickly expanding the features and capabilities of the Palms that even the original developers themselves couldn’t fathom. Soon, it became possible to read novels, create text documents, edit spreadsheets, and view pictures on the Palm. Using the Handspring PDA with the modem capability, it was now possible to fetch email without the need of the computer. Shortly thereafter, it became possible to browse the WWW on the handhelds as well. Granted, the webpages rendered on the Palm went through a proxy that stripped out most of the formatting so that they could load on a device in a very limited way. However, this trick worked, and it worked well enough for general use by Palm users. For surfing the web on a Palm around 1999/2000, this was nothing short of breathtaking. A small handheld device was doing the same thing that a Compaq Presario PC could do.
The Palm V is emulated well under the POSE Emulator.
Palm V - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_V
Palm OS Emulator - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS_Emulator
Palm, Inc. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc.
Freescale DragonBall - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescale_DragonBall
Palm (PDA) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_(PDA)
3Com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Com
Palm’s progress: The rise, fall—and rebirth—of a legendary brand - https://www.fastcompany.com/90246716/palms-progress-the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-a-legendary-brand
Palm: The Rise and Fall of a Legend - https://www.technobuffalo.com/palm-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-legend
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