1.7M views · Dec 7, 2021 · 30:36 · 3 HN recommenders · 6 mentions · discussed 2022–2025
The Verge's documentary on Handspring and its Treo, a smartphone that came a decade before the iPhone. It tells how a small team tried to build the modern smartphone and was held back by carriers and timing.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends it as an interview-rich history of Handspring, Palm OS and why telcos hurt early smartphones.
“Nice documentary about this with interviews”HN comment, 2024
“I thought this documentary about Handspring was interesting”
Handspring history and how telcos hurt it.
Calling it a Palm clone isn't really fair, it was developed by the team that founded Palm, Inc in the first place. link I thought this documentary about Handspring was interesting, and it also comes to the conclusion that the problem was at least mostly the telcos. this video
“Nice documentary about this with interviews”
Interviews on Handspring and Treo creation.
Right, it was ex-Palm employees at Handspring that created the Treo. Nice documentary about this with interviews: this video
“Handspring documentary by the Verge had an interesting perspective on the matter”
Interesting perspective on Handspring's fate.
Handspring documentary by the Verge had an interesting perspective on the matter: this video (I'm bad at cropping YouTube videos. The part in question is [12:53 - 14:30])
“you can hear it first hand from the Handspring/PalmOS/WebOS folks”
Apple is indeed the driving force that improved "targeted advertising, media consumption and unnecessary services subscription" compared to the old "Open the Web Browser and Owe 10 dollars" days by leveraging their iTunes userbase. Android would not even have launched without the iPhone breaking down those doors, you can hear it first hand from the Handspring/PalmOS/WebOS folks: this video
“the part I'm referencing is about 20 minutes in”
I've heard blame partially put on carriers - they initially resisted even carrying the Treo line without putting limits on what Handspring could do with it. Apple had the iPod - and, crucially, customers - could bring these customers to the carriers, and so they could dictate more. this video (the part I'm referencing is about 20 minutes in).
Worse yet it's the only effective way to sync music to the iphone over a wired cable. I can tell they've abandoned their USB sync software because of how annoying the dialogs are when you plug your phone in and don't authenticate to start it, additionally that thay've (likely intentionally to push I-cloud) never added automatic usb photo sync from phone to computer. This probably all originated from when Apple shifted their convergence model from all around the desktop to all around the phone¹ [1] this video
