Rating: 
Summary: An in depth page-turner!
Review: As someone who regularly keeps up with Palm, Handspring, etc. through all of the daily-updated websites devoted to the Palm Platform, I figured that I'd know most of the stories in this book. I was wrong. The few stories I knew were fleshed out with far more detail, and there were tons of interesting insider accounts that I had never heard of before. Best of all, the writing style is fantastic (not a surpise with David Pogue as a co-author) making this a real page-turner, something that not a lot of non-fiction books do for me. Highly recommended; if you're interested enough in this topic to be reading this review, then you'll love the book.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read, Edited So They Can Still Work in Silicon Valley
Review: For those of us in Silicon Valley who only knew Palm from the outside this book is a great read. The true hero of the story is Donna Dubinsky; her travails makes the Perils of Pauline seem tame.However, the book was obviously written by people who still care to work in the computer industry. It pulls so many punches that the story reads like light fiction. Too polite and politically correct the authors simply dance around some issues that were clearly crying out to be discussed. 1. Palm's first venture capitalists essentially bailed on the company by not leading a second round of funding. This forced the company to sell itself to US Robotics. There is a lot of 'happy talk' about why the VC's did not want to 'lead' the round, but if they truly believed in the company they could have, and would have. How did Donna Dubinsky really feel? What was really said when they turned their back on the company? 2. Before there ever was a Cisco, 3Com (Palm's second owners) owned the networking market. (I'm sure there's a great book in someone on how 3Com managed to blow this huge lead.) While never quite coming out and directly saying it, Eric Benhamou's (3Com's CEO) constant dithering about whether to spin-off Palm seems to be indicative of his management style in running the rest of 3Com. How did Donna Dubinsky and Palm really feel? 3. Carl Yankowski comes off as if someone wrote a whole chapter on how he personally sank Palm, and then removed it for legal liability issues. 4. Did Jeff Hawkins use Xerox PARC the same way as Steve Jobs did? Xerox had demo'd two of the unique Palm innovations; a constrained handwriting recognizer, and the keen observation that the PDA would be a PC attachment, not a standalone device, well before Palm. Give Hawkins credit, he was the only one to read or see the Xerox PDA stuff and get it, but there is zero acknowledgement in the book that these ideas did not spring full blown out of Hawkin's head. (Probably a good reason, since Xerox finally sued Palm for patent infringement. Given the Xerox track record for belated cluelessness, it's doubtful they'll collect.) The deification of Hawkin's at the expense of the truth might maintain the authors' personal relationships, but not mentioning these issues as at least the current hot topics in Silicon Valley, is disingenuous at least. 5. Handspring's success is still predicated on Palm's ability to innovate in its operating system. Palm's glacial speed was fine when Palm was the only game in town, but Microsoft's inexorable progress should be nightmarish. Handspring and the other licensees are known to be pulling their collective hair out as Palm painfully updates their operating system. Not a word on this issue. 6. Now Palm has split into two parts. An operating system group and a hardware group. The new head of the Palm Operating System group is Eric Nagel, best known at Apple as the head of research for 10 years who let Microsoft catch up and leave them in the dust. How do Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins really feel about being dependent on Palm? Overall, still a great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitive Chronology
Review: From Hawkins initial vision until early 2002, Piloting Palm chronicles the birth of the handheld industry's first real success story: Palm. The triumphs and set-backs are re-lived in detail in this page-turner that is augmented by numerous quotes from Hawkins and the others who lived it. The book is more of a chronology, and with the exception of evidencing a very pro-Palm and later pro-Handspring bias (one of the authors worked for Palm's marketing division previously), the book avoids drawing any conclusions about the companies and their successes and failures. Insight, however, abounds from the quotes which appear on literally almost every page. The authors' access to the managers of the two companies is quite impressive; however, the book is little more than a narrative of what happened and doesn't really comment on how the principals felt that they could have improved on their performance or what lessons can be applied from their struggles to other businesses. In fact, the book talks more about how to build a PDA than a business. The book will probably be regarded as the definitive history of the companies, but it really doesn't go far beyond that, and forces the reader who is looking to apply the lessons to search deeply within to extract the gold nuggets that are hidden throughout.
