If the order of events were different, what might we be calling smartphones?

I had this shower thought earlier and I actually wanted to post it in that community. The name I came up with was SmartWalkman, but later I realized that Walkman is Sony specific, so I doubt other companies would’ve gone for that name, but I didn’t want to let this shower thought slip so here I am now asking you guys.

reverendsteveii ,

I feel like palmtop, as derived from desktop and laptop, has a shot here

howrar ,

We did have palm pilot for a brief period in time.

Saigonauticon ,

We had some computers called palmtops for a while! They were sort of like early tablets that ran Windows and had keyboards. Some were pretty cool, and they definitely played a similar role to smartphones for a bit. Although they were overly expensive. Here is one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO

These are making a (little) bit of a comeback. I find myself sometimes wanting a portable terminal for emergency maintenance, although it's more practical to just throw a Bluetooth keyboard for my phone in my backpack.

mindbleach ,

Office Depot's tiny-laptop aisle was like pornography, whenever I was dragged through there as a child in the late 90s. A computer of your own? The size of a Game Boy? Running actual* Windows?! And it's only $3000! Forget the colored binders, mom, lemme snag one of these!

Saigonauticon ,

Haha yeah... I couldn't afford them either. Also the weird fancy Sony-VAIO things only in Japan.

I did eventually get a Panasonic CF-M34 though. It was a netbook before netbooks were a thing -- and you could use it to hammer in a nail, then boil it it in a pot of water to clean it. Without turning it off. Then set it gently on a table, and blow the table up with dynamite -- although this apparently caused a restart (someone tried it). That thing was awesome. You still spot it in movies sometimes.

mindbleach ,

Ohhh, the Toughbooks. Yeah those things were ridiculous. I just bought a Libretto, years later, and have had the most aggravating time trying to get any data on or off of it, thanks to the gulf in interfaces.

Saigonauticon ,

The librettos were cute little machines though!

Also there were those TransMeta Crusoe processors that came after them. Those were way before their time and didn't take off. Went bankrupt. Now we do that with Intel Atom, or RISC.

rmuk ,

It's my Microsoft® Windows® PocketPC™ 2024 for Home™ PremiumPlus™ for Palm Computing™ Touch Edition (non-commercial) with Bing™ -powered device.

mindbleach ,

Microsoft redesigns the iPod.

weeeeum ,

PITA from the article "Is that a PITA in your pocket?". It was written in 1999 and was a literally perfect prediction of what smartphones would be. Even down to PITA being an acronym for both "Personal Information Telecommunication Agent" and "Pain in the Ass" since the overwhelming connectivity would destroy our privacy.

You could legitimately make a conspiracy theory from how accurate his prediction and article was.

Saigonauticon ,

Telescreen. Term coined in 1949 by Eric Blair.

It's always on, always listening, always notifying you when you should do things. Algorithmically telling you what to hate, in two minute videos. Not having one is akin to exile from society. What was really a stroke of brilliance was making them portable and convincing us to pay for them, rather than making them mandatory and provided by the State.

Absolute genius, I could not have done it better! My telescreens are Xiaomi/Huawei -- I would feel lonely if only the West was listening. They are quite wonderful little things.

NigelFrobisher ,

And here I was wondering why podcasts are still called podcasts when they barely had anything to do with iPods in the first place.

Ross_audio ,

iPods had an 82% share of the US market at the time the term was first used.

https://www.theregister.com/2004/10/12/ipod_us_share/

At the time a "broadcast" to you iPod made the name podcast pretty understandable.

And there's not much else I could think of to call it given technology at the time.

MP3 player was the generic term. But MP3 cast feels clunky.

I did hear audioblog used. But they weren't all blogs.

It really comes down to the fact that at the time everyone knew "pod" meant "iPod" and that's it.

intensely_human ,

Terminals

RIPandTERROR ,
@RIPandTERROR@sh.itjust.works avatar

Here to point out Personal Electronic Terminal was very much on the table at one point

zeusbottom ,

Pocket Ad Machine

Sellfone

Social Distorter

Dynamic Uniform Radio Receiver (DURR)

aluminium ,

Pocket PC

VinesNFluff ,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

Honestly, probably "palmtop"

There WERE palmtop computers, and the first few smartphone-like devices trace their lineage TO palmtops integrating cell phone functionality.

And it pairs nicely with laptop.

pelletbucket ,
@pelletbucket@lemm.ee avatar

they were called Pocket PCs right up until they started putting cell network chips in them.

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