Handholding

[00:00:05] Speaker A: Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to Crosswise, the technology variety show that is brought to you by pure chaos today. And I really do mean chaos between browsers, audio interfaces, and, well, quite frankly, my guests, we're gonna have a good show. Now, look, this. I've been wanting to get this panel back together again for some time, and we've. We've tried to make this work, and I think majority of trying to schedule two different ti, three different time zones. [00:00:33] Speaker B: If I remember, we're all east coast, I think. [00:00:35] Speaker A: Oh, you're all east coast. Okay. [00:00:37] Speaker C: Yep. [00:00:37] Speaker A: All right. Okay. Two different time zones. That's fine. That's fine. Even that has been a challenge. But this, we are going to be talking about something that is really fond in my memory of tech, handheld computing. Now, what made me smile is when I was talking about this episode with Jay, she's like, oh, yeah, you gotta talk about a game Boy. You gotta talk about, you know, this and all the. Emily's like, no, Jay, wrong type of handheld computing. We're not talking gaming here. We're talking things like palm pilots, handspring visors, the scion, and everything else in between. So let me introduce my panel. Now, because of technical issues in my browser, I can't see my panel, but I can hear them. So I think we're gonna go in alphabetical order. So, Dan Vincent, welcome back to the show. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Okay, I guess I am first. It's great to be back. Thanks for having us, James. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Oh, my pleasure. Anything new in New Zealandia that you want to tell people about quickly? [00:01:37] Speaker B: We did just the last week post the VCF east roundup video, which was fun, as I was saying, early first. Well, not first, but really exciting to be back into producing things on location again, which is not a skill that I normally have, but I learn quickly, I guess, and learning about all the various things that it takes to be in a live location. Because the last one, last VCF before that was back in last September. So I had to relearn everything that I'd learned six months prior and do it all again. But it was fun. And oddly enough, all of the people in this call, all the guests in this call were also at that event. [00:02:26] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, you need to do a VCF Bournemouth. That's all I'm gonna say. Although actually, we and Dan nearly met, didn't we? We nearly. [00:02:35] Speaker B: We almost did. [00:02:36] Speaker A: Cause unfortunately, trains were just an absolute nightmare. I'll come back to that. Now then, let me get my Alphabet. Ah, yes, the wonderful Shaun from action retro, who is currently trying to run haiku on his kitchen cheese grater. [00:02:50] Speaker C: Trying. No, I successfully installed it and it's grating cheese right now. [00:02:55] Speaker A: Brilliant. There we go. Sean, how are you doing? [00:02:58] Speaker C: I'm doing pretty well, thanks for having me. Excited to talk about handhelds. Oh, I brought a bunch of handhelds. I know you can't see me, but I'm gonna hold one up here. I brought. This is probably my favorite handheld here. [00:03:11] Speaker B: Hey, I've got one of those too, commodore here. [00:03:13] Speaker C: As you see, it fits nicely in my hand, so I'm excited to talk about handhelds. [00:03:19] Speaker A: Oh, jeez. You see, the thing is, I actually can't see what Sean's holding up. Everyone else can look. Thank you as always, Sean. Shallow course action, retro, some just absolutely wonderful videos. I mean, always. But recently in particular, I think you've had your fair share of fun and games with blue scuzzy there, haven't you, Sean? [00:03:42] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I was just trying to install. Well, I was making a intel next box, and blue scuzzy was, for some reason, really fighting me on it. I don't know if it was my SD card or the weird jumble of components I was trying to build with. [00:03:56] Speaker A: What made me smile the most, Rob, was your choice of processor, because that Pentium 75 was the processor in my first PC. Not my first computer, my first PC. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Nice. [00:04:09] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good speed. I don't know why anyone would need more than 75 MHz, but you don't. [00:04:13] Speaker A: Need more than 640 ram, do you have? So anyway, and my final but by no means least important guest, Steve, Mac 84. Now. Hey. Hey, how you doing? [00:04:28] Speaker D: Good, thank you for having me back, I appreciate it. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Oh, my absolute pleasure. Now, you know, obviously, how long did it take you to change your name to Mac 84? I mean, was it a big legal process? [00:04:40] Speaker D: Well, you know, there was that Mac 85 guy and, you know, just. He was so much more popular than I was. So, you know, once that was taken care of, let's say it was an easy process. [00:04:51] Speaker C: So, yeah, once you subtracted that one. [00:04:57] Speaker D: Look, math is difficult for me. You know, that was just, you know, step one of it. [00:05:02] Speaker B: I don't know. You gotta watch out for that Mac 83 guy. No, you don't want. [00:05:06] Speaker D: No, that's. That's. Yeah, you don't want anything to do with him. But, yeah, I've been tinkering around with stuff. As Dan mentioned, we were all at VCF east in Wall, New Jersey, just in April. So that was a lot of fun connecting in person. But other than that, I've been once in a while trying to put some content out there on the interwebs. Recently I did a video about VCF, just like Dan did. But I've also been playing around with a pioneer Macintosh clone, which was pretty fun and did a little bit of a video about re PC in Seattle when I was there on business. And that surprisingly got a lot of views for whatever reason and a lot of questionable comments. But yeah, as videos do, I was. [00:05:50] Speaker A: Going to say, isn't that just the world of YouTube, I have to admit. So obviously, doing my podcast, doing my streams, I have not got around to doing all of my YouTube videos. I really should get on because I've got lots of cool stuff I actually need to film, make videos about, but I haven't gotten around to it. Steve, you recently had some fun for marching Tosh, if I remember correctly, with opening up Apple. Talk to the web. [00:06:19] Speaker D: Yeah. So I didn't invent it or anything, but there was a very smart group of people who were working on it. And somehow I was picked to say, hey, you figured this out, and was sort of administrating a spreadsheet for, you know, that that's basically all it was. But my good friend Ron took that over. But it was a lot of fun just connecting these old Macs. We had some viruses going around, which is exciting. My image writer sort of gave up the ghost a bit. It still worked, but the caps smelled like you could go down to the basement, go, what's that smell? Oh, and you know, so that had to be swapped out. But other than that, other than simple text crashing on a client's computer and sending 100 pages with one line of text to my poor image writer before I pulled the plug, it was largely a lot of fun, and folks are still doing it. So if you want info on that, just go to marchandtosh.com and you could find all the information there. [00:07:14] Speaker A: Amazing. All right, let's get started. So, look, I'm a of an age where I think for me, my first handheld experience was seeing other people with handheld seeing. I remember a friend's dad had one of a very early, when it was still branded, us robotics palm devices. Was it us robotics? [00:07:37] Speaker B: It was, you are correct. And then Threecom got them and then they palm split off from there. [00:07:43] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah, I remember seeing one of those. There was a thing where a lot of, like, youth workers I used to work with, worked with had scions. They all seem to love the scions for some reason. And then obviously going through a palm line. But what about. And let's go in reverse order. Let's put Steve on for hotspot. Steve, for you, what was your first handheld experience? We should really start with my first handheld thing. [00:08:09] Speaker D: Yeah. And I was thinking about this earlier. I was trying to figure out if I had a Newton message pad first, if I had a palm pilot first. Because growing up, I remember a lot of, like, toy computers and like, sort of pseudo organizer type things. And, you know, if you frequent yard sales or whatever, you might find one or you get as a Christmas gift or something like that. And so we had a bunch of, like, toy computers growing up. And I always liked the InF, the way that you could like, sort of like organize information, but anything about connectivity, whether it was like beaming something somewhere or a serial connection to something or wireless later on, that always, for some reason, excited me. I was like, oh, this is cool. So I want to say the Newton message pad 130 was the first handheld I had. And it was on a fire sale from shreve systems, which was an old reseller of apple related stuff. And I think it was like $29 or something. Ridiculous. Cheap enough, where our parents got like, you know, one for each of us. And it was fun to play around with. It was, you know, really, hey, what can I do with this now that I have this? You know, and the primary function of a Newton is to take notes and organize data. But when you're a kid, what do you have? Like three of your friends phone numbers? So it was more of, you know, can I draw little pictures? Can I download programs to this and things like that? So that, I think, was really like an eye opening experience. And I would later get a palm three e. But I think the Newton was really like my first step into, like, oh, wow. Like, you could actually play around with this stuff. And since I had some old Macs, it was pretty easy to get some software onto it. [00:09:47] Speaker A: Nice. Sean, what about yourself? What was your first handheld? [00:09:53] Speaker C: Well, before I talk about my first one, I actually brought one of my favorite handhelds, classic handhelds here. I know you can't see, but this is my Amiga 1200 HD 40. It fits very nicely in my hand. It's kind of a two hand device, but it's very satisfying thumb feel on these keys. But I didn't have this when I was a kid. Of course. [00:10:20] Speaker A: I like that. The Amiga 1200 has been described as a handheld. I mean, technically you can hold it with your hands. You can. Do you realize how jealous I am about ten year old me would have been like, because I had a 600. Okay. That was my first computer. And of course, our friends, who were a bit better off than we did, they had the 1200. