Love your iPhone 16? Thank this little '90s gadget

Summary

The Palm Pilot was a ’90s PDA with basic apps and resistive touchscreen.
Smartphones caused the Palm Pilot’s downfall due to their advanced capabilities.
Single-use tech like Kindles and e-ink phones are gaining popularity for simplicity and escapism from overstimulation.

I grew up in a Star Trek household. My mom was always anticipating the next big product that would come along on the hockey stick curve of exponential technological growth we lived in. While we weren’t quite at the stage of addressing “Computer” out loud on the bridge of my home (the kitchen), it truly wasn’t all that far off — Siri made its debut on the iPhone 4s in 2011, and Google and Amazon would be catching up with their respective call cues soon after.

All that said, new technology usually made its way into my childhood in one way or another. I vividly remember being more excited about my mom’s tech hand-me-downs than stealing clothes from my older sister — and if you have one of those, you know what a big deal that is. In turn, I guess it’s obvious where I get my excitement about new devices.

You can’t argue with the inspiration, because there’s a crumpled-up Christmas wishlist out there from 2007 with “Pom Pilot” scribbled under the newest Polly Pocket set. I guess I was eight-going-on-eighty, because I wanted so badly to plan out my whole day with a palm-sized personal assistant, just like my parents. Luckily, they reality-checked me hard, and now I’m fully aware of the working life they were keeping me from for at least the next few years.

But, what was the Palm Pilot, and what happened to it?

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The Palm Pilot and its demise

A totally ’90s personal digital assistant

A Palm Pilot against a purple background.

Wikipedia / Pocket-lint

The Palm Pilot was a groundbreaking device released by Palm in the late 90s. It was a palm-sized (per the name) personal digital assistant (PDA) that worked primarily as a digital organizer. It came complete with basic apps like a calendar, address book, memo pad, and to-do list — the two latter apps were highly appealing to my elementary school self, for whatever reason.

I don’t think showing up to third grade with a handheld computing device would’ve scored me any points in the popularity contest, so it’s a good thing I never opened one on Christmas.

It featured a monochrome LCD touchscreen that worked with a stylus and even Graffiti handwriting recognition that let you write on the screen right then and there. The drawback was having to combat the resistive touchscreen with your stylus, but it was the turn of the century, so you really couldn’t have expected a buttery OLED experience.

Not that I would’ve had anyone but my mother to share this with (who probably had my “busy” playdate schedule already logged in her own device), but later models even had expandable memory slots, color screens, and wireless connectivity between Palm devices with Infrared Beaming. I sure didn’t need one looking back, but they took the business professional world by storm — what better way to carry around essential information back then? It sure beat the bulky weight of laptops back then.

Talk about technology making your personal and professional life as organized as ever. So, what happened to the Palm Pilot, and why doesn’t anyone walk around the office tapping their styluses against the resistive touchscreen anymore?

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The consolidation of single-use tech

See ya, dumb tech. So long, Palm Pilot

Apple / Pocket-lint

It’s exactly what you think — smart tech loomed like a tidal wave ready to drown all sorts of devices like the Palm Pilot. Why would you need a personal digital assistant on top of your phone that could make calls, send texts and emails, and even browse the Internet in addition to everything the PDA could do?

Smartphones were rising to the call in the mid-2000s and adding cellular connectivity as a default to the mix. How could the Palm Pilot compete? The company did try — releasing two of its own smartphone-competitors, the Palm Treo and the Palm Pre — but ultimately, it struggled in the financial department and was acquired by HP in 2010 for $1.2 billion.

I did not get a Palm Pilot, and neither did the rest of the world following 2010.

As Star Trek predicted much of the technology we now have casual access to (still waiting for that replicator), my mother predicted this consolidation of single-use devices into pocket-sized supercomputers. She had the last non-smartphone model, and anticipated Palm’s demise as the smartphone sea was rising. I did not get a Palm Pilot, and neither did the rest of the world following 2010.

A woman holding a Kindle Paperwhite 2024.

What single-use technology is worth it to you?

I’ve re-entered my e-reader era now that I have my hands on a new Kindle Paperwhite. Personally, there’s nothing that can replace the feel of a true hardcover, or the way book spines line up on my shelf, but there’s no denying the convenience that comes with having a (practically) endless library weighing in at just over 7 ounces.But what I appreciate more is that Kindles truly don’t try to deviate far from the actual experience of reading a physical book — and not just because of the e-ink display and matte feel. Kindles were made for reading, and nothing else. That means no notifications, no social media apps to doom-scroll, and nothing else vying for your attention. It’s a piece of single-use tech — and I absolutely adore it, especially when I own several major tech hubs in the form of my phone, MacBook Pro, and even my smart TV. However, e-waste is a major issue, one that products like my phone and laptop combat by having hundreds, if not thousands, of use cases.Selfishly, th

It’s all cyclical

Is it comeback season for single-use technology?

Kindles, the Walkman, e-ink phones, even flip phones are rising in the popularity department. People are yearning for simplicity in such an overstimulating world, with entire companies now dedicated to doing exactly the opposite of modern marketing — selling less.

Devices such as The Light Phone chop off all the bells and whistles and chisel a phone down to the bare bones. But, it’s not just phones — products like the Kindle Paperwhite are in the hands of commuters all over train cars, not a notification in sight or a ring in ear. People are even separating their music from their technology, opting for retro MP3 players or Walkman devices. The people are “crashing out” — as the kids say nowadays — and looking for a little quiet in the noise. Maybe there will come a middleground between ultra-smart tech and “dumb” tech — the hockey stick curve of progress seems to have jumped straight up from the Palm Pilot’s infrared beaming to the supercomputers in our bags and pockets in 2025.

Though the Palm Pilot is gone, the technology lives on in all of my smart devices. I might never be able to add it to my wishlist, but I’ll always mourn the idea of it. RIP Palm Pilot.