Palm Pilot: The Tablet That Schooled Apple

The Palm Pilot is one of the most iconic devices in tech history, playing a pivotal role in the development of mobile computing. Released in the 1990s, it revolutionized personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paved the way for smartphones and many mobile technologies we now take for granted.

However, from today's perspective, PDAs can seem like one of the most confusing devices to explain to younger generations. These devices look like mobile phones from the early 2010s, so why not simply add an antenna and create the iPhone a decade earlier?

This is what a smartphone looked like in the 1990s...

To understand this, it helps to know what cell phones looked like at the time. Cellular networks weren't as advanced as they are today, and communicating over them required sizeable antennas and batteries. Devices that attempted to combine a PDA and a phone, like the IBM Simon and Nokia Communicator, struggled to find success.