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:10:44] Speaker C: Because it. Well, it's a better handheld. [00:10:47] Speaker A: Well, there's more of it to hold. [00:10:50] Speaker D: It's more battery effects. [00:10:54] Speaker C: It only takes 24 D batteries and. [00:10:57] Speaker A: Runs about 20 seconds on those. [00:11:02] Speaker D: Batteries. [00:11:02] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep. [00:11:04] Speaker B: Well, you could also splurge for the twelve volt lead acid portable battery kit. [00:11:09] Speaker C: I just carried around. A car battery. [00:11:11] Speaker D: Yeah, well, they sold those easy neck braces. You could just put it around your neck and just hold it there. [00:11:16] Speaker B: The real pro's got the backpack straps for the battery kit. [00:11:20] Speaker C: Right. Yeah. Well, so that. That's currently my favorite. When I was a kid, though, my first handheld, I don't remember the model of it, but I think it was based on Palm, and it was just some little chintzy, you know, one bit screen. And what I specifically remember about it, though, is I found some third party basic app, and I was, like, sitting around in school, like, I think I was, like, writing in basic with the stylus, trying to, like, write programs. [00:11:54] Speaker A: Hang on. Trying to write basic with graffiti, because graffiti was the. [00:11:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:59] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Okay. [00:12:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:01] Speaker C: I don't clearly remember what it was, if it was graffiti, or if it was some, like. I don't think it was, like, windows ce. I remember specifically, it was, like, you know, flip open, and there was a stylus. And I remember writing in basic, and my proudest achievement was I was drawing circles. I could then tap on, but I'm pretty sure I was, like, writing it in, like, graffiti or whatever this thing had. [00:12:26] Speaker A: Wow. [00:12:28] Speaker D: I think you need to relive this, Sean, on a video of yours. Write a whole basic program with graffiti without crying. [00:12:34] Speaker C: I could remember what it was that I had. [00:12:37] Speaker A: I mean, it sounds like one bit. I'm wondering if it was a handspring of some. [00:12:43] Speaker B: Do you remember what kind of, like, rectangular case? [00:12:46] Speaker C: I feel like it was small and gray, and this would have been in, like, 99, and it was probably a few years old at that point. I think they, like, bought it secondhand and gave it to me for Christmas or something. [00:13:02] Speaker A: But it's sounding like one of your original visors. [00:13:05] Speaker C: Could be. [00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah, because I should say that was. That was. Yeah, I had. I had a. Yeah, I can't remember exactly which. I had a handspring visor, and that was a great little device, so I know what you mean. It sounds very similar to it. All right, Dan, what about you? I'm going to guess you've got a wonderful, wonderful story for us. [00:13:25] Speaker B: Hmm. That's a good question. I'm trying to think of what my actual first handheld computing experience, because I do remember my first. I do remember my first PDA. That was the handspring visor platinum I got it for. It had to have been in, like, I'm trying to remember the year that I got it. It must have been like 2000 or 2001. [00:13:48] Speaker A: That. [00:13:49] Speaker B: That sounds truthy. It was a birthday present. So I remember, you know, we drove over, because I lived in the sticks, we drove over to Crossgates Mall and Albany, New York, to the Best Buy, which had recently opened up there and replaced nobody beats the whiz. And. [00:14:06] Speaker D: Oh, yes. [00:14:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And got that. I want to say that probably was like $250 or something, but I want to say even before that, I had. Because I had people in my life who are gadget people. Like, they weren't turbo nerds like we are, but very much like gadget people who are in tune with, like, that stuff. And I swear somebody had once given me one of those old, you know, like, Radio Shack or sharp little handheld organizers that had a little keyboard and they had an address book and a date book and, you know, a clock or whatever. Really not, not much complexity, but I'm sitting there, I remember it vividly with its little lcd display, you know, old style, like maybe two columns of. Two columns, two rows of lcd display. And I'm sitting there with a little membrane keyboard trying to like, tap it and say, okay, I'm gonna put my phone numbers in here. It's actually got a little text thing. It can run a calculator. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is really cool. And you know, now when I see those things, I'm like, yeah. It's like, I don't know what I was seeing in it, but I guess when you're twelve years old, you know, you look at something like that, you think, wow, this is cool. I'm cool. I'm a somebody. [00:15:23] Speaker A: I've got one of these things that usually only my teachers have. [00:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You know. [00:15:29] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Because. Because obviously we're talking about maybe more PDA's, but I've completely forgotten that whole category of little tiny, like, calculator, probably calculator size, like handheld devices, like, you know, the electronic dictionaries, the electronic. For services, the organizers, but for me, the translators. [00:15:54] Speaker B: Catherine O'Hara is trying to give away in home alone to try to get back to the United States. [00:16:01] Speaker A: She didn't get very far, did she? It was like, it was like a quick game show that wasn't, I've got this, I've got this organizer, you know, take my second board or both. Take, you know, absolutely. [00:16:13] Speaker B: Be like a prize. You would get on like the price is right, you know, guess, you know, we got this sharp personal organizer, you know, how much is that? You know, $99. Who knows? [00:16:23] Speaker D: You're jogging my memory there, Dan, because I think that I either had a Casio one, it was secondhand, like, like your experience likely was, or, you know, you said people in your family had gadgets. And I forget where I got this from, but I remember it like either, either didn't work or we didn't have the battery for it, but just the concept, like, oh, there's a keyboard and a screen. Like that was probably one of my first experiences. Even if it was broken, it is. [00:16:46] Speaker B: A computer and it technically, technically fits in your pocket, you know, so it really does make you feel like, oh, I'm kind of in the future a little bit. [00:16:57] Speaker A: Of course, I remember I had one friend who had the calculator watch but also had the tv remote. [00:17:04] Speaker B: Oh, yes, I knew somebody had one of those too. [00:17:07] Speaker D: I was the popular kid in middle school with the tv remote watch until I told people. And then it was all the, all the delinquents in the class, hey, turn off the tv, because the teacher's doing such and such. And it's like either I, either I do what they say or they'll beat me up or something, you know. So I had to sort of be slick about it. [00:17:28] Speaker C: I was one of the delinquents. [00:17:29] Speaker A: You were a delinquent? Why does that not surprise me? [00:17:33] Speaker B: We've got more, I'm sure all of us have more delinquency. Tales of our handhelds in schools. [00:17:39] Speaker A: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so, but what my vivid memory is seeming advertising. Now this might not mean much to you free, but to our UK audience, if I say the Argos catalog, I mean, we're mail, mail order catalogs, like a big thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. [00:18:00] Speaker D: JC for like toys. But you'd have, you'd have, yeah, like general department stores that would send out catalogs or things to entice you, especially in the holidays. [00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:08] Speaker B: Actually digging through an old Sears catalog this week for some reference material in 1993 for computer sales opening up. Sears catalog. Sure enough. There's Packard Bell, there's IBM, there's performance, you know, all right there along with stereo equipment and other things. Sears catalog and Argos catalog. Very much. Two brothers separated by an ocean. [00:18:31] Speaker A: Indeed. Absolutely. So we got that little class of device and then we started getting into this whole, the whole idea of a PDA, something that you, I guess what would be best way pen based. Pen based computing. Because I remember watching, you know, computer chronicles and starting to see, you know, more Stuart Shaffay, telling everyone, hi, I'm Stuart Shafeh. Do you know, I tried to reach out to him because the retro hour had him as a guest a long time ago and I. His email address was on his website. I tried to email him instead. I don't think he is. [00:19:09] Speaker B: I mean, unfortunately, Stewart is like, he's over 80 years old these days. So unfortunately we got a prayers that he'll keep rolling. But I wouldn't be surprised if something happened on that web hosting and he might not be aware of it. [00:19:29] Speaker A: That's a shame, because I always love the computer chronicles. I remember seeing it on KPI. [00:19:33] Speaker B: He was a big proponent of pen based computing. Like, you see a lot of episodes where he will talk about Wacom devices, he'll talk about PDA's, he'll talk about all sorts of things. He really was, you know, I think he was a big fan of that stuff. [00:19:47] Speaker A: And when we, you know, and when we think about, I think, for me, what really has always enticed me about those devices, and maybe it's just led with this, is watching Star Trek TNG and deep space Nine. Me, maybe not the original series where they had the, like Apple's reject Newton or Star Trek five and Star Trek five, the final frontier, which is, I'm sorry, the motion picture has its flaws, but Star Trek five is an awful film. [00:20:21] Speaker C: I'll still watch it. [00:20:22] Speaker B: I'll still watch it. [00:20:23] Speaker A: I'll watch it because it's a Star Trek film. But it's basically, what, an hour and a half, maybe a bit more of William Shatner's ego on screen. [00:20:32] Speaker D: Well, that could be said for anything. I mean, come on. [00:20:35] Speaker C: That was all of that error. [00:20:38] Speaker B: It did give us the great line of what does God need with the starship? [00:20:41] Speaker A: Starship. But there's a bit where he's got this new, like, I think it's meant to be a job. He's got this new like, handheld for doing his captain's log. And there's a big, almost like a third of the device is taken up with a thing that lights up to, say system malfunction. [00:21:01] Speaker D: That's because Sean had a handle on it before. [00:21:04] Speaker C: Yeah, the install got corrupted. [00:21:06] Speaker A: There we go. But this concept of being able to interact with these handheld devices, you know, that aren't by themselves, aren't what we would think of a traditional computer, particularly back in those days. Wow, that sound makes me sound old, doesn't it? When. When your traditional PC or home computer needed a big screen and, you know, keyboard. But you could walk around with all this information and beam your contact cards. Sorry, Jason. Okay, so Jason backstage listening in, and she's just messaged, literally just messaged me while we're recording. Say you are old, dear. [00:21:47] Speaker B: Look, we're all on the wrong side of 40 here. [00:21:49] Speaker A: We are. [00:21:49] Speaker D: We? [00:21:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. [00:21:51] Speaker D: I'm slightly under it, but not for long. [00:21:54] Speaker A: Wait, I know you. You're giving me. [00:21:56] Speaker C: Yeah, Steve's a kid. [00:21:58] Speaker A: Oh, whoa. [00:22:00] Speaker D: Just a wee bit, I'm afraid. [00:22:02] Speaker C: Oh, one of these gosh dang Gen Z's. [00:22:06] Speaker D: I'm gonna. I'll be 38 this year, so. [00:22:09] Speaker A: Okay, fine. You still older? [00:22:11] Speaker D: I said just by a hair. [00:22:12] Speaker A: Just by hair. [00:22:13] Speaker D: Not that I have many hairs. Oh, my back is over 40. Yeah, all those laser printers and crts made sure. [00:22:23] Speaker A: Anyway, sorry. This concept of handheld computing, it's always fascinated me, but where do we think. And I'm going to open this up. Just completely open it up. Where do we think that it really started to become popular and actually, shall we say, usable? [00:22:42] Speaker C: Well, I brought an example of what I think actually would kind of illustrate that. So when I got this handheld, you know, it has a smaller screen, but it's still pretty nice to carry. And you could kind of beam things by just facing the screen. [00:23:04] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:23:04] Speaker C: James, if you can see this, it's a Mac plus. [00:23:06] Speaker D: Let the record state, he's holding up a Macintosh plus from 1986. [00:23:11] Speaker B: It is a luggage from a certain point of view. [00:23:13] Speaker C: Yeah, look, it's in my hand right now. [00:23:16] Speaker B: He's holding us. [00:23:17] Speaker A: Is this going to be the theme of the whole episode, just Sean holding up random old computers? [00:23:23] Speaker D: You were warned before we started. [00:23:25] Speaker A: That is true, yes. [00:23:27] Speaker B: This is what happened together. [00:23:29] Speaker D: I think where I started seeing them was, you know, in tv shows or movies, you know, someone would have something. But I think what's really important to underline here is the first portables that we think of. I think when the four of us think of a modern ish type of a handheld, maybe a palm three or something like that, a lot of these were just standalone devices. They sync to your computer. You could transfer data back and forth and little apps and things like that, but there was no wireless connectivity. There was no Internet connectivity at most you would have an add on modem years later or something if you had such email functionality and the huge amount of memory to store apps and things like that, which would come later as a standalone foundational feature set. But I think a lot of these little organizers were just trying to figure out the best way to store and make information usable for you. I think it's actually really hard for people that are younger than us to think of. We had these devices that weren't connected to a larger network, and the only connectivity you had between devices was