‘The computer guys don't seem to be planning to just, you know, knock this out’
In 1998, woman Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins quit Palm, a corporation they’d founded, to start a replacement one: Handspring. that they had an easy goal in mind: to eventually produce the smartphone. Years before any of the technology was really ready, their little startup began birthing the mandatory groundwork for what would become the Treo.
In Springboard: the secret history of the primary real goodphone, we tend to document the history of Handspring, from its dramatic beginnings to its tragic end. on the way, we hear from 5 of the key players who tried to create the trendy smartphone years before the technology world was prepared for it. It’s a story that interweaves the dotcom crash, technological innovations, wireless carrier resistance, and far more.
you'll watch Springboard on smart TV apps on Roku, hearth TV, humanoid TV, and Apple TV. And currently it’s conjointly accessible on our YouTube channel.
aboard today’s YouTube release, we tend to’re conjointly business , the discussion we recorded when the premiere of Springboard at our 10-year day party in ny last October. In it, Nilay Patel and that i speak through a number of the stories that were left on the room floor.
I’d prefer to share a few of them here, too. each fall outside the scope of the documentary’s timeline, that was centered strictly on acrobatic feat and not the eras of Palm that preceded and followed it.
the primary comes from Jeff Hawkins throughout the early days of Palm. His company had captured the lion’s share of the private Digital Assistant Market with the PalmPilot and a few of its successors, that meant that Microsoft was planning to take Associate in Nursingother run at them. Given Microsoft’s dominance, it absolutely was an existential threat. Here’s however Jeff, one in every of the good product executives in school history, delineate his approach to handling that threat:
Our initial huge run in competition was with the Palm V. That was with Microsoft.
we tend to had been having tons of success with the PalmPilot, and Microsoft said, literally, Steve Ballmer came front of their annual conference, and that they had an image of Palm during a target, and it absolutely was like, “We’re gonna kill these guys,” you know? “We’re gonna crush them.”
I had engineers writing their resumes. I mean there have been folks saying, “Oh, man, it was an honest run, sorry,” you know? the traditional knowledge was you can’t vie against Microsoft, and that i same, “No, we are able to compete.”
and that i came up with a technique for it. I said we’re gonna build hardware and also the software. They’re solely building the code, and they’re counting on others to create the hardware. therefore what we tend to oughta do on our next product is create the foremost lovely piece of hardware we are able to create, that they’re not gonna do.
This was the disputable idea; they were adding of these options to their software, loads of features to their software. and that i said, “We’re not gonna add any new features to our software,” as a result of if we add new features to our software, people are planning to compare our new software features to Microsoft’s new software features, and we’re gonna be behind.
If we tend to take off with an exquisite product, they won’t mention our new code options. All they’ll do is talk about the new, beautiful product. then they’ll say, “This product is a lot of beautiful than something that they got going on,” right?
therefore this was a disputable strategy of mine; we’re not planning to add new features once the Palm V came out. There’s going to be no new software features. we tend to may have had an entire list of things we could place in, however I same that’s not going to facilitate us. And it worked beautifully.
The Palm V came out, and that we just crushed Microsoft. They just, you know, they solely couldn’t vie at all. and that they were blown away that we blew ‘em away.
The second story may be a very little totally different — and it’s conjointly addressed in episode, with a number of the relevant audio. when acrobatic feat united back with Palm, dysfunction Colligan was running things, and eventually, all eyes were on Apple, that was wide expected to unharness a smartphone. a couple of weeks before the iPhone was initial announced, Colligan sat for Associate in Nursing interview with ny Times newsperson John Markov at the Churchill Club.
Back in 2006, nothing had really leaked concerning the iPhone, then Markoff and Colligan speculated a small amount on what Apple may be doing. Then the oral communication turned to discussing competition in general.
