Towards total mobility...
Psion Organiser
Source: babbagecabbage
Throughout the early 1980s, Psion was best known as a provider of software for Sinclair computers, but in 1984 it launched the Organiser, its first hardware product and what is almost certainly the world’s first handheld computer - even though it was really only used to run basic personal information management software. Two years later, Psion released a much more advanced model, the Organiser II, which is now considered the first PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), though the term wasn’t coined - by Apple’s then-CEO, John Sculley - until 1992. More than a personal-data entry and presentation device, the Organiser II had a programming language, OPL, allowing to to run general-purpose applications. Psion soon shifted away from organiser functionality to focus on handheld computing with devices like the Series 3 and Series 5. Its EPOC OS would eventually become Symbian.
IBM/BellSouth Simon
Source: Bill Buxton/The Buxton Collection
By 1994, Psion had already defined the PDA market with the Organiser II and Apple had made it a laughing stock with the Newton MessagePad. Now IBM would take the PDA to the next level: incorporate cellular phone connectivity to create the first smartphone, the Simon, released in August 1994. IBM had shown the prototype in November 1992, but it took the intervening 18 months to get the software right. Simon, sold by US telco BellSouth, had a stylus- or finger-operated 4.5in touchscreen on which were presented phone, personal info, email and other PDA-style apps, all running on a 16MHz x86-compatible CPU. Simon was a chunky, clunky affair and was discontinued in 1995. The following year, Nokia would release the 9000 Communicator and show how to do it properly.
Apple iPad
It was the Mac all over again. Apple didn’t invent the tablet, or the tablet-centric operating system, but its iPad nonetheless has done more than any other platform to popularise this form-factor. Indeed, while GUI computing would have become dominant without the Mac, there’s a case for claiming that today’s array of tablets would not have arrived without the iPad. Would smartphones have gained bigger screens? For sure. But rivals’ feverish rush to emulate the iPad’s success with 10in tablets of their own shows the Apple gadget was a groundbreaker.
COMMENTS
Wot no C64?
Greatest selling single model of any computer (until very recently being overtaken by the iPad or iPhone - AFAICR)
No Commodore?
Where's the PET, the 64, and the Amiga? Nice article, but omitting Commodore's place is like skipping the existence of several countries in a history book. The Osborne used a Commodore OS if I remember right, BTW.
Re: Surprised...
Would that not be the GRiD 1100 Compass which was "the world’s first clamshell computer and thus the template for the notebook computer"?
Re: Hmm, iPads?
quote: "I'd have put Apple's most recent serious innovation as the iPhone. Whilst it wasn't the first touchscreen smartphone, the UI certainly blew away all the competition, and it has certainly defined the look and style of pretty much all smartphones since."
I'm guessing it's because putting an iPhone just underneath the Simon would invite all sort of unwelcome comparisons; the Simon has a rectangular touchscreen whose UI is a grid of icons, has rounded corners, can make phone calls... and was released in 1994, 13 years prior to the iPhone.
Re: Hmm, iPads?
iPads shouldn't be there, the PalmPilot should be... that is where tablet computing began for me..