whatever proprietary connection method that they had for their series, like Palm had. The beaming and the Newton devices had a similar beaming functionality. But it wasn't until networks and phones and things like that got cheaper and digital assistants got cheaper and merging with smartphones, there's really a wider connection of networks. But just looking back and thinking about those devices, I had a heck of a lot of fun. Even though they weren't connected to anything, you know. [00:25:11] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I think they were still trying to like figure out what people wanted these things for. People obviously thought they were interesting. Like, I showed you some examples now recently, so I don't know if they really counted. I'm going to look up in this full fledged computer here to see what else I have in stock here. For the record, this is my scion MX five anyway. [00:25:36] Speaker A: Mx. Which one? [00:25:37] Speaker C: Mex five MX. Now this is, as you might imagine, running Linux of course. [00:25:46] Speaker A: Wait, he's not ready in haiku? [00:25:47] Speaker C: No, no, I don't think that's gonna work. I can barely see this screen. [00:25:50] Speaker B: I haven't ported it yet. [00:25:52] Speaker C: Anyway. I can't even tell what it's doing. Yeah, people are trying to see what they wanted to use these things for. I mean, they were like just notepads or were they computers or were they like communicating devices? Steve, was that a dreamcast? [00:26:09] Speaker D: Of course, it was the smallest, most convenient PDA of a VMU. [00:26:14] Speaker A: Oh, I love it. [00:26:15] Speaker C: Yeah, that's so funny. I had that when I was younger and I remember like carrying it around school. Like I have a computer in my. [00:26:21] Speaker A: Hand, which technically speaking you did because it had a processor. I mean, you know. [00:26:26] Speaker C: Right. But I remember my fondest memory with an actual handheld computer. I had an HP journata 420, which I remember that name specifically because it's funny. And I, when I was, I don't know, 19 or something, I worked at a skate park in the retail section and it was hardly ever busy, so I had an external 33 six modem, parallel modem and so I brought that and the dock and the handheld to work and hooked it up to the store phone line and was dialing into my ISP and browsing the web as kind of, you know, an early version of what we do now. And I was like, I'm living in the future. [00:27:19] Speaker D: I'm sure they were so happy to see the phone bill. [00:27:23] Speaker C: Well, I never got in trouble, so I don't know if they understood what I was doing up there. Like, he's playing with his toys. I'm, like, tying up the one phone line for the store. [00:27:34] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:27:35] Speaker A: How many lost sales was that, you reckon? [00:27:38] Speaker C: They went out of business? About a year later, so I'd like to think that it was entirely my fault. [00:27:43] Speaker D: Just the phone bill alone for that long distance Internet. [00:27:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:27:48] Speaker D: I love this image you've painted, though, Sean, because, like, all of those accessories that you mentioned probably weighed more than the stupid device itself. And that was just. That was how these things were. They were great and thin and portable. But if you wanted any sort of expansion, it's like, well, I got to bring this adapter. I got to bring this cable. I got to bring this. And, you know, you're running off of two aaa batteries or something like that, so you better have spares. [00:28:14] Speaker A: And it's interesting you mentioned the scion five minutes because you had, like, the vote, the science, which were effectively folding, like, little keyboards, and I don't think, until later, revisions. I don't think the science were touchscreen. Were they? [00:28:30] Speaker C: They're touchscreen, yeah. [00:28:31] Speaker A: Oh, they. Okay, right. [00:28:32] Speaker C: I got a little stylus right here. [00:28:34] Speaker A: Oh, but what did Steve Jobs say? If you see a stylus, it. You failed. Was it? [00:28:40] Speaker C: And now they have a stupid pencil. [00:28:42] Speaker A: Several stupid pencils. [00:28:44] Speaker D: Well, see, now they're selling a stylus, so it's. It's okay now. [00:28:47] Speaker A: It's fine now, but, yeah, absolutely. [00:28:50] Speaker C: But they just haven't told Steve. [00:28:51] Speaker A: But, no, no. He'd be beach balling in his grave. Sorry. That's terrible. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Although I do think, at least when it comes to handheld computers, I think what actually made them useful to people and not actually, like a toy or whatever. I mean, granted, the Newton was ahead of its time. [00:29:17] Speaker A: Yes. [00:29:18] Speaker B: That what made, like, the palm itself take off was the fact that it was out of the gate. You could immediately see what it was useful for. It's like, okay, it's got a date book, a calendar. It's got an address book. It's got a notepad, it's got an expense tracker. It's got all of these things where you say, okay, if I'm a traveling executive, okay, I'm a traveling executive. I'm going everywhere. I have a paper date book that I have to carry. I have a paper notepad that I carry. I have a paper, you know, my fake Rolodex, which is separate from my Rolodex in the office, by the way. So trying to keep those two things in sync. Royal pain in the butt. So here you are. You know, Apple is trying to sell you a much more powerful thing for, you know, five, $500, however much they asked for a new Newton back in the day. And then here's palm, part of three comm slash us robotics, saying, hey, here's a much cheaper, much simpler device that's a little more focused, that costs half as much. And, oh, people say, hey, I'm a high flying executive. The fact that I don't have to keep multiple paper books in sync anymore, to them, that's a gold mine, and it fits in their pocket. And you can pitch that to somebody. It's not going to revolutionize the world like a cell phone would, but it's enough to make a actual reasonable business out of it. [00:30:46] Speaker A: Right. And that's the thing now at that stage where the early stage, could you still connect them to the PC? Because Palm obviously had, I'm trying to remember the two terms. I don't know if they started out for. Palm had hot sync. [00:31:02] Speaker B: Hot sink. Yep. That was what it was from the get go. [00:31:05] Speaker A: And obviously that worked. Started off serial, went to USB. Microsoft, I say Microsoft. The, because we then got the Windows CE and beyond itself. But that was active sync. And I think if I remember the difference was the hot sink, you had to press a button. [00:31:26] Speaker D: I think there were, there were a few differences there because the, the palms, at least the ones I've had, the cradles had a dedicated button on it, but they also had a button on the screen. And so, you know, you could, you could toggle whichever you wanted, but you could also, I think there were some smart things we could just, when you put in the cradle, you're attached to a modem, you could just dial and then it would, you know, eventually connect and do a sync. [00:31:49] Speaker B: But yeah, you could do the palm, which was if you bought a modem and set up your computer so that you could dial into your computer. Yeah, to a remote hot sink. [00:32:00] Speaker D: You know, when you, how many times I tried to do that as a kid, not understanding that, you know, I needed another computer connected to the only phone line in the house that. Yeah, it wasn't gonna work out. [00:32:09] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I was very naive when all this was happening. Like, oh, yeah, I should be able to connect to a computer by dialing my house phone line. And my mum would pick up the phone. [00:32:23] Speaker B: What you trying to do? [00:32:24] Speaker A: What you trying to do? Yeah. I could never convince my parents to get a second phone line. We had rules in our house because we were on dial up for, you know, obviously a while rules in our house that at certain times, like, particularly if my mum needed to call my Nana, no Internet for the hour that she was on my phone to Nana. So just not. Not a thing. Now, palm, obviously, palm just had such a. They really had a lot of devices in the market running via OS because obviously you have the palms themselves. And I just remember, like, again, people like the going all the way up through, like, the M series. You then went into the lattes, into the palm tungsten's. And I had the zires. Yeah. Because the zy was a cheaper model, wasn't it? I mean, you have the tungsten, which was nice. And I had a t two, and a t two had this. It had the slide down where the graffiti but graffiti pad could be hidden. [00:33:21] Speaker D: I loved that I had that. That was one of the devices I had. So the first palm I had was the three e. And I might have gotten either just before the Newton or right around the same time as that. And it was the special edition, so it had the clear case instead of a gray case. But of course, it had some sort of firmware bug and we had to send it in for servicing. And I got just a standard gray one in return. Now, I've since remedied this via ebay and very late night searches a few years ago, but at the time, you know, it was a bit disheartening for me, but I remember that thing was quite capable. It was, you know, not the. The highest end, but it did have some improvements over the standard three. And then a few years later, my mother had gotten a palm v. So that was the fifth model. And I think they had a few generations of that. But the really hallmark thing I remember about that as Dan holds up a pretty one there, is that we had a Magellan GPS attachment to it. [00:34:19] Speaker B: Oh, Steve, am I going to have to go in the other room and get it? [00:34:25] Speaker D: And when I say we used it, I mean, we attempted to use it once, because we quickly figured out that the amount of memory that these maps actually hold on this device, you couldn't even fit an entire state you had this mechanism where you selected your counties or your routes, if I'm remembering correctly. And it was just basically like, oh, yeah, yeah, we could load that in, but, you know, you can't do this or you can't do that. You know, we tried it once, and I remember, like, staring at it and not understanding how it acquired the signal and all this stuff, and then the batteries would just drain. And it was, you know, kind of useless at that point, but we must have gotten it dirt cheap because, you know, it was probably an accessory that didn't sell well, but that was, like, one of the first experiences was like, wow, this. This palm is connected to something other than, you know, myself, even though it's just receiving a signal from somewhere. But just the. I think just the promise of that, because it was the wild west of. Of those sort of devices that everything, even if. Even if you had no connectivity at all, it was like, hey, I have this computer. It's in my pocket. It could do things, man. Like, I'm cool now, even though, you know, I have braces. And, you know, in middle school, I've. [00:35:38] Speaker C: Been poking around PalMDB while we're talking. I found the basic. So I told you, one of my first experiences. Yeah, it definitely was palmist. It's. Why basic? [00:35:50] Speaker B: Okay. [00:35:51] Speaker C: Why basic? I'm looking at a screenshot of it now, and the input line is just a line, and you would scribble in letters. [00:36:00] Speaker D: That's great. [00:36:00] Speaker B: I sent you a video idea. [00:36:04] Speaker C: I have to go find one. [00:36:06] Speaker D: I think I have a bunch. Sean, you can borrow. You just need. [00:36:10] Speaker C: I'm on my way after this call. [00:36:11] Speaker A: There you go. There you go. [00:36:13] Speaker B: Have it ready. That promise of connectivity I remember for my handspring visor. One of the main things about the handspring visor is that it had the cartridge slot on it. [00:36:24] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:25] Speaker B: And most of the time, that cartridge thought it's like, okay, I had, like, an eight meg memory cartridge, like, flash memory cartridge I had. They actually sold, like, you could buy software, like Game Boy game, just like a game Boy. Pop it in. It's like, oh, I'm gonna pop in this Tiger Woods PGA golf and play some golf on my. On my visor. But one of the things I bought for it was a zircom plug in 28k modem. And this zircon modem, it didn't have a pop out thing or a dongle. It actually had the modem port built into it. And because it was that thick, it actually took a battery holder that was the same one as