Palm Programming: The Developer's Guide

What’s in a Name—Is It a Pilot or a Palm?

We have to take a moment here to talk about both the name of this book, Palm Programming: The Developer’s Guide, and about Palm devices in general. If you are a loyal Palm user, then you probably call it a Pilot. So does virtually everyone else on the planet, except the company that makes them— 3Com. The producers of these dandy devices want you to think of Palm not as a device, but as a platform, the Palm Computing platform. They do this, reasonably enough, so that you realize that all the following devices use the same operating system, even though different companies make and sell them:

• Pilot 1000, Pilot 5000

• PalmPilot Professional

• PalmPilot Personal

• Palm III

• IBM WorkPad

• Symbol SPT 1500

Why 3Com went from the use of Pilot to Palm can be summed up in one word—lawsuit. Lawyers for the French Pilot Pen company contacted lawyers at 3Com and said, “Hey, Pilot is our name; stop using it.” So 3Com did. Now, while we could spend hours talking about the questionable wisdom of letting a pen company tell a computer company to throw away a wildly popular, highly recognized trade name, that doesn’t change our problem. People call them Pilots; the company calls them Palm devices.

As if the situation weren’t interesting enough, add the entrance of the lumbering giant, Microsoft. Noticing the success Palm Computing was having with its popular devices, Microsoft’s leaders said, “Hey, we’re going to make some, too, and we’re going to call them PalmPCs.” While ...