Here is a time that those under 30 cannot know. The Internet Archive association, which publishes among other things the very popular Wayback Machine service, has just put online a collection of applications and games from the legendary Palm Pilot.
Released in 1997, the Palm Pilot was a very popular device in the United States. The little gadget, equipped with 512 kilobits (yes, yes) of memory, a 160 by 160 pixel touch screen and a 16 MHz Motorola processor, popularized PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) among the general public. Long before the advent of the iPhone and our current smartphones, the Palm Pilot carried a whole host of applications that could be consulted at any time thanks to its compact design that fit in a pocket and its two AAA batteries served as a battery.
A monument of digital history
If you are taken by a fit of nostalgia, it is therefore possible to rediscover this plethora of applications (563 in number for the moment) on the Internet Archive site. More than just applications, the project led by digital historian Jason Scott is in fact a complete emulation of Palm OS 2.0, the Palm Pilot’s operating system. It is therefore possible to navigate through the menus, launch an application or pretend to write an email from the dedicated client. For even more immersion, you can even run the emulator directly in your smartphone’s browser, just to taste the technological prowess of yesteryear.
Although the tool is still in beta phase, it works very well. In an interview with The Verge, Jason Scott explained that integrating and running the operating system on the Internet Archive site only took him six short months. Older Internet users will no doubt remember the Space Trader game, which consisted of accumulating as much money as possible to buy a moon somewhere in the universe in order to spend happy days there. You can also discover a GPS application with a confusing concept or even launch TikTok!
The project is worth a quick detour for anyone interested in the history of computing. If you want to participate in the development of the project, you can contact Jason Scott on Twitter.