Motorola startech phones. So you could put either double a batteries or a rechargeable battery from your Motorola cell phone into it. And I swear I used that thing maybe three times to try to connect to. I'm like, oh, I'm going to plug in the phone. I'm going to try connecting. And I'm like, this isn't working very well. And you think I would have learned my lesson, but when I got my Casio E 125, like, I'm not buying a modem for this thing. No, no, no. I'm buying a compact flash ethernet adapter, which I still have in the house, by the way. I still have it. It's around here somewhere. And I. That was actually more useful. Like, I could plug that in, plug into an ether. I was in college when I had that. So I plugged it into the many ethernet ports that they had hanging around. Like, okay, I can actually use. And I'm thinking, like, well, if I could do this, why am I not just bringing my laptop with me? [00:37:58] Speaker A: I was gonna say, it's not exactly like you free roaming me. You've got Evie. You've got the world's longest Ethernet code to go. [00:38:04] Speaker B: I know. [00:38:07] Speaker A: I got. Well, no, I never actually got it. I ordered and had a nightmare trying to from handspring, I think. I couldn't get payment to make payment for because they wanted some, like a weird thing, but I can't remember what it was. So I would be. Wouldn't let me pay with my debit card or anything because I was only young at a time. I think it was like maybe 16, maybe a little bit older. I was getting my cellular modem for the handspring visor into that same cartridge slot. [00:38:35] Speaker B: Yep. [00:38:35] Speaker A: And I'm trying to remember, I think it was handspring. Who made it? [00:38:39] Speaker B: They did. The visor phone. [00:38:41] Speaker A: That's it. Because I have this idea. I'm gonna get rid of my little Sony Ericsson T 610, which is the phone I had. And I'm gonna have everything on that phone, you know, on my handspring. I'm gonna carry it. Yes. I'm gonna carry around that as my main phone. That was my 1617 year old brain. It never turned up. A promise was so good. But, you know, obviously you mentioned compact Flash, because we then started to get things like, you know, wifi. As Wi Fi became a thing. We did get Wi Fi cards. You got things like presentation cards where we'd have a VGA output so you could plug it into a projector. And again, still be not exactly free roaming. You still be chained to a projector and looking like an absolute idiot, snapping your next slide. [00:39:29] Speaker B: Yes, next slide on your. [00:39:31] Speaker D: But you had the capability. [00:39:32] Speaker A: Yes. [00:39:33] Speaker D: That was the promise of it. You had that. And this is why we all had fanny packs back then, because we had all these stupid adapters and wires to carry around. I mean, I remember carrying around a Sega game gear and an extra six double a batteries because, you know, whose pockets are going to fit all that? [00:39:49] Speaker C: Oh, I had jenkos at the time. [00:39:51] Speaker D: Well, that was the other. [00:39:54] Speaker C: My game gear could fit right in the back of them. [00:39:57] Speaker D: You could have two game gears. [00:39:59] Speaker C: I could have like, 20. [00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna throw this out there. [00:40:02] Speaker C: Of sprite cyber codes. [00:40:06] Speaker D: Yeah. Now I had, I had one. [00:40:10] Speaker A: Now, didn't cybercause. Now, wasn't that. Okay, miss is gonna show my age a little bit. Wasn't Matt Ember Frankie Mooney's film Big fat liar? [00:40:18] Speaker B: Probably. [00:40:19] Speaker D: I think so. I've never seen it, but I know that a friend of mine in middle school had one, and I was very jealous because there was another kid that also had one. And the promise of wireless chatting, like, you know, whatever wireless band or whatever. And I just thought, how cool is that? Like, with the palm, it was line of sight with the beaming. But now you have this radio antenna, you could, you know, interact with others. I thought that was the coolest thing. And I think I got one at one of these discount stores or something like that. And it was lime greens. It was perfect for me. And by the time I got it, nobody was using these things. Yeah. [00:40:56] Speaker B: So they had a very short. [00:40:59] Speaker D: Yeah, it was PC only. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't download anything on my Mac or anything like that. But, you know, it had the promise of, oh, you get do email with an update that will be on our website sometime soon. And all this other stuff, you know. [00:41:11] Speaker C: Oh, weren't they like, mesh networking or something? [00:41:13] Speaker D: Yeah, it was. LGR did a great video about that. Him and his brother went around testing the capabilities of that and, but what I found so intriguing of those island, they really showcased, like, the peak of nineties consumer electronics versus, like, kid gadget toys type things where there were organizers and then there were, like, things that were more of like an adult palm pilot. And because the electronics were getting cheaper and because, you know, they were trying to, I guess, find more markets for these than executives, there was a slew of that stuff, like the, I think it was a zipit wireless instant messenger thing. I played around with all these things that would come out later on, you know, where, you know, they were just like before a smartphone was a smartphone and affordable, you know, there was all this crap that tried to take its place. [00:42:06] Speaker A: Well, everything is these devices, this class of, you know, Palm or Windows mobile. And I don't mean Windows phone folks. I mean Windows mobile, pocket PC. Pocket PC. Well, we're going to talk about that because that's a fun one. They really did give birth to the smartphone. Smartphone. The smartphone concept started in this class of device, and it's really fascinating. Now, I do want to talk a little bit about, because Palm, we're not the only os in town. A lot of, a lot of the handheld, a lot of makers. So, to my knowledge, obviously, palm themselves, handspring. I mean, the Palm story, there's a wonderful documentary about what happened to Palm and how it all got, like, ridiculously so. Like, I can't, off the top of my head, I think, didn't make it. Sold, like split up, sold, split up, sold, put back together again and just. Yeah, but they were not the only OS in town. I mean, Sony's clie, I believe, used Palm as well. [00:43:10] Speaker B: Yeah, palm had several licensees. Like one that I've got my Garmin IQ here, which I did the video on about fairly recently. Not to toot my own horn. [00:43:24] Speaker A: No, please do. [00:43:25] Speaker B: And this, I mean, this thing I still got to say, for a device that was made in 2003, the GPS experience is very, very similar to what you could have in like a 2000 920 ten smartphone. In terms of its capability. You didn't have to, unless you. You could put a big enough memory card and you could have the entire northeast United States and actually have, like, point of interest in routing on the device. Unlike, like, the previous attempt that Steve was talking about, which I also like. You put the two side by side and they're like three years apart. And the difference is shocking in terms of, like, the capabilities of what the devices can do. But Garmin also sold, like, like for pocket PC. They sold gps dongles that you could plug in to a pocket PC device and get you basically the same functionality. [00:44:15] Speaker A: And pocket PC is such an interesting because you had win, so you had window. And this is where I think things started off. We have windows ce, which was on, like, you know, I guess palm tops. I remember seeing a lot of windows ce. Palm tops. [00:44:29] Speaker B: Yeah, there were actually windows ce laptops, too. What? Oh, yeah, they're, they're, they're out there. And I was like, oh, that's a hit the hip new sub notebook thing. Very much like an emate, except less, you know, stylish. [00:44:44] Speaker A: That email I had, I got my. [00:44:47] Speaker B: Mates in the other room. [00:44:48] Speaker A: Oh, I got loaned one for a while and what I didn't realize is we were trying to see whether or not I'd like it and let me keep it and no one had bothered to tell me about, so I didn't really use it that much. Oops. It was all right anyway, but. So windows ce, which fun fact, I think, wasn't some of the dreamcast power by windows ce. [00:45:09] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I think so, yeah. The kernel of it. [00:45:12] Speaker D: Yeah. They had that little logo on it which always confused me. And I think, like a handful of games supported some type of transfer or something with that. [00:45:20] Speaker A: That's right, yeah. I mean, just random one for me. I think the Dreamcast feels like the ancestor of the Xbox. There's so much about it that feels. [00:45:35] Speaker B: Like the guy who was in charge of the Dreamcast went to work for Microsoft. [00:45:39] Speaker A: So there we go. [00:45:41] Speaker D: Yeah, I just want that Dreamcast zip adapter, the I Omega zip adapter that was a prototype and shopped around. The first time I saw that. Oh, God, the first time I saw that, a picture of that. I'm like, I need that now. And there were actually a few of. Yeah, there were actually a few orange zip disks on eBay a while back, but people couldn't really tell if they were the real deal or someone just like, put a label on it and they were going for stupid amount of money. [00:46:06] Speaker B: But, yeah, they made multicolored zip disks. [00:46:10] Speaker D: Exactly. [00:46:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I've got some. [00:46:13] Speaker D: This just fits into this whole realm, though, of like, devices trying to do like, all these different things. And for better or worse, like some devices, like Dan was saying, would have expansion ports for this or that. And it's just these things felt like you could do anything with them even if they were super limited. [00:46:30] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. Yeah. It just fascinates because I had. Was it a come and was it a compact arrow? So I. For. Yeah, was it. Well, yeah, the iPad. But was it before the air, was the arrow one of the iPads? I can't. I seem to remember that being a slightly different. But the IPAC, because that was around my time at H. No. Yeah. Was it the iPad, HP's one? And we. [00:46:59] Speaker B: What happened was, is you. Before HP bought Compaq, compact speed, Compaq was making the I pack and HP was making the Giornotta. And when HP bought Compaq, they discontinued the Giornada and they just kept the iPAC going because at the time of those devices, like the iPAC really had the market share, which to me was an affront because I thought the IPAC was the inferior device because I was a firm member of the Church of Casio, because the Casio E 125, the best pocket PC and is the best for three reasons. One, had compact flash slot built in. When you had the iPaC, in order to use a CF slot, you had to put in the stupid sled. [00:47:45] Speaker A: Yes, that's right. Yeah. [00:47:47] Speaker B: You had to change up the sleds to get stuff. Two, it had the best screen as long as you were inside because it had a real like, active matrix TFT like, laptop quality screen. And number three, the buttons were arranged in such a way where you had a D pad like controller on the left side and three face buttons on the right hand side. So guess what? You could play games on it reasonably well, unlike everything else, which had like the four way with the buttons in the center of the thing. [00:48:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:48:17] Speaker B: But unfortunately Casio chose mips while Compaq went with arm. And, well, history shows that arm was the winner on that front. [00:48:27] Speaker A: And I think windows, and again miss morphed it. So Windows pocket PC morphed into Windows Mobile, which was like both on the. Just regular PDA's. I mean, the phones. I remember having a. What was it? A. Oh, it was HTC Artemis, I think it was. [00:48:49] Speaker B: Right. [00:48:50] Speaker A: And it was. But it was branded as an. As an X O, two Xda something. [00:48:56] Speaker B: No wonder these things didn't sell well, that's the thing. [00:49:00] Speaker A: Like it was all over. Like HTC didn't really used to make or what they did. But you wouldn't. Weren't buying a HTC device, you were buying your caviar's branded version of a HTC. And, you know, things like. So I remember having a, you know, the Artemis. I remember having the, what was called the Orange SPV M 500, which was a candy bar phone running Windows mobile. [00:49:36] Speaker B: Okay, how many people in this chat, as I know, James, you've already