Foreword
by Daniel Pifko, Phillip B. Shoemaker, and Bill Witte
The Palm Development Tools Team
In 1888, the invention of the ballpoint pen revolutionized the world of writing. In 1995 the invention of the Pilot™ connected organizer revolutionized the world of computing. The concepts behind the Palm Computing® platform have a history longer than the device itself. Before the advent of the Palm Computing platform, Jeff Hawkins and others at a small start-up called Palm Computing were developing software for handheld devices, working with myriad hardware manufacturers to have them adopt the vision of those at Palm Computing. When Jeff and the others finally realized it would never happen, they opted to create the hardware themselves. Years later, out of this primordial ooze of creativity, the Pilot 1000 was born. Then came the Pilot 5000, the PalmPilot™ Personal, the PalmPilot™ Professional, and the Palm III™ connected organizers. Companies started calling upon Palm Computing to partner, and out of those relationships came upgrade cards, pager cards, the IBM WorkPad, the Symbol SPT 1500 with integrated bar code scanner, and the Qualcomm pdQ with integrated cellular phone. And the list continues to grow. Within eighteen months, four products shipped from Palm Computing, and over a million devices were sold. We knew we had a solid and compelling platform that would be popular with developers.
The fundamental idea behind our strategy was first to get a large installed base using the devices ...
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