The Talk Show

‘High-Margin Candy Bar’, With Dieter Bohn

Saturday, 8 January 2022

Dieter Bohn joins the show to talk about his excellent new documentary, Springboard: The Secret History of the First Real Smartphone — a history of Handspring and the creators of the original PalmPilot.

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• Earnest: Freedom of choice meets student loans.

Links:

• “Springboard: The Secret History of the First Real Smartphone” — the full 30-minute documentary.
  • (That same link has Dieter’s bonus material, too, including his corrected version of Ed Colligan’s infamous December 2006 quip about the then-imminent iPhone.)
• “The Zen of Palm” (PDF) — Palm’s HIG and design philosophy.
• Palm OS’s Graffiti handwriting system, including an illustrated cheatsheet of the gestures.
• PalmOS devices:
  • PalmPilot
    • Jeff Hawkins’s wooden prototype for getting the size right
  • Handspring Visor
  • Sony Clié
  • Harry McCracken’s look back at Palm devices for Fast Company in 2018
• The Palm Pre — Palm’s answer to the iPhone in 2009.
• TreoCentral and VisorCentral — both sites long defunct, but still available online.
• BlackBerry-esque prototype Android devices from before Google saw the iPhone.
• HTC’s G1 — The first commercial Android phone (a real turd).

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.