said that you've had. How many of you actually owned a pre iPhone slash Android smartphone? Like a trio or something like that? [00:49:48] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, so I had a trio. I actually brought one of my first phones. It's right here. I don't know if this really counts as a handheld, but it's holding up. [00:50:02] Speaker A: His time. [00:50:04] Speaker B: An indie, it looks like. I believe it's an SGI. [00:50:07] Speaker C: Technically it's an SGI indie, but when I was younger, I used this as a phone, and, you know, it's fairly smart for a phone. [00:50:16] Speaker D: I mean, if you hit him over the head with that, like, I just tell him anything. [00:50:20] Speaker C: Yeah. But I did have a palm trio, actually, before. Right before I got an iPhone. Yeah. [00:50:25] Speaker A: And I think that's a lot what a lot of people have. What was my. Oh, I mean, I even had. I went, oh, gosh. I went Nokia communicator. I went for one. I had one of a flip open, you know, but 95, you might be 9500 Symbian, which I think very popular. Yeah, Symbian. If I meant, wasn't that on the scions? [00:50:47] Speaker B: That sounds. That sounds correct. Yeah, like that. I believe that was a scion like offshoot. [00:50:52] Speaker A: That sounds right. [00:50:53] Speaker D: No, I just think what's interesting with these devices is the method of inputs, as Dan was mentioning, with the D pad and the buttons, because on the palm you always had, like, the four buttons and maybe an up and down. And they did have games. I remember there was a master system or game gear port of Sonic the Hedgehog, the original one for the master system for the palm. And I remember it was just unplayable on my tungsten e two or whatever it was, because you had, like, a few buttons, but it was not comfortable to play, and they were so close that you would overlap them and, you know. Yes, these were pen based, but it wasn't multi touch. You had a stylus and you could tap in one spot, and that was it. There was no clever swiping or anything. And the only, like, perfect use case I ever found for that precision was either doodling something or the applications that you can install on the palms to act as a universal remote so you could draw little buttons and things like that. But you had to be looking at it. There was no just, oh, I'm just going to feel my way around this. No, it was, you know, there was none of that nonsense. [00:51:57] Speaker C: I don't think I ever saw a sonic port for that. That's amazing. [00:52:02] Speaker D: I have the little card, or at least the appropriated PRc file of that experience. Would you come over to gander at some of the palms? I'll force you to play around. [00:52:13] Speaker C: All right, yeah, I'm on my way after this call. [00:52:15] Speaker A: Literally. He is literally getting in the car now. We've always handhelds. [00:52:20] Speaker C: Yep. Hold on. Let me. Let me look up your address here. This is a full desktop PC. [00:52:27] Speaker D: Ah, the libretto. Yes. [00:52:28] Speaker A: Oh, you see? How did you keep it close? Certainly coming closer. I didn't even thought about how I remember the libretto. And I remember an executive at the company, my dad got me like a summer intern. Yeah, internship, his other place he worked and one of the executives had a libretto, but he, he literally left it docked for whole. I've never, I never saw that thing out of its dock. [00:53:01] Speaker D: It was never broken. [00:53:01] Speaker B: I'd like to have a libretto. [00:53:03] Speaker C: Mmm, yeah, I love it. When I was a kid, that's a vivid memory of seeing that in magazines. Picture of a libretto and like, how small is it running Windows 95? It seemed like magic to me. [00:53:14] Speaker B: Yeah. You just have a real computer anywhere. [00:53:18] Speaker A: Yeah, well, okay. [00:53:20] Speaker B: Dream, isn't it? [00:53:22] Speaker A: And that's the distinction, isn't it, between these sub notebooks and my handheld? Because my handhelds, as much as Microsoft would want you to believe that Windows Mobile and Windows Pocket PC and Pocket PC were full fledged desktop operators, they weren't. They had a lot of limitations. I mean, they definitely had one limitation. They came with Internet Explorer. [00:53:46] Speaker B: Well, it's funny that people really tried. Like, we had the competition right between the pen based devices and the palm top style devices. Where I have, in the other room, I have a Philips velocity that I found at a thrift shop for like $10 in the box with all this. It still works last, I last, I turned it on about a year ago, monochrome screen, but had it in the glow and other things. And I never actually used a. All my windows CE stuff that I use was all pen. I mean, you could use a pen on it, but it was stuff that was pen first, whereas something that actually had the keyboard and the experience of using this, these ultra wide screens that didn't have much vertical real estate, that had a task bar, a freaking taskbar that's chewing up, like, I'll be generous and say, you know, three eight of, or, yeah, maybe slightly less than a quarter of an inch, one quarter of the screen. That taskbar just chewed up so much space. And you're like, okay, I'm just trying to imagine, you know, some guy who is in an airport somewhere with this little thing and he's just quickly like, okay, I've got my spreadsheet open. I'm punching in all my numbers. I'm trying to bring out this really big business deal just mashing away on this little keyboard. And I'm like, why would somebody subject themselves to this when you realize it's like, well, it's either that or you schlep your, before a libretto, you would schlep your six pound laptop everywhere. So you can see why people, they really wanted to make that work, because they didn't want to have to lug around all those back breaking stuff, and they were willing to accept a lot of compromise. [00:55:32] Speaker D: Yeah. And the two pound charger for it and all this other stuff that it was not just a thin MacBook or something that lasts for 10 hours more on a battery. It's like every PC of that era was like three inches thicken. It had a huge power adapter, and you had a passive matrix screen. [00:55:53] Speaker A: So it was not good days for portable computing. I mean, obviously very pioneering, but nowhere near what we've got now. And it's, you know, I remember my, sort of, like, my this is really cool moment was with my tungsten t two and my aforementioned Sony Ericsson. What? Yeah. So it was only Ericson was after this. I must have had. No, I had, like, a Nokia brick at the time of the. The handspring visor, but I had a t 610, which was a great phone because it had infrared, and you could use the infrared as a GPR's modem. [00:56:33] Speaker B: Infrared is really just a serial port. [00:56:35] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So I was at work, and when nothing was happening, because I was working night shifts, basically. I worked night shifts putting newspapers inside of other newspapers. [00:56:49] Speaker B: Those ads got to get in there somehow. [00:56:50] Speaker A: When was it? Property pages and things like. It literally was. And I mean, just for. Do you know of a job title? Hand inserter. [00:57:00] Speaker D: A perfect title for this podcast episode. [00:57:04] Speaker B: Perfect title. [00:57:05] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. [00:57:06] Speaker B: No notes. [00:57:09] Speaker A: Oh, no. But for me, connecting. And this will bring back connecting to a. To my AOL instant messenger, my aim account, through some palm app that I got. I'm trying. What else? Oh, I had also that tv remote app. I think I mentioned it. Yeah, Steve mentioned that I had. That never worked. Could never get it to pair properly. Like, you know, trying to control. I'm like, mom, dad, we can replace all the remotes in my house except for the cable box, which doesn't use infrared. And for some reason, early virgin. Well, NTL. NTL cable and virgin boxes used rf. [00:57:56] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [00:57:57] Speaker A: Remotes. So that was, I think. Yeah, maybe the tip. Was it BTV? No, it was early tvs that did not use infrared, at least the ones that Virgin Media sold didn't anyway. But for me, that was a moment like being able to chat with my friends on a little palm top, a little tungsten thing. Oh, yeah. It was brilliant. Loved it. [00:58:16] Speaker C: That's the future. [00:58:17] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. And it's really interesting, the evolution that we've got, because we don't. I mean, obviously, coming up on about an hour of recording at this point. It's a great conversation, but I just want to just highlight that these sort of devices, this class of device does not exist anymore. [00:58:36] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:58:37] Speaker A: To my knowledge. Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, is the can. [00:58:41] Speaker B: Hmm. Yeah. [00:58:42] Speaker D: Even Apple's iPod touch is no longer a thing, you know, and that was basically everything an iPhone was without the cellular. And, and I remembered all those connectivity options like I had a Nokia 5100 series or something like that. And I was so starved for Internet connection that there was an SMS relay service for Yahoo messenger. And so I had to convince all of my AOL instant messenger friends, all two of them, to use Yahoo messenger so I could spam them while I was at school or something. And we all soon, so quickly forget that there were all these different services or in different platforms. It wasn't, you know, since you didn't have a cellular radio in there, it wasn't just sms texting. You had to use something like AOL or MSN or all these other things. And, you know, not everyone was on everything. [00:59:34] Speaker A: Well, she's still, I mean, look, we're back at the green bubble situation, aren't we? [00:59:38] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:59:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:39] Speaker B: And you had to make sure that your ISP had a gateway or something that, oh, yeah, go and take care of those things because I mean, I never had a, I didn't, I never had a trio. So I, I was, I never had something like that. I was, I was the dumb nerd who would say, okay, I've got my laptop in my backpack at all times. I'm just going to do a little bit of war walking and try to find like open access points or whatever, you know, the things we do in the year of our lord 2006. [01:00:11] Speaker A: But good old 802.11 g g would have been a thing then. [01:00:17] Speaker B: B was the first. Well, in 2006 it would have been g. Yeah, but before that it was, it was b before that. But I would have. You'll just carry on the last opera. [01:00:28] Speaker D: Yeah, sorry. I would have done horrible things for the, the palm sd I o w f I card for, for whatever tungsten I had at the time, wireless, because I got a hint of Bluetooth connectivity which involved a very rigorous setup on an ibook to share an Internet connection from Ethernet to Bluetooth. So I could be 5ft away and go on AOL Instagram messenger and have it crap out ten minutes later. Because that was the future. [01:00:55] Speaker A: You mean instead of just having a laptop with AOA Instant messenger on it? Yeah, yeah. [01:01:01] Speaker D: We can't make any sense. It's not, that's not happening. [01:01:05] Speaker A: But you know, we don't have, you know, back when these devices existed, you again, we started to see the standalone PDA's phase out for things like the trio, for things like the HTC Windows, Windows mobile devices. And then I think once, certainly once iPhone and Android became BlackBerry to BlackBerry. Well it's interesting. I found the other day my sister's old BlackBerry. I think it's an old, is it a curve? Maybe see for a curve or a bolt. But BlackBerry again, master name, you don't hear now in devices. They are now a services where it, you know, I don't even think they do. Is BBM still a thing? [01:01:49] Speaker B: That's a good question. It's funny, I remember in, I want to say in like 2004 I was at O'Hare airport in Chicago. I was coming, I was seeing these big billboards. It must have been a deal that United was doing with BlackBerry. They were doing this advertisement say get this BlackBerry phone for, you know, some remarkably cheap price that I still couldn't afford because I was a broke college student and they don't tell you that, okay, the phone is this much, but in order to get data service you're going to pay through the nose monthly for a data service. And I thought I was really tempted by that, but like, no, that would be a. I was this close to being a BlackBerry guy, but it didn't happen. [01:02:29] Speaker A: I keep forgetting BlackBerry because