Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone (Full Documentary)

The Verge
11 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2021–2025
YouTube
1.7M views · 4 years ago · documentary · historical

A Verge documentary on Handspring and the Springboard expansion slot that led to the Visor and Treo, telling the story of the company that grew out of Palm. It includes interviews with people involved and looks at why the company's vision of a modular smartphone ran into trouble with carriers.

HN people recommend it as an interview-rich history of how a pioneering smartphone product was made and why it fell short.

Product design & product thinkingMobile & touch interfaces
#handspring#springboard#palm#treo#smartphonehistory#producthistory

15 comments from Hacker News

p
@pushedx2024 · in “PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS”
Right, it was ex-Palm employees at Handspring that created the Treo. Nice documentary about this with interviews: ▶ this video
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p
@pjmlp2023 · in “Springboard: The First Real Smartphone”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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w
@walterbell2022 · in “Springboard: The History of PalmPilot, the First Real Smartphone (2021)”
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F
@ForgotIdAgain2022 · in “Ask HN: Books/Media about the creation of a product”
I'm really fond of book and medias about the creation of a product here are some of my favorites one: - link (docu series on the creation of the xbox, by microsoft) - link (precursor of the modern smartphone, still not watched this one but look interesting) - ▶ this video ( the springboard smartphone history) - link (Half life documentary, various video game documentaries are available on the noclip channel and they go with a a good amount of depth) - link (AN incredible series on japan electronic industry, not a single product per se but lot of seminal products are introduced) - link (Iphone history) - Master of doom (classic book on ID software, the last entries of abrash black art book on Quake creation are a lot of fun too) - link great article series on the creation of the crash bandicoot and its tech challenge - The Future was here – The Commodore Amiga (book on the Amiga computer creation, with lot of technical yet manageable details) All in all ressources that include a good mix of technical details and compelling narrative would be great.
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d
@depingus2022 · in “Cloudpilot, a PalmOS Emulator for the Web”
Someone had previously posted this short documentary about Handspring. You might enjoy it. ▶ this video
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r
@roywiggins2022 · in “IBM Simon”
Calling it a Palm clone isn't really fair, it was developed by the team that founded Palm, Inc in the first place. link I thought this documentary about Handspring was interesting, and it also comes to the conclusion that the problem was at least mostly the telcos. ▶ this video
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m
@marban2021 · in “Springboard: The first real smartphone (Full Documentary)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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r
@rbanffy2021 · in “Springboard: The first real smartphone (Full Documentary)”
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@jonbaer2021 · in “Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone”
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p
@peterkelly2021 · in “Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone”
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@andrewshadura2021 · in “Springboard: The Secret History of the First Real Smartphone”
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W
@WorldPeas2025 · in “But what if I want a faster horse?”
Worse yet it's the only effective way to sync music to the iphone over a wired cable. I can tell they've abandoned their USB sync software because of how annoying the dialogs are when you plug your phone in and don't authenticate to start it, additionally that thay've (likely intentionally to push I-cloud) never added automatic usb photo sync from phone to computer. This probably all originated from when Apple shifted their convergence model from all around the desktop to all around the phone¹ [1]▶ this video
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