Piloting Palm: The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring and the Birth of the Billion Dollar Handheld Industry

377 Pages·2002·1.59 MB·English

by  Andrea Butter

PILOTING
PALM

PILOTING
PALM
THE INSIDE STORY OF PALM, HANDSPRING,
AND THE BIRTH OF THE BILLION-DOLLAR
HANDHELD INDUSTRY
ANDREA BUTTER
& DAVID POGUE
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Copyright © 2002 by Andrea Butter and David Pogue. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy-
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To Dagmar, Julia, and Matthias Butter

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Note to the Reader xiii
Prologue 1
Chapter 1 In the Valley of Dreams 5
Chapter 2 Palm Computing 19
Chapter 3 Donna 31
Chapter 4 Zoomer vs. Newton 43
Chapter 5 The Writing on the Wall 59
Chapter 6 The Zen of Palm 70
Chapter 7 Crossing the Desert 89
Chapter 8 U.S. Robotics 102
Chapter 9 The Shortest Honeymoon 118
Chapter 10 Selling the Pilot 129
Chapter 11 The Eleventh Hour 144
Chapter 12 Inside the Tornado 152
Chapter 13 Microsoft 1.0 167
Chapter 14 Swallowed Whole 179
Chapter 15 Omens 190
Chapter 16 Microsoft 2.0 203
Chapter 17 The Fight for Independence 214
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viii
CONTENTS
Chapter 18 Once Again, with Money 225
Chapter 19 Sea Change 241
Chapter 20 Revolving Doors 255
Chapter 21 Zero to Sixty 266
Chapter 22 IPO 283
Chapter 23 Millennium 294
Chapter 24 Uncharted Waters 308
Epilogue 324
Notes 329
Index 339
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Above all, our gratitude goes to Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky,
and Ed Colligan, who generously and incautiously consented to
cooperate with many hours of interviews, which they endured
with patience, good humor, and complete frankness. In a very
concrete way, they made the book possible.
We also owe thanks to these people for sharing their time
and recollections in interviews (sometimes many of them):
Robin Abrams, Al Ahmed, David Anderson, Vicki Barklow,
Randy Battat, Eric Benhamou, Mark Bercow, Monty Boyer,
Markus Bregler, Stephen K. Brown, Bill Campbell, Elizabeth
Cardinale, Marian Cauwet, David Christopher, Byron Connell,
Chuck Corbett, Casey Cowell, Bruce Dunlevie, Martin East-
wood, Bob Ebert, Howard Elias, Shawn Ford, Donna Gafford,
Mike Gallucci, Jean Louis Gassée, Rob Haitani, Doug Haslam,
Ray Ivins, Joel Jewitt, Andrea Johnson, Doris Kanemura, Alan
Kessler, Randy Komisar, Doug Kraul, Art Lamb, David T. Lee,
Bill MacKenzie, Carolyn Malestic, Ron Marianetti, John McCart-
ney, Pat McVeigh, Bruce Mendel, Jack Miller, Daniel Pifko, Kate
Purmal, Frank Quattrone, Chris Raff, Dinesh Raghavan, Janice
Roberts, Michael Seedman, Andy Simms, Joe Sipher, Bill Slakey,
Caitlin Spaan, Janet Strauss, J Tempesta, Karl Townsend, Dave
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