BlackBerry, but BlackBerry again was its own. They started off as just like pay effectively email pages didn't mean. Yeah, and then they morphed into similar devices and smartphones. You know, you had, obviously you have the Palm trios, you had all the HTC devices. I mean as it's very interesting isn't when Windows Mobile started to go away and got replaced by Windows Phone, which controversial, maybe Windows Phone seven and eight were not bad platforms. [01:03:04] Speaker B: They were really good actually. I think you found a lot of people would agree with you. [01:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The problem was, and this is, I think I said this the other day talking to someone on Mastodon, the problem was that Microsoft was so focused on Kit, on killing the iPhone that they didn't bother to get developer support for the things. [01:03:23] Speaker C: Yeah, they didn't kill the iPhone. They had the funeral. [01:03:29] Speaker A: I saw pictures, I saw, I remember covering it on a. That was just, was that, that was a Balma, wasn't it? That was the Balmade. Yeah, yeah. [01:03:39] Speaker C: So he really bombed it. [01:03:43] Speaker D: No bomb. [01:03:44] Speaker B: This. [01:03:45] Speaker D: Our friend Mike is obsessed with that. That last attempt for the Windows Phone. And he still swears it was a great platform. And I remember helping a co worker with one and it, it was very interesting what they were doing with it. But yeah, I mean, they sort of pulled an apple with the Lisa where they got, you know, they thought they had everything and then they had no developers support, so the thing died, you. [01:04:07] Speaker B: Know, and it wasn't just that. They also, I feel like their hardware just wasn't quite there. Like they hitched their wagon to Nokia. And unfortunately, Nokia, I don't think they could have delivered the goods, the operating system. I mean, I had a friend of mine who, his first job at Microsoft was working on Windows Phone. Like, he developed like device drivers and things like that. I mean, every time I remember using a Windows phone, I'm always like, yeah, I'm digging the interface. I like the style. I liked a lot of things about using it. It's like, okay, but I can't do anything else on it. If they had been out, like exactly like a year after Apple, like, if they had. If. Unfortunately, they didn't have the insider knowledge that Google did to get ahead of things on Android, but if they were able to get out just a year before, I think there was a lot of things that went wrong with Windows Phone, but I don't think it was because it's yet another example of a really good product that just didn't have anybody to buy it or, you know, just fell apart because everybody was coalescing around two other. It was the third wheel that fell apart just like Casio. [01:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:24] Speaker D: Wasn't that Lumina? The, was there one with like a, what was it? Like a 40 megapixel camera? 41 megapixel camera or something. And I, I remember the ad for that was just insane. And then I remember seeing the actual, like, Engadget reviewer, like, the camera full quality is okay, you know, but one of those things where they were really trying in it and it was, it was interesting to have that competition. But, yeah, like you said, the third wheel is not really going to last. [01:05:50] Speaker A: No. When you've got powerhouses like obviously Apple and then Google with Android, where every single OEM was making Android devices and still are, HTC shifted entirely to Android phones and actually started making those in, you know, marketing files in their own right. You obviously had Motorola on the Android bandwagon, LG and traffic. I mean, basically Sony. Sony went, yeah, because the Xperia were really good Android phones. Like, they were some of the best Android phones. Like stylish phones at the time. And again, I think we've lost standalone digital assistants. I like that word, digital assistants. I don't mean like. I mean, like things that don't have. Maybe I have Wi Fi and Bluetooth, but don't have a cellular connection. But then again, when we've got smartphones, why do we need them? And. Okay, wrapping up question man, because we could. We could talk for a lot longer. Maybe we will, actually. Because knowing, knowing this panel, we will still talk for a long time. Is there anything, do you think, that we are missing from our wheel? Because I don't think we're all iPhone users. I feel. I have a feeling some of us are Android users. For our daily smartphone. [01:07:07] Speaker B: I use an iPhone. [01:07:08] Speaker A: You're an iPhone. [01:07:09] Speaker C: I switched. I'm on iPhone now. [01:07:12] Speaker A: Are you on iPhone now? Okay, fine. I'm guessing. See? Okay, so we're all iPhone users. Okay, fine. [01:07:17] Speaker D: I'm still on the Newton. [01:07:18] Speaker B: That doesn't mean your iPhone is the only thing I have. But my primary phone is an iPhone. [01:07:22] Speaker A: Okay? So if we take the two platforms that are out there right now, and obviously, folks, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments, in the discord. Fred, come and talk to us. Other things you think we're missing from our modern iPhones on modern Android devices that had that magic in the days of our palms, our ipacs, our genardos, our clies, our Casio Ethereum. Was it 150? E 100 and 5125? 125. What's missing from our modern devices? [01:07:56] Speaker C: Graffiti. [01:07:58] Speaker D: Physical instability? [01:07:59] Speaker A: Graffiti antennas. Oh, add ons. [01:08:04] Speaker B: You know what? Here's the thing. This is not necessarily related to PDA's, but there is something that we have lost in our move to our modern phones. At first, we lost it when we went to cell phones, but then it came back because we had flip phones. The act of hanging up on somebody is just not satisfying anymore. Because in the old landline days, you could go, oh, yeah, you know, screw you. And then you just go, slam the thing on the cling, and the person on the other end of the line will hear the noise when you're doing the phone. And with cell phones, when we got flip phones, you can say, oh, yeah, well, I don't like you. You flip the phone, you get the nice, satisfying thunk, that action. And we don't have that in regular phones anymore. And it was funny because with the IQ, the gps antenna on it flips out like a flip phone. So it's got that satisfying thunk when you close it. And that's what I feel like with our slabs of aluminum, titanium, glass, whatever, we've lost a little bit of that physicality that comes with devices. Even though I do not want a hardware keyboard anymore, I will take the trade in the screen space. But I have to admit, I do. You do miss the tactility of buttons. Sometimes. They are kind of useful. [01:09:29] Speaker A: I will actually grieve you on that. Yeah, Sean, you just made a really good point, which I had. I wanted to touch on. So we are going to touch on it. Graffiti. Okay, so people thinking, what, you mean we need to spray paint our phones? No, graffiti was palms way of. Way of writing on your. On your PDA. But the idea was that you learned their way of writing certain letters. I'll put a link to graffiti in the show notes, because it took some getting used to, didn't it? [01:09:59] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. You know what? I think it was because they wanted it to have handwriting recognition, but everybody's handwriting is so different, and the computing power was so limited. They were like, well, we can't do that. Why don't we make them write it our way? So they came up with graffiti, and then, you know, much less variation in how people were going to write these very specific little glyphs that sort of resembled letters. Yeah. So it did take some getting used to, and I don't think I ever really got used to it. [01:10:29] Speaker B: Well, you could see, I've seen people who are good at graffiti, like, they can fly. You know, they can really. Even faster, I think, than somebody who was doing like, you know, little membrane keyboard, because here I showed it in the thing. But I've got this HPLX 200 here, which actually does run MS DOS and has a CGA compatible screen. So theoretically, you can do certain things. I've even got a PCMCIA flash memory card that was pulled out of some nortel networks thing. But you can use, that's how you would get storage. And if you didn't want to do a serial cable. But this little keyboard, when you're using just your two thumbs, you know, you know, you're not really getting advantage of, like, a real keyboard where you can use all ten fingers. Like, you could try using more than two thumbs to type on this thing, but it's not very fun. No, you get somebody who's good at graffiti. It's like, I watched somebody once with a palm just going. They're just. Hand is just flying everywhere. And I'm like, how are you so good at this? Because, I mean, microfitting skills. I'm like, sean, like, I'm okay, but I'm nothing. I'm not a wizard like some of these people. It's amazing. [01:11:36] Speaker C: They went through all that effort to build up that skill. [01:11:38] Speaker B: I know. [01:11:39] Speaker C: And now it's gone. [01:11:40] Speaker D: I still remember some of those. I was playing around with one the other day, and I'm like, I could type a little bit on this. But, yeah, nothing like the physical keyboard of the trio 90, which was the non cell phone version of the organizer that I'm holding up now. That keyboard was pretty good. I typed a lot of middle school science notes on that, and what I loved about it is it had infrared and so did the printers in our schoolrooms. And I could just walk up to one of those printers, and I would. I would be my science notes and get a 100% grade on every single time we had to show our work, because it was. I don't know, I guess it was just me tinkering with a gadget, and it was like, hey, I'm doing work, but this is also fun. And then, you know, of course, my friends were like, well, you already have the notes typed up. Why don't you just print me a copy, you know? [01:12:27] Speaker B: Well, you gotta say, okay, $5 a penny up. [01:12:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:12:33] Speaker A: Oh, wow. I'm just. I found. Let me put this. This is from Wikimedia. I'll put a link to the actual article that is the palm graffiti layout. And I'm just looking at it and remembering how hard that was to do things like the f and the t. [01:12:54] Speaker B: It didn't help that palm had to change graffiti after a while because Xerox sued him over it. [01:12:59] Speaker D: That's right. [01:13:00] Speaker B: Change some of the strokes. So they had graffiti two after a certain point, and he had to go and relearn everything again. [01:13:08] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Represent symbol looks a little bit erotic. [01:13:12] Speaker D: Yeah. I remember using the on screen keyboard for anything other than just letters and. [01:13:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, because, of course, a lot of these early palm devices had. What was it we called? The silkscreen was. It was silver screen, where it was a dedicated graffiti pad. [01:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah. One half was for letters and the other half was for numbers and other characters, whereas the IQ was the first one to have the collapsible virtual graffiti zone. Which is interesting that palm was not the first company to have that on their home thing. [01:13:46] Speaker A: No. Which is really interesting. But graffiti, what? Just an incredible, incredible way of input. But, yeah, I mean, you know, obviously you've got handwrite, you've got a little bit of hand writing recognition on modern devices, but I just. I type everything, you know, I do. I'm double thumb. I'm actually quite good at double thumb typing now on my iPhone keyboard. I do use. I do use handwriting. I think we call it scribble. Is it? Yes, scribble on the. On the iPad. [01:14:16] Speaker B: When I say there's some. Some of that Newton technology is still lurking in there, because if you remember, when they brought inkwell to the Mac in, like, 10.3 or something, it was still basically the Newton recognition, because you could do one of the old, like, Newton Easter eggs and it would still recognize it. [01:14:35] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [01:14:36] Speaker B: And that still, as far as I know, you can still do inkwell in macOS. I think it's been a while. I would do it with my wacom tablet, with my cintiq, because you could have the little zone open. It's like, oh, I can just hand write something in there. Yeah, I think they took it out. I'm sure they probably would have. Yeah. But I have to imagine that some of that still lives on