Why the Palm Pilot worked

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Wed, 12/06/2006 - 5:30am.

The Palm Pilot comes in at number 15 in the top 25 technologies. The Palm Pilot was the first electronic organizer that was a success. The Newton had come out earlier, and many would more powerful, but the Palm Pilot was priced right, easy to use and had just the right feature set.

I remember buying my first Palm Pilot and being less than impressed. Sure, I played with it for four weeks or so, but I just couldn't get into keeping all my lists electronically.

The Palm Pilot wasn't powerful, but then it wasn't designed to be. It was meant to be a simple, easy device with very few features. The power was in the simple letter recognition program it used.

Anyway, the funny thing is that it was made by US Robotics. Talk about good timing. US Robotics was losing money as people moved from BBS to the internet, so the Palm Pilot allowed them to continue making money.

The Palm Pilot opened the way for all sorts of small, simple devices people enjoy.