All of this context is in commission to correcting the record on {one of|one among|one during all|one amongst|one in every of} Colligan’s responses. Somewhat famously, a line of his has been quoted over and over — most frequently by John Gruber at Daring Fireball in a post titled “Palm business executive dysfunction Colligan’s Head Seems to be Stuck Somewhere.” He quotes the subsequent period transcription — which, because it turns out, is inaccurate:
Responding to queries from ny Times correspondent John Markov at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the concept that any company — as well as the wildly fashionable Apple laptop — may simply win customers within the finical smartphone sector.
“We’ve learned and struggled for a couple of years here deciding a way to build a good phone,” he said. “PC guys don't seem to be planning to simply figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
We’ve gotten the first recording of the interview — our because of the pc History Museum, that has received the Churchill Club’s archives when it sadly had to shut down. Here’s the particular exchange, which begins after the Apple speculation.
John Markoff: however what is going to it appear as if in 2007? Apple will get in. Eric’s [Schmidt, then business executive of Google] wandering around talking concerning free phones. He’s got Andy Rubin, who was the founding father of Danger doing one thing inside. He bought Andy’s startup. The phone market may look, I mean, it's crowded now. It may look intensely jam-pawncked next year.
dysfunction Colligan: It’s intensely big. we tend to simply got to get our fair proportion of the pie. And let Pine Tree State tell you this, it’s not as straightforward because it looks. You’ve seen Motorola, one in every of the largest phone corporations within the world enter with a tool that was planning to take over the world, and it’s had huge issues.
Markoff: The Q? You’re talking concerning the Q. [The Motorola Q, a overvalued Windows Mobile smartphone that struggled with technical issues and slow sales]
Colligan: Yeah. then I just would caution folks that assume they’re planning to enter here and simply and do these. we tend to’ve struggled for a couple of years here, deciding a way to build a good phone. The computer guys don't seem to be going to just, you know, knock this out. I guarantee it. So, look, welcome, let’s choose it. We can’t stop all that. It’s going to happen, however it’s going to be, I don’t think it’ll be really easy for everyone, as everybody thinks to enter it. It’s a tricky space.
Markoff: You’ve been around this business long enough, and you most likely remember, perhaps you don’t actually, the illustrious Wall Street Journal ad that Apple took move into 1981. “Welcome IBM. Seriously.”
Colligan: Exactly. Well, look, you know, I’m not making an attempt to be assertive concerning it. it's a tricky, it’s a tough business. We’ve extremely struggled through that within the sense of constructing world category radios that perform on international networks systematically with all the applications that we tend to deliver and…
Markoff: Is radio expertise, one thing you've got to possess internally, is that...
Colligan: Yes.
Markoff: Yeah. That’s a black art, still.
Colligan: Yes.
The oral communication moves on from there. Colligan clearly saw the competition returning was was seemingly disquieted and required to place a brave face on it, however it’s notable that the a lot of immediate prompt was Google and Motorola. And on the far side the specifics of the wording, the tone and have an effect on of Colligan’s response (which you'll hear concerning , beginning round the eleven minute mark) is additionally relevant. It wasn’t a prediction that Apple would fail — it absolutely was more of an admission that smartphones were hard. And it wasn’t merely about Apple, but also Google and also the new entrants running Windows Mobile (which Palm conjointly used on its Treos at the time).
Weeks later, the iPhone was declared and it absolutely was, of course, a lot of fashionable than any Treo. However, it was humanoid that concluded up walking in, turning into the fatal competition for Palm and its sequent webOS phones. Verizon ultimately selected Google’s software system and also the Motorola Droid rather than the Palm Pre to vie with the then-AT&T-exclusive iPhone.
The Motorola Droid was spearheaded by Rick Osterloh — who got his begin creating SoundsGood MP3 Springboard modules for acrobatic feat Visors before his company was noninheritable by Motorola. Palm persevered for a bit whereas longer and was acquired by HP, however the Droid was the start of the end. Osterloh currently runs hardware at Google, and his picture element phones face competition equally as discouraging as something Palm once dealt with.
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