in the iPad. [01:15:04] Speaker D: No. Yet. I just. Sorry. Something in my throat. Yeah. Inkwell was neat because it was sort of, I think, on the desktop, at least for the Mac. One of the first explorations I ever dealt with where you were using your pen on a tablet, not just for drawing a. But there was some text based stuff, and it wasn't perfect, but it was neat. And that came out with Jaguar. And looking at the wiki, it says Mojave was the last one that had it because it was 32 bit. And I guess Catalina pushed that away. But, you know, it is interesting to see, like, the iPad air a few years ago did have, like, the scribble thing that. That you guys are talking about. I think that, you know, sort of is the successor to that, where you just scribble something and it would maybe make it text or just leave it alone. [01:15:49] Speaker A: Well, I use it for occasionally, if I'm feeling lazy, I will use it to write the chapter titles when I'm editing in February. And it does the most of the time work, so it's actually quite impressive. But it's. But that just reminds me, and I'm sure, what if you've got one of these? Or if not, we know someone who does the axiom. Is it the axiom? Mod book? [01:16:11] Speaker B: Sean, you have one of those, I thought. [01:16:13] Speaker D: No, we've played with one. Our friend Ken has one. [01:16:17] Speaker A: Oh, it's good. I know Ken Decker. [01:16:19] Speaker D: Colin has one. [01:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:22] Speaker B: There's. [01:16:23] Speaker D: You could see them at VCF. People usually bring them and draw on them. And they're a lot of fun. I always wanted one, but, you know, I can never afford it. Back in the day. [01:16:31] Speaker A: And just to be clear, we're talking about Ken of crazy. Crazy Ken, the computer clan. And I'm gonna guess Colin from this. From this does not compute. [01:16:43] Speaker D: No, the other Colin from Dos, dude, one, he does a lot of crazy mods and such. [01:16:49] Speaker A: Oh, I love Dostoe's stuff. I love college. I love this does not compute as well. But, you know, I mean, look, we've got brilliant, you know, all three of you are brilliant youtubers. Colin just seems to make almost like, I want to say this correctly, retro, retro system porn. When he's shooting his b roll, you. [01:17:12] Speaker B: Can get a lot. Certainly with focus poles. [01:17:15] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, certainly, certainly. There's a, like a style to that which is really great. I love trying to emulate some of those shots and then, like, breathing too hard and the camera moves. [01:17:29] Speaker A: It is fascinating. Now, Steve, put a really good question. I think I do want to start. Is there any other thoughts on what we're missing in our modern phones and modern smart devices? [01:17:40] Speaker D: The one thing I thought of, and I think it was 2016, was the Motorola Z there. You could add on these, like, hardware things to it. That just comes to mind, because I think that was sort of like the last hurrah in the phone world, at least in recent memory, of trying to get away from everything just being, whatever came with the phone, came with it. I think there was. There was a speaker system. I'm looking at a list here. Now, there was a projector. [01:18:11] Speaker A: Yes. [01:18:11] Speaker D: You could add on to this. [01:18:13] Speaker B: There. [01:18:13] Speaker D: There was a game pad. There was an extra 360 degree camera. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but after this, I'm going to hop on eBay and search for some of these stupid add ons for this thing, because that just sounds cool. [01:18:26] Speaker A: That is a really good point. Because now we've, at least in this generation, with everything, every smartphone now being USB C with Apple moving. Yeah, we've lost that. But also, you know, we talked about like a PCMCI PC, MCA Ethernet adapters, right? [01:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Now you can plug a USB C Ethernet dongle right into your phone. And it does work. [01:18:51] Speaker A: It does. Absolutely. You know, that will work. You can, you know, obviously put SD cards in. I think. Haven't I seen, in theory, wouldn't a USB floppy drive work as well? [01:19:02] Speaker B: Yes. [01:19:05] Speaker A: Of course. LGR did it. Yeah, of course he did. Because, you know. But it's fascinating. But I mean, with the latest, I think the latest versions of iOS. You could even do video capture now straight into iOS. [01:19:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:19:20] Speaker A: I could plug my little HDMI capture box or something. That actually was a bit more USB C. This is. Can I, can I make my plea, my once a year plea to manufacturers if I see a micro USB on your device? You have failed. [01:19:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Span all that filth. [01:19:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just all. Just USB C everywhere. Heck, even my, even my blood pressure monitor thing has the ability to be powered by USB C. Like. [01:19:48] Speaker D: Yeah, that's because your blood pressure will go up if you put the USB in the wrong way and you have to fiddle with it. You know, that's good ux right there. [01:19:55] Speaker A: I like that. But Steve, geez, Steve asked a really good question in our little squad cast chat that we got going on here, which. So the question Steve asked, we've obviously talked about our first palm, our first handheld, but Steve's asked two questions. What were our first dumb phones on our first smartphones? So I think, Steve, you get to answer that one first. [01:20:19] Speaker D: Sure. So my, my first dumb phone was either a Nokia 5100, and I think later on it was a 3300. It was a hand me down from a friend. I had the prepaid service. It was just like bog standard Nokia unbreakable thing. [01:20:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big break, everything. Yeah, yeah. [01:20:38] Speaker D: And my first cell phone, which I got, I think, right before entering high school, because the whole reason of me having it was, you know, to keep in contact with my folks and such. And there was the choice between a Sony Ericsson, which had a camera, or the N Gage QD, which could play games. [01:20:56] Speaker A: Oh, God. [01:20:57] Speaker D: So naturally, n gauge QD. And I will tell you, I loved that stupid thing. It had bluetooth, it had Internet. I had a 1 mb data limit for a month. And I never went over it, I never exceeded it. And I tried. [01:21:15] Speaker B: Wow. [01:21:16] Speaker D: I had the Mac rumors, message boards on there. I was keeping up with all the latest Star wars rumors, you know, as one does with n gauge. I quickly wore out the SD card flap that would keep the card in there because you could put, I think it was the symbian os that also ran. So there was emulators and junk that people had on there. It was such a fun device and everything, but a camera. It had everything I wanted but a camera. So that was like what a foray into smartphones, having this quirky little taco shaped little device that, you know, it was actually a lot of fun. They were, they were pretty neat. And I miss sort of that excitement of silliness that, you know, hey, I could just download this weird app and hack this phone with something. You know, there's sort of an end of that these days, but that was my experience. [01:22:06] Speaker A: Okay. I like that. Yeah. The N gaze QD. I mean, that thing does not look comfortable to use as an actual phone, though. [01:22:14] Speaker D: Well, thankfully, you didn't have to hold it like the previous generation where it was, like, sticking completely out, like. [01:22:22] Speaker A: Yes. [01:22:22] Speaker D: Yeah, this one. This one was fine. I remember having conversations on. It was. It was okay. I loved. I loved the. The bright orange interface of it. [01:22:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:22:31] Speaker D: Just. I have to go find mine again and dig it out. [01:22:33] Speaker A: That is a cool device. Sean, what about you on first smartphone? Steve? [01:22:37] Speaker D: Yeah, I guess. I guess the QD was. Would be my first quote unquote smartphone. [01:22:41] Speaker A: Got you. [01:22:42] Speaker D: It did have bluetooth. It did have notes and stuff like that, so it was pretty. [01:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah, to be fair. Yeah, I class as a kiss. Symbiote. Was. Yeah, was smart. Sean, what about you? First dumb phone, first smartphone. [01:22:54] Speaker C: Well, so I didn't have a cell phone till I was, like, 18 because I got a job at a Nextel store and got one through work. So I had, like, a Nextel. Like, I don't know if you're familiar with Nextel, but a lot of, like, construction oriented. So I had a huge, like, yellow chunk of an indestructible next telephone that was like three inches thick and was just like a brick. And that was my first phone. And then my first smartphone, I think, was the Palm trio. [01:23:32] Speaker A: That makes sense. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Now, here's a quick, random question for you three, because obviously here in the UK, we were always GSM. Were you with those CDMA devices? I'm gonna guess at least for trio, maybe the trio and me Nextel were the Nokia CDMA. [01:23:51] Speaker C: Verizon, I think, with CDMA. [01:23:53] Speaker A: Okay. Which is really interesting. Cause that's not a thing anymore. We're just LTE now. Well, yeah, Lte and 5G with old GSm. [01:24:04] Speaker D: Yeah. That's why we can't even force each other to use old phones as a prank anymore, because the service can't be connected. [01:24:11] Speaker A: Yeah, but no CDMA. [01:24:12] Speaker C: That's not technically true. T Mobile still has a 2G service. Ooh, wow. You can still hook up an old 2G phone to T Mobile. [01:24:24] Speaker B: Hold on, let me dig out my 2g phone, though. [01:24:27] Speaker C: Yeah. And if you want to see confirmation of that, if you're in the states here, if you have a phone, you can say, like, my Android phone here, I can set it to 2g only and then tell it to search for networks. And the only available network is T mobile. It's pretty cool. [01:24:43] Speaker B: So my first dumb phone, or it technically still had. It could, it could play snake. I also had a Nokia 5100, something that was still an analog cell phone. It was not a digital one. [01:24:57] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [01:24:58] Speaker B: Because that one was a hand me down. It was like the last gasp of analog phones. This is like 2002. I think analog phones were going away pretty quickly. I want to say like a year or two later, I wound up getting some Motorola digital CDMA, some prepaid thing. I didn't have a contract or a postpaid, but. Yeah, I remember that nok Nokia 5100. Something held onto that for a while. And the one that replaced it held on until I got a razor is a phone that was slightly smart. It did have Wap. So I could theoretically look at some websites. I could use AOL instant messenger on it. It had some smarts. But I did not own a trio. I didn't own a Windows mobile phone. I basically, my first smartphone was the first iPhone, you know, iPhone two g. I bought that with my first bonus check from a job that I had just gotten that year. And I've been on the iPhone train ever since. [01:26:05] Speaker A: My, so my first, my first smartphone, first dumb phone. So I write on myself was, I think, yeah, Nokia 51, who didn't have a Nokia 5100. I think it was a 5010 because it was. I'll find. I'll put photos, all this. So, yeah, 5110, I went through various different phones, like different nokias, a couple of different phones. But my first true smartphone, that wasn't like. Yeah, but my first true smartphone would have probably been that orange SPV M 500. I think that was my first. My fur. No, was it actually. Oh, yeah, I think it was. Oh yeah, I think it was the orange SPV. [01:26:49] Speaker B: I would say that the putting the visor, at least attempting with the visor phone would have made that your. Because the visor with the visor phone is functionally the same as the first generation trio. [01:27:02] Speaker A: Right. I never got the visor phone. It never actually got shipped. [01:27:07] Speaker B: I know, but you tried. [01:27:09] Speaker A: I tried. I get bonus points, right? Yeah, yeah. I really wanted that because. And of course you wouldn't. It had no speaker. You would have had to have a little headset with. Did it? [01:27:18] Speaker B: Yeah, because I. Well, I thought they had a micro. It's. You brought up, you brought up earlier that handspring documentary. They go into a whole bunch of visor phone stuff in that. So that highly recommend if you're anybody listening is interested in visor phone stuff, watch that handspring documentary. It's a