.FLYINGHEAD FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
.TITLE Is PalmPilot the next Macintosh?
.DEPT
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY The PalmPilot is inspiring the same enthusiasm among users as the Macintosh did in its early days. In his monthly editorial, Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz compares PalmPilot to the spirit of the Macintosh. He also introduces our first PowerBoard Host of the Month.
.EDNOTE In this month’s editor column, we discuss the similarities between the PalmPilot of today and the Macintosh of yore. Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz ends the column by nominating a PowerBoard Host of the Month.
I recently read an excellent article in Wired News called "How PalmPilot Became a Hacker Cult", by Chris Oakes. There were a number of sentences in the article that, taken together, began to make the hairs on the back of my neck rise up and tingle. Let me share them with you:
.QUOTE The PalmPilot has spawned an intense, emotional, and fanatical developer following not seen since the glory days of the Mac.
.QUOTE PalmPilot shares a chip family with the early Macintosh line – Motorola’s 680X0.
.QUOTE "[Metrowerks] CodeWarrior was the leading Mac development tool," said Purmal. "They were already using it, so it became the first platform for development." With that, she said, the PalmPilot naturally attracted the Mac fanatic element.
Alan Jay Weiner has written a fine introduction to PalmPilot programming, so you’ll be able to read more about CodeWarrior. But, given the current sorry state of the Mac industry, any time I hear the phrase "Mac fanatic element", I get nervous.
Mr. Oakes of Wired isn’t alone in noticing the similarities. Rob Myers wrote the following in the November 20th issue of The Detroit News:
.QUOTE It comes with one meg of memory installed, no floppy disk drive, and only a tiny, black-and-white monitor. But its radically innovative interface is making waves throughout the industry and endearing a legion of fanatic followers. No, it’s not the 1984 Macintosh I’m talking about. It’s the 1997 PalmPilot PDA.
Is PalmPilot the next Macintosh? Is that good? Or is it something to worry about?
.H1 How PalmPilot is similar to Macintosh
Let’s look at some of the similarities. Some of them are to be expected, and some are downright eerie (and yes, I’ll probably have left some out–that’s what the PowerBoards are for):
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET In the PalmPilot, 3Com has introduced a form factor and set of functionality and Microsoft has decided to clone it with the PalmPC. The similarity here, of course, is to the Macintosh interface and Windows.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Both the PalmPilot and the original Macintosh sport the same processor and both use CodeWarrior as a principle development environment. PalmPilot developers are as zealous as Mac developers were in it’s heyday.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET The PalmPilot has some highly usable user interface (UI) enhancements that, on retrospect, seem incredibly obvious. For example, list items grow to multiple lines when the text reaches the end of the line. Virtually all other lists truncate text or prevent it from being displayed. The Mac has always been known for its excellent user interface.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET While the bulk of UI features on the PalmPilot are very well designed, the PalmPilot team has implemented some baffling user interface elements. The most obvious: to drop a menu that’s at the top of the screen, you need to click a button on the bottom. Mac, similarly, has many UI elements that are excellent and intuitive, yet ejecting a disk requires a counter-intuitive drag to the trash.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET The PalmPilot UI was prototyped on a Mac, using HyperCard.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Many employees of Palm are former Apple employees. That’s not reason on it’s own to be concerned however. Both firms are in Silicon Valley and if you thought you could link any actor to Kevin Bacon easily (i.e., Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon), you can definitely link employees of any one Bay Area technology company to another in many fewer hops.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET The device strikes a chord with its users. Like Macs, the PalmPilot often appeals to its users in a very personal way. For lack of a better set of words, it "fits" instantly to some users. This has been the same for the Mac.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET As a result, users aren’t just users. Users are enthusiasts. Or maybe even fanatics.
.END_LIST
.H1 How PalmPilot differs from Macintosh
Obviously, the PalmPilot is a handheld and the Macintosh is a desktop computer. Even with the similarities, the PalmPilot isn’t truly a chip off the old block. For instance:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET The PalmPilot is affordable and was designed to be affordable. Apple always charged a premium for the Macintosh experience — to their detriment.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET One of the things that always ticked off Mac users was the tendency of Apple to not provide an upgrade path. USR/3Com provided a fair upgrade path for Pilot 1000 and 5000 users to the new PalmPilot machines.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Apple was always against licensing the MacOS. While 3Com clearly hasn’t made licensing their most externally visible priority, many 3Com execs have told me that their licensing program is very important to them and they’ve done deals with IBM, QualComm, Symbol, and FranklinCovey.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET There’s unquestionably hype about the PalmPilot. But the relentless and often self-destructive and self-denying "reality distortion field" of the Macintosh is not in much evidence.
.END_LIST
.H1 What, me worry?
One of my earlier companies was a Macintosh development company. It suffered as Apple changed directions and went back on promises. I felt the joy of working with an exceptional device and the absolute panic when Apple, a company I’d learned to trust, proved to be psychotic and self-destructive.
And like many other Macintosh developers. I lived to tell the tale. I even wrote a book about it called "The Flexible Enterprise".
There are aspects of working with any company and platform that can cause company executives to lose sleep. Certainly, relying on Microsoft (or worse, partnering with them) is no picnic.
All companies make short-sighted decisions. All companies have employees who’s decisions are of the cover-your-ass variety to the detriment of the corporate mission. All companies have overworked employees who make mistakes.
3Com’s Palm Computing division seems no different. For that matter, neither is Component Enterprises, the company that publishes this magazine.
Thusfar, it seems that the PalmPilot device’s similarities to the Macintosh are good: enthusiastic users, development environments, good design.
Only if we see other similarities — like rampant self-destructiveness, overpricing, refusal to listen to users and developers, psychotic tendencies, and other Apple practices that seem to be destined for B-school case studies — should we worry in a Macintosh way.
So far, it looks like 3Com’s just another big company. No visible history of mental illness.
.H1 The hostess with the mostest: Claire Pieterek
And now, for something completely different.
Last month, we instituted the PowerBoards. We signed up a bunch of volunteer hosts, gave them the ability to create folders and move messages, and let them have fun.
The results have been impressive.
Its not the message count. It’s the quality. We got one letter, from Pete Fuenfhausen, that says it really well:
.QUOTE I’m enjoying PalmPower magazine and the PowerBoards. Before that I was reading the PalmPilot part of FranklinCovey’s forum site, but I got tired of the problems with FranklinCovey’s PalmPilot solution which the forum postings tended to focus on. The PowerBoards is very different –very positive and constructive. I think ya’ll have a great group of hosts and David G. seems very in-touch and supportive. I’ll be a regular reader.
Our hosts have made the PowerBoards a clean, well lighted place for PalmPilot users. Discussions have been constructive, fun, and friendly. Everyone has been polite. Strangers helping strangers becoming friends.
We appreciate the help of all of our hosts. We couldn’t have made the PowerBoards work (or be as pleasant) without them. But one host stands out. This person’s been very helpful, always there, and always available with great help and ideas. She’s really been the most visible presence behind the PowerBoards this month.
She really is the hostess with the mostest, as her tag line describes her.
This month, our PowerBoard Host of the Month is Claire Pieterek.
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://www.component-net.com/webx?13@@.ee6ba42
