Rating: 
Summary: Insightful!
Review: If you like your corporate biographies short on technological details and long on struggles for survival and success, Piloting Palm is the book for you. Andrea Butter, Palm's marketing director in the early days, provides backstage access to Palm's evolutionary drama, complete with political infighting, searches for cash and the simple quest for survival. The story is told largely from the point of view of Jeff Hawkins, whom Butter and co-author David Pogue dub the father of handheld computing. The involvement of such dynamic firms as Casio, Tandy, GeoWorks, America Online, Intuit and various venture capitalists makes the story all the more interesting. We from getAbstract recommend this book for its straightforward - although not all too objective - account of the creation of a modern technological phenomenon.
Rating:
Summary: Read it and had to have a Palm
Review: Piloting Palm is what I would call the missing link in the story of Palm Computing. From Palm's humble beginings to its great successes this book is hear to tell it all. I got a rollar coaster of a ride reading it as my emotions were swayed back and forth. The news never convered this story of Palms history the way this book does. Ultimately the basic story of the book is known to any Palm fan but I would this book as a great way to fill in the blanks on palms history. I would recommend this to anyone who who is interested in pen computing.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Job!
Review: Piloting Palm is what I would call the missing link in the story of Palm Computing. From Palm's humble beginings to its great successes this book is hear to tell it all. I got a rollar coaster of a ride reading it as my emotions were swayed back and forth. The news never convered this story of Palms history the way this book does. Ultimately the basic story of the book is known to any Palm fan but I would this book as a great way to fill in the blanks on palms history. I would recommend this to anyone who who is interested in pen computing.
Rating:
Summary: The Soul of a Small-is-Beautiful Machine
Review: The book is compulsively readable, but I
cannot give it 5 stars. What's outstanding
is that it covers a significant period of
time, from GRiD Systems (circa 1987) all
the way to Handspring Treo (2002). So at
least 5 or 6 generations of handheld product
evolution/revolution are ably documented.Like "New New Thing", it chronicles the
flocking or Pied Piper syndrome which
is what Silicon Valley is all about. Everybody is madly flocking after the 99
percentile person, who in this case is
Jeff Hawkins and his uncluttered vision. Hawkins began his career at Intel, which may explain
his skill at exploiting the leading-edge chips. This
converges with his passion for so-called "anticipatory
computing systems" (AcSys), for example neural networks
or software to model the mechanism
of the brain. He has mastered the subtle art of
consistently anticipating what the market needs,
and translating it to a winner product. The book doesn't really explore this "brain" theme
very much, nor does it mention many of the silicon
technology enablers powering the operating systems.
Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is nowadays king of
the hill, so handheld organizers have had their moment.
Rating: 
Summary: Weak
Review: The book was very disappointing. It is very superficial and overly enthusiastic, yet leaves out a lot of detail and dwells on generalities. Honestly, I expected something as zesty as Apple's history, or at least comparable to the good popular writing about Silicon Valley or Microsoft, but no luck here. I ended up skipping a lot of pages. It was disconcerting that little attention was given to technology; not much was said about Newton, Psion, CE, etc, except that they were really slow and bad, and Palm (and their earlier device, Zoomer -- the only interesting thing I learned from the book) were quite decent in comparison. The book dwelled too much on what Dubinsky or Hawkins were thinking this or that day. The book tries to present Palm (Dubinsky & Hawkins, rather) as a company