very good one. [01:27:38] Speaker D: The verge put out. [01:27:40] Speaker B: Yes. Yep. It's on, it's on YouTube now, so you can, it's much easier to watch it. [01:27:45] Speaker A: That's good. And, yeah, because again, that whole story, handspring and how they. Wow. It's just that whole journey of palm. [01:27:54] Speaker B: And, and I think all this stuff happened within the span of like five years. [01:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? I mean, obviously palm, because palm sort of came back with, what is it? The Palm Prix is a iPhone competitor which never really weboS rip. [01:28:08] Speaker B: Webos. [01:28:09] Speaker A: Oh yeah, that is what webos. Because that then went to HP, didn't it? [01:28:14] Speaker D: Correct. [01:28:14] Speaker B: When HP bought Palm. Yeah, yeah. [01:28:16] Speaker A: Now is that webos, the same webos is now powering LG tvs. [01:28:21] Speaker B: Yes. It is a descendant of that webos. Wow. [01:28:25] Speaker A: It's not a bad. [01:28:26] Speaker C: I still want an HP touchpad. [01:28:28] Speaker D: I have two. [01:28:30] Speaker B: I'm sure there's some eBay. [01:28:32] Speaker D: I got, I got one when they were doing the fire and I accidentally got two somehow that's how I got mine. The battery is toast, but you could still turn it on maybe. [01:28:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Also, when Circuit City was itself having a fire sale. [01:28:50] Speaker D: Yes, exactly. [01:28:52] Speaker A: Oh my gosh, we're having a fire sale. Sorry, Tim, it's gonna do. [01:28:59] Speaker C: Turned into a fire sale. Yeah, it is unfortunately. [01:29:05] Speaker A: Just reminds me, of course, of the, what can only be described as a disaster. That was surface rt when Microsoft tried to make. [01:29:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:16] Speaker A: Bless them. Do you know, do you know where the Windows mobile UI does not belong? [01:29:22] Speaker B: On a desktop. [01:29:23] Speaker A: On a desktop. Thanks. Windows. [01:29:24] Speaker B: I think that also kind of turned people against Windows Phone, honestly, because, you know, they saw they were, instead of just trying to make a good phone, Microsoft was trying to do the same thing they always did. And you know, we all saw how well that went for them. [01:29:39] Speaker A: Indeed. [01:29:41] Speaker C: Well, I like Windows eight. I think it was nice. [01:29:44] Speaker B: Well, mister contrarian here. [01:29:46] Speaker A: Wow, Sean, who are you and what have you done with action retro? Because that's, that's, well, no, I would. [01:29:54] Speaker B: Say is actually very much in his character. [01:29:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say that's on brand. [01:30:01] Speaker D: Yeah. But it has to be running within a vm, within haiku. [01:30:07] Speaker C: It's running on a 486. [01:30:10] Speaker A: No, no, it's running on an old spark station that's been modded with a 68040, which I know is not a thing, by the way, I do. [01:30:20] Speaker C: It's probably possible. [01:30:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:30:22] Speaker C: I mean, it's all just electrons, you know, patching some wires. [01:30:26] Speaker D: I know. [01:30:26] Speaker B: You probably could run haiku on the sun PCI that I have in my sunblade works, and it's a 600 MHz Pentium. I mean, I'm sure you can do something with it. [01:30:37] Speaker A: Space heater. [01:30:39] Speaker C: No, that's the power Mac G five. [01:30:41] Speaker A: Oh. [01:30:43] Speaker D: I keep a load of them in. [01:30:44] Speaker A: My basement just to. What? Yeah. Was it the g five now? Because. Random one. Because I just remembered this. They tried to put a g five into a laptop. I don't think that worked out well at all for them. [01:30:59] Speaker D: No, they never. They never commercially released one. Apparently, the yields were not good. [01:31:05] Speaker A: No. Which is why they. [01:31:07] Speaker B: A little toasty. [01:31:08] Speaker A: A little toasty. I heard the rumor. I don't know if it's true. I heard a rumor that it might have started to fire in a test lab. [01:31:17] Speaker D: Yeah. Wouldn't surprise me if you went the route of the powerbook 5300 and. [01:31:20] Speaker B: Oh. [01:31:22] Speaker A: Oh, dear. [01:31:23] Speaker C: Anyway, if they got him into an iMac, they could get it into a laptop. [01:31:27] Speaker B: Yeah. It would just be a very wells, very large laptops like we used to have back in the day. [01:31:33] Speaker C: Big fans. [01:31:34] Speaker D: I mean, you have a. You have a. You have a dremel. Sean, I think you should try and do it. [01:31:39] Speaker C: That's a bucket list. Build I want to do is build the world's only g five laptop. Just take an iMac. [01:31:48] Speaker A: An iMac G five. I like that idea. I do like. [01:31:54] Speaker D: How many car batteries do you need, Steve? [01:31:57] Speaker C: Do you have any 17 inch imac g five s I can borrow? [01:32:00] Speaker B: I'll give it back. [01:32:00] Speaker D: If you watched my channel, you know, I have plenty. Yeah, borrow. I don't know if I want it back after. I know what you're gonna do. [01:32:10] Speaker A: It's absolutely total normal. Totally normal computing, isn't it, Sean? [01:32:15] Speaker C: Totally normally normal. [01:32:18] Speaker A: Thank you so much, folks. This, honestly has been a great discussion. I think. I hope people have had a bit of a chance to reminisce. I mean, I think, you know, we look at where we are today and the devices we all use over history to some of these early handhelds. And, you know, I think the thing that still strikes me, even after all this time, is the arm still. Just. My mind still boggles on this. But the arm processor that we all rely on for our smartphones, like everyone, one started off in good old Cambridge here in the UK. [01:32:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:32:52] Speaker A: As the BBC. You know, BBC as a thing for what was. Well, it was acorn, wasn't it? Acorns. And he was going to be a bit part of a BBC micro master. Very, very interesting. Jay's just messaged because she's still backstage reminding me to finish up with one phrase. Eat up, Martha. [01:33:13] Speaker C: Perfect. [01:33:14] Speaker B: Oh, I think we, I think there's no better way to. That sums up our entire experience, doesn't it? [01:33:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it really does. It really does. So let's get some outros done and make sure people get a chance to book stuff. So we're gonna go in. We'll go in reverse alphabetical order. So, Steve, we're. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you on three interwebs? [01:33:40] Speaker D: You can find me on YouTube at Mac 84. I'm almost at 20,000 subscribers, so maybe you want to subscribe. Hopefully. I'm also on other social media things handle as Mac 84 tv and Mac 84 dot net has a bunch of repair guides and junk like that too. So feel free to check that out, preferably on your palm OS device. [01:34:02] Speaker A: Absolutely. Oh, there you go, folks. That's what we need, right? Photos of. I'm setting this challenge. Photos of you, of you accessing our guests sites or if possible, YouTube channels on palm devices or any old handheld. If you can do that. You know what? If you can do it, I kid you not. If you can do it. We haven't quite got all the crosswise stickers done. If people send them in and have got stuff like that, I will up to a certain value, give you a crosswise sticker. All right. [01:34:36] Speaker D: Nice. [01:34:37] Speaker A: There you go. [01:34:37] Speaker D: I do, I do have a retro enabled website. So I'm sorry in advance for your sticker costs. [01:34:44] Speaker A: 1St first four customers only, folks. No thanks. Steve. Sean, where can people find you? [01:34:52] Speaker C: Oh yeah, I am on the Internet. [01:34:54] Speaker A: Really? [01:34:57] Speaker C: You can find me on the YouTube website, the modern one, not accessible via palm, I don't think, unless you really soup up your palm pilot. I don't know, overclock it. But yeah, I'm action retro on the YouTube. [01:35:14] Speaker A: You are. Do check out. Do check out. Make sure Jay's just again, Jay's, Jay's like literally backseat driving the show. Jay's actually upped the ante here, folks. Jay's up the ante for the best photo we get of someone accessing. Think it needs that? We need to have a photo or of any of any of the guest YouTube channels or sites. The best photo. Go and submit those in me. Let me disco. Come and join me discord and submit them all podcast@crosswise.net if you don't want to use discord for whatever reason you can have. Jay said you could have any piece of merch in my store. [01:35:48] Speaker B: All right. [01:35:49] Speaker C: But of course, frog find.com is going to work well on any device. [01:35:53] Speaker A: There we go. Oh, I've. Okay, that's not. No, that works. That's fine. That is absolutely fine. That works too. Sorry. Jay, of course, is counting on this going on my credit card, not hers. But, yes, we will honestly do that. Dan, where can people find you? [01:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I can also be found online. Go to my YouTube channel, userlandia. It's also website of the same name, which nowadays is mostly just transcripts of stuff posting on YouTube. But we're all on the social media, you know, on the. On the blue skies and the mastodon. So there's links there if you want to. If you want to follow or hang out. But yeah, just of. Of all the people in here, you know, subscribe to this podcast, subscribe to everybody's YouTube channel, and share the wealth. [01:36:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. And as always, look, I love having. Honestly enjoy having you free on Michelle so much because you derail everything. It's amazing. We talk our episode. These episodes tend to be our longest episodes, but I genuinely hope people have got something for this. Let's have a discussion. And of course, it goes without saying, I'm trying to think what we need to do next. What's our next. Next. What's our next panel discussion? Let's have a think what it could be. [01:37:19] Speaker C: Oh, Unix max machines. Favorite Unix experience. [01:37:24] Speaker A: Favorite Unix experience. This is a Unix system. I know this. [01:37:30] Speaker B: I know. We should do. [01:37:31] Speaker A: Oh, no, go on. Go on. [01:37:33] Speaker B: We should do our favorite experiences with a printer. [01:37:38] Speaker D: Oh, yes. [01:37:39] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:37:42] Speaker C: Aka the Steve show. [01:37:45] Speaker D: It's just 47 minutes of image writer noises. [01:37:48] Speaker A: Oh, well, ASMR. Image writer. Okay, there you go. [01:37:53] Speaker D: It'll be your most popular episode. And you'll be like, why? [01:37:58] Speaker A: Oh, geez. I try. I just. I remember when I did not know anything about Max trying to get a. I think it was a color classic. Trying to get a printer working with it. I had no clue about macOS. Well, it wasn't even macOS. It was system something. System seven, maybe. [01:38:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:38:14] Speaker A: No idea what I was doing. Honestly. No idea. Printers are going to go to the chooser. Yeah, it didn't work. [01:38:22] Speaker D: What's a chooser? [01:38:23] Speaker A: What's it. What? You gotta remember. I. Okay, final thought. I was. I was very anti Apple in my younger days. I did not come over to Apple land until the Intelli era. So, you know, shame on me, I guess. Anyway, folks, thank you very much for listening. We will see you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of Crosswires. We hope you've enjoyed our discussion and we'd love to hear your thoughts. So please drop us a note over to podcastwires.net. why not come and join our discord community? Over@crosswires.net. discord we've got lots of text channels, we've even got voice channels, and we've got forum posts for every episode that we put out there. If you are Mastodon, you can also follow us either by heading over to wires social or just follow crossedyires Dot social. If you'd like to check out more. [01:39:17] Speaker B: Of our content, head on over to. [01:39:18] Speaker A: Crossedwires.Net YouTube for all our videos and keep an eye on our Twitch channel@crossedwires.net. [01:39:26] Speaker B: Live for our upcoming streams. [01:39:27] Speaker A: If you like what we heard, please do drop a review in your podcast directory of choice. It really does help spread the word about the show. [01:39:34] Speaker D: And of course, if you can spare even the smallest amount of financial support. [01:39:38] Speaker B: We'D be incredibly grateful. [01:39:40] Speaker A: You can support us@kofi.com. crosswires. That is Ko dash fi.com crossedwires. Until next time. Time. Thanks for listening.