Rating:
Summary: Definitive Chronology
Review: From Hawkins initial vision until early 2002, Piloting Palm chronicles the birth of the handheld industry's first real success story: Palm. The triumphs and set-backs are re-lived in detail in this page-turner that is augmented by numerous quotes from Hawkins and the others who lived it. The book is more of a chronology, and with the exception of evidencing a very pro-Palm and later pro-Handspring bias (one of the authors worked for Palm's marketing division previously), the book avoids drawing any conclusions about the companies and their successes and failures. Insight, however, abounds from the quotes which appear on literally almost every page. The authors' access to the managers of the two companies is quite impressive; however, the book is little more than a narrative of what happened and doesn't really comment on how the principals felt that they could have improved on their performance or what lessons can be applied from their struggles to other businesses. In fact, the book talks more about how to build a PDA than a business. The book will probably be regarded as the definitive history of the companies, but it really doesn't go far beyond that, and forces the reader who is looking to apply the lessons to search deeply within to extract the gold nuggets that are hidden throughout.
Rating:
Summary: Read it and had to have a Palm
Review: Great book and a real page turner!! I bought the book from a business perspective and can't believe how well it read. The Palm story is inspirational and a complex business tale. Let's face it IPO's and corporate takeovers can read pretty dry. I am a Pocket PC user and I am throughly surprised. I wanted a Palm!! Mission accomplished!! I picked up a Palm VIIx on eBay! Of course, I am not giving up my Pocket PC.
Rating:
Summary: Piloting Palm, right on course
Review: Having just finished reading Piloting Palm I found the book to be very informative, and enlightening. I compared the book to one I read many years ago titled "Small Wonder: The Amazing Story of the Volkswagen Beetle" The reason I say this is because both the Beetle and the Palm Pilot share one thing in common, they both almost did not make it into production. I would recommend this book to anyone who is any interest at all in this amazing handheld computer, I believe you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Recipe for success and failures
Review: I read that book like I watchd Columbo series. I knew the end but I didn't know why. Now I do and I will certainly pick that book as a required reading in my coming graduate course on "Creating Breakthru Products". The recipe for success is clearly presented here. Take a great product visionary add a great business strategist and manager who respect, admire, and want the success of each other. Add great people, respect them, challenge them, and create a strong team spirit. Starve them to death (yes, too much money kills products). Focus on a customer type and make all your decisions based on that. Strive for simplicity. Add one or two genius innovative ideas (the story opf grafiti is a case study by itself). And ... Let them loose. In comparison, the story of Palm under 3'com is an example of how not to do it although not all is bad. But I could feel the pain of the original creators as they saw one manager after another shoot at the golden goose. I feel very pessimistic on the chances of Palm after reading this book and I would not be surprised to see Handspring buying them down the road, but technology always reserve surprises, so we will see.
Rating:
Summary: Recipe for success and failures
Review: I read that book like I watchd Columbo series. I knew the end but I didn't know why. Now I do and I will certainly pick that book as a required reading in my coming graduate course on "Creating Breakthru Products". The recipe for success is clearly presented here. Take a great product visionary add a great business strategist and manager who respect, admire, and want the success of each other. Add great people, respect them, challenge them, and create a strong team spirit. Starve them to death (yes, too much money kills products). Focus on a customer type and make all your decisions based on that. Strive for simplicity. Add one or two genius innovative ideas (the story opf grafiti is a case study by itself). And ... Let them loose. In comparison, the story of Palm under 3'com is an example of how not to do it although not all is bad. But I could feel the pain of the original creators as they saw one manager after another shoot at the golden goose. I feel very pessimistic on the chances of Palm after reading this book and I would not be surprised to see Handspring buying them down the road, but technology always reserve surprises, so we will see.
Rating:
Summary: Clear, accurate, highly informative and enjoyable!
Review: I've read many (most?) of the books about high-tech companies over the past 18 years, and this is one of the best. I'm familiar enough with the participants and events in Palm's history to know it is accurate. But it is also well-written, a fascinating story to read, and is well-documented with careful references throughout. Andra and David are to be congratulated! I am recommending it highly to my colleagues.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but just sort of ends
Review: If you have any interest in the handheld industry, this book gives an interesting look at its history. It is mainly about Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, the main founders of Palm. It treats them a little reverently - they seemingly do no wrong. But leaving that aside it is a good story of start up and the struggles it goes through as they eventually leave to found Hanspring. The only other negative is that the book just kind of ends at the beginning of this year (2002) and the future is so uncertain. Will Handspring's Treo product be like the original palm in the it completely takes over the market? Maybe the authors should have waited a year to the history is a little clearer.
| 
