It Occurred to Me That a Lot Has Changed in Mobile Computing over the Last Fifte...
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It Occurred to Me That a Lot Has Changed in Mobile Computing over the Last Fifteen Years
This past weekend my wife and I headed down to Charlottesville, VA for the night, to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. When we met, she was half-way through law school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and I soon moved up there (from Williamsburg) to make dating her a little less highway-intensive. (As it happens, four months later we were engaged.)
I’ve been a googly-eyed computer junkie since Christmas 1982, but it was just after arriving in C’ville in early ’97 that I became all about mobile computing (we called them “PDAs” back then). I got hold of a Palm Pilot Personal, and was hooked.
At the time, I was running Debian Linux as my desktop OS, and I started a PalmOS-on-Linux blog that was short-lived and of little utility to anyone. It was my very first blog, though.
Standing there pondering the situation, I sent out a string of tweets that I wanted to share with those who may not follow me on twitter or who may have otherwise missed them. (For easy reading, the tweets below are temporally arranged top to bottom, and I’ve hyperlinked them a bit for added info.)
I am standing in the first Barnes & Nobel I ever encountered. I think it was back in ’93 or so. (@ Barnes & Noble) http://4sq.com/1cgJAsE
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
It’s interesting…
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
I was in here in my early PDA (handheld computers, youngins) crazy days all the time (’97, ‘98) following the technology…
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
…always searching the shelves for the latest issue of Conrad Blickenstorfer’s Pen Computing magazine ( http://www.pencomputing.com ).
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
I had a Palm Pilot back then, moving to a Philips Velo, a Newton MessagePad 2000, and then the Philips Nino.
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
The Nino inspired my first second blog, back in ‘98. Here it is, derelict: http://blakespot.com/nino/ Frozen (basically) for 15 years.
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
There was no easy internet on these devices. Some had jacks to dial out to a PPP account over the phone line. All of these had b&w screens.
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
And, it’s interesting…
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
Here I stand, my iPhone 5S in hand, tweeting this, cross checking in Safari, getting alerts, with a fast, wireless connection to the ‘net.
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
Pen Computing was the one. Bi-monthly. Today, here, I see about 2/3 of the computer mags on the shelf are about mobile.
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
A lot has happened in the last 15 years in mobile. (Most of it in the last 5-6.)
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
The Palm Pilot, I spoke of, has a 16MHz 16-bit processor. The Philips Velo has a 36MHz 32-bit processor.
Blake Patterson @blakespot 13 Oct
The iPhone 5s, here, has a dual core 64-bit Apple-designed CPU running at 1,300MHz.
Technology marches on.
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