ERIC BERGMAN

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

ROB HAITANI

Handspring, Inc.

Figure 4.1: Rob Haitani

BERGMAN: You worked on the design of the original Pilot (see Figure 4.2) at Palm Computing. What was your role?

Figure 4.2: An early PalmPilot connected organizer:

HAITANI: I was the product manager for the first-generation Pilot. Among other things, I was in charge of designing the user interface of the operating system and the applications. Our president, Donna Dubinsky, one morning asked me if I had ever "done this before." I wondered if she meant whether I had designed an operating system. I hadn't even managed a software project before coming to Palm, actually, so I simply said, "Uh, no."

BERGMAN: Tell me a little bit about the history of the PalmPilot.

HAITANI: Before the PalmPilot, we wrote the application software for a product called the Zoomer, which was similar to the Newton. It had a 320 x 240 pixel touch-sensitive display, a pen, and handwriting recognition. It was called "jacket pocket size," which was another way of saying that it was too big to fit in ashirt pocket. We were actually a software company, and our expectation was that these products would become smaller, cheaper, and faster overtime, and that we would be the leading software developer for whatever product won out. Trouble was, we didn't anticipate that none of the products would win.