Wednesday, May 18, 2005

This document is a comprehensive timeline of the evolution of personal digital assistants. Specifically, my intention is to clarify which companies premiered each of the primary front-end features that are considered standard in modern devices, from the technology's invention to its acceptance as a mainstream product category in the mid-1990s.

Apple did invent the actual term "personal digital assistant," but it is widely known that the marketing staff ignored the design staff's plea not to hype the handwriting recognition feature - they knew it did not work well. As with many Apple products, the Newton's user interface was especially nice, and there was a widespread independent developer community. However, we can now see that it was just one of five Apple projects (the others being General Magic, Rolex, Smartifacts, and Swatch) - and arguably not even the best one. So even within Apple it was not the "first" PDA by any reasonable standard.

Just because a company has a new term to explain a product category hardly means they deserve credit for inventing the product category. Newton fans don't see it that way ... That is senseless. Regardless of how fancy the Newton's interface is, a digital handheld organizer is a digital handheld organizer, and Wizard models existed four years before the Newton (not to mention many PDAs dating back to at least 1976!).