[HN Gopher] IBM Simon ___________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-06 23:00 UTC)