cross-posted from: https://mamot.fr/users/thibaultamartin/statuses/113879452911907737

Palms were offline devices that only synced with your computer when put on a docking station.

You could read and reply to emails offline, book or cancel meetings, and sync with your computer later. The latest versions allowed you to snap pictures and listen to your music.

No servers running constantly. No data spilled everywhere. Days worth of battery on a single charge.

The future stole our cables, and it took our attention span and our privacy with it.

#privacy #offline #data

    • Björn Tantau
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      58 hours ago

      The good old days of screaming through the house not to pick the phone up, dialing in, downloading emails and usenet messages, cutting the connection and screaming the all clear through the house.

      • veroxii
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        23 hours ago

        And everything was “federated”. You sent email to a local email server and it synced with other email servers. You connected to your chosen Usenet server and it synced with other Usenet servers. Same with IRC for chat. Very few things were centralised.

    • bluGill
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      322 hours ago

      The boss already had wifi. But it was a large external antenna and the speeds were terrible.

      • @[email protected]
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        321 hours ago

        Whoa, that sounds interesting!
        (I should have clarified that I meant like the first laptops, at the dawn of computer intraconnectivity)