Editorial by Steven Bush, the publisher of Brighthand, with a good overview of how both the Palm and Pocket PC platforms continue to strive towards the same goals, even if that goal has been something of a moving target over the years:
In my October 1999 editorial In Search of Shangri-la, I wrote that Palm and Microsoft were headed toward the same destination, which I called “handheld Shangri-la.” Both were in a quest to create a slim, lightweight handheld that could do a lot of cool things but was still reasonably-priced. The only difference, I wrote, was that they were taking entirely different paths to get there. Now, four years later, it appears that they’re both pretty close, but has the destination changed?…So where are they now? It’s safe to say that they’re both pretty close to the original goal. But now it appears that the ultimate destination may have changed. Some industry analysts have begun to predict the death of handhelds, citing the growth in smart cell phones, and other convergent devices, as its death knell. But it appears that Palm, with its Handspring acquisition, and Microsoft, with its Smartphone platform, have recognized that their original destination was not, in fact, Shangri-la, but a mirage, and have set their sights on the new promised land.
