[HN Gopher] IBM Simon
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IBM Simon
Author : rbanffy
Score : 30 points
Date : 2022-02-03 09:47 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| hulitu wrote:
| I guess its phone programm was very good. To really qualify as a
| smartfone you need a buggy and unreliable phone programm and a
| buggy and unreliable messages programm. And some games.
| shortformblog wrote:
| I was sent one of these by a reader who also sent me a couple of
| EO Personal Communicators (which I wrote about for Input a couple
| of years ago: https://www.inputmag.com/features/fax-on-the-beach-
| the-story...).
|
| None of these devices worked, though there were a few in the box
| that did, most notably two still-functional Apple Newtons. I
| especially had little luck with the IBM Simon. The batteries
| simply did not want to charge and from what I read the charging
| process on them was supposedly quite involved even when the
| gadgets were new. If anyone has any ideas on how to get the
| device to connect to some source of power I'm happy to give it
| another shot, however.
| dcminter wrote:
| The multi-touch screen and good quality software1 of the iPhone
| are what really drew a line in the sand between the old and new
| "smart" phone worlds.
|
| Prior to the iPhone I think the closest device to hold a candle
| to it was the "VisorPhone" (palm clone with an add-on telephony
| device).
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010107042900/http://www.handsp...
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Handspring_Prism_Vis...
|
| Close but no cigar - even if the hardware had been a little more
| integrated they would probably never have pulled off the deal
| with the telcos that Apple finessed.
|
| 1 - relative to most phone software, whose UI beyond basic
| telephony was remarkably dire
| Closi wrote:
| Absolutely - the impact of the multi-touch screen and 'touch-
| not-stylus' design really cannot be understated.
|
| I think people sometimes forget that there were lots of phones
| with giant touchscreens before the iPhone - but the problem was
| that they just weren't very good. Windows Mobile 6 dominated
| the world, and if they managed to get a capacitive screen and
| put a sensible UI on it that was actually responsive the
| marketplace might be very different today!
| t43562 wrote:
| I think you might have wanted to say "cannot be OVERstated"
| meaning so important that even if you tried to hype it to the
| max you wouldn't be wrong.
|
| Capacitive displays were new, I think, but there was a bias
| against them at Nokia since you could not operate such
| screens with gloves on. In a cold country like Finland that
| was seen as a negative which is why resistive displays were
| preferred. Oddly though, I almost never use multitouch now -
| only for photos.
| dcminter wrote:
| Pinch-to-zoom was a very visible feature easily
| demonstrated on photos. Then it was an absolute necessity
| on websites purely designed for desktop.
|
| I hadn't reflected on it before, and it makes sense now
| everyone targets mobile first, but it is a _little_
| surprising how rarely I need it these days.
| jspann wrote:
| This reminds me of the Verizon One Home Phone[1] which didn't
| have many applications to justify it being smart but was smart
| for smart's sake. Breaking beyond that barrier and aligning a
| product, in a customer's mind, with a problem it solves is a key
| starting point (IMO) for someone who wants to justify the cost of
| a first adopter product.
|
| I think it is interesting they branded the Simon as "the first
| personal digital assistant or PDA to include telephony features"
| rather than the telephone with PDA features. I think this is a
| key distinction in marketing that can go overlooked - everyone
| has a household telephone but a PDA was more of a niche product.
| Its easier to wrap your head around "I have one of these and it
| does more!" instead of the other way "I don't have a PDA so why
| would I need one that makes calls? I already have a phone!"
|
| [1]: https://www.engadget.com/2007-01-08-the-next-verizon-one-
| net...
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| Featured in the opening of this episode of PBS's "the Computer
| Chronicles" on mobile computing from 1995:
| https://youtu.be/S8Mgc8dYLr0
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