The author has clearly never seen a PalmOS device. Outdated now, sure, but they were a massive hit, and everyone - still - knows the platform. Put in its correct perspective - i.e., computers were less ubiquitous during its heyday - the Palm Pilot and its successors were a massive hit. It's a clear case of revisionist history to say that the iPhone is the "first comprehensively successful attempt to create a mass-market, consumer-friendly, always-on, pocketable touch screen computer".
> Put in its correct perspective - i.e., computers were less ubiquitous during its heyday
Now this is some historical revisionism. Palm's "heyday" was the late 1990s through the early 2000s. Computers were already extremely ubiquitous at that time. Laptops weren't quite as common, but the dream of "a computer on every desk and in every home" had long-since been achieved in developed nations.
> the Palm Pilot and its successors were a massive hit.
Relative to what came before it, but not what came after. Palm's PDAs were very much still a niche market when smartphones came along and made them irrelevant. In 2003-2004, PDAs (across all brands) sold about 2.6 million units[1]. This was probably the peak, but I can't confirm that. Three years later the iPhone launched and Apple sold 6.1 million units of the 1st generation[2]. Just last quarter they sold 47.8 million iPhones[3].
> It's a clear case of revisionist history to say that the iPhone is the "first comprehensively successful attempt to create a mass-market, consumer-friendly, always-on, pocketable touch screen computer".
No, it's clear that the iPhone's sales absolutely dwarf those of Palm. Relatively speaking, Palm was not a "successful attempt to create a mass-market ... touch screen computer". Even current BlackBerry sales absolutely dwarf Palm's best-ever sales rates[4].
