The Independent Kixmiller Pigeon MrkII

If the history of Palm could be likened to that of The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire , then this would be the part of the story where the Roman Empire split itself into two. Palm splitting itself ranks among the dumbest things that the company could do to itself. Others describe it as the moment that killed Palm. Personally, I would agree. The company could have survived it as long as the split was better handled, and continued to have hit products while fixing their OS. Palm could have created something that would have caused corporate users to salivate over. However, this is Palm where talking about. This kind of luck wasn't in their cards. As such, the company split was essentially the beginning of the end. The company was split among its hardware and software division. The hardware company became PalmOne while the software company became PalmSource. For the hardware company, I'm still going to refer to it as Palm proper though. Anyway, the hardware team nee...

  Apple Drops The Ball Apple was ridding high from the success of the Apple II Plus. A successful computer needs a successful follow-up...right? Apple had their sights on their next goal; the corporate market. Their was a lot riding on Apple. While they've been successful conquering the the small business and education markets, they had no experience reaching out to corporate users. Microcomputers weren't a thing within the corporate realm. Corporate computing was very different in the 70's compared to today. The ubiquitous PC was nowhere to be found. The office was dominated by various electric typewriters made by manufactures like Smith-Corona and IBM. For those who did interact with a computer, it was typically a mainframe that was accessed via a dumb terminal, which was basically a monitor with a network connector. Apple saw a huge potential in the corporate market. However, they would need a computer to meet the needs of the office minions. The n...

  The Nokia S60 Platform Continues To Evolve By the middle 2000's, the Symbian-powered handhelds made by Nokia dominated the marketplace once held by Palm. The PDA was evolving into the smartphone, and Nokia was in the middle of transformation. Symbian was rapidly evolving to meet the needs of these new users. The smartphone continued to get bigger screens, along with full physical keyboards. The user interface of Symbian was revamped to accommodate these changes. However, their really isn't much to say about the base OS. The applications included were very basic and standard. The bigger-screen devices featured bigger icons, just like PalmOS. The launcher could have different themes. Their was a multimedia viewer that supported both JPG and GIF icons. Again, by 2006-2007, this was the norm. When it came to multimedia, their were limitations within the Nokia SDK Emulator. MP3 Playback didn't work. The codec wasn't incl...

  The Apple II Redefines Micro-computing! Apple was about to grow at an explosive rate. The grassroots team of free-spirited engineers that operated out of an home garage in Cupertino, California attracted the attention of venture capitalist Mark Macula. With him and others, the band of engineers got a massive cash infusion that led to the quick development of the Apple II. Primary designed by Steve Wozniak, the Apple II became one of his milestone accomplishments. Success quickly followed. The computer appealed to both hobbyist and new buyers alike. Promoted at the Western Computer Faire, the computer quickly got the attention of various parties. The computer case was designed by Jobs. He studied industrial design and knew how to design a case that would appeal to these new buyers. The computing press and industry pundits was equally enthused by the appearance of the new computer. Why wouldn't they be. The Apple II sported a 6502 CPU running at 1M...

 I recently browsing my Facebook feed when I've encountered the following meme: Now a meme of this type demands examination. It has to be noted that the claim propelled by this meme is technically true, both in the specifics to Wounded Knee and in the general treatment of Native Americans by our government. The U.S. government carried out the forced removal of the Native Americans throughout the history of the country. The Native Americans lost their land and countless thousands were killed in the process.  However , this meme leaves out a very important detail: the reason why our government carried out their actions was because they had popular support from the general population. Did one selectively forgot Lincoln's Gettysburg quote "and that government of the people , by the people , for the people , shall not perish from the earth.". In a democracy, the government is essentially the collective representation of the general population that formed it. Where did th...

  The Beginning Of A Saga The story of Apple is much more straightforward compared to the evolution of the PC compatibles. The company was founded by an ex-hippie in his parents garage in Cupertino, California and their computers are now used by millions of Starbucks-drinking hipsters that nobody likes. The End! I think that series explaining Apple’s hardware evolution went very well! That was the shortest article I’ve ever typed. I wonder what the response will be? ROBERT. GET TO WORK AND DO AN ACTUAL EXAMINATION OF THE APPLE’S EVOLVING PLATFORM THROUGH EMULATION YOU LAZY TURD! Pre-Apple Examination Context Now granted, their sounds like there is a lot of animosity directed at Apple. That's a product of when one encounters a history written by fanboys who portraying Steve Jobs as an Christ-like figure with elements of Greek Mythology thrown in too. However, it's known that Jobs was very determined, intelligent, and creative (much more s...

  The LifeDrive Ended Up On Life Support Instead As the 2000's continued, the Palm handhelds continued to lose their appeal. The Treo devices remained high sellers. However, the profit margins of these handhelds tended to be lower as they were geared towards the general consumers. Palm had made numerous attempts to gain a foothold into the lucrative corporate market, but to no avail. In 2005, Palm made yet another attempt into the corporate market with the LifeDrive. This device was geared towards power users who wanted corporate features while still having that recreational handheld capable of music and video playback. Palm defined this market as the "prosumer" market, as ridiculous as that word is (Is the phrase "power user" is too generic? ). The power user market (if one exist) is typically defined as one where the user wants all the general purpose features of a given handheld while still needing more powerful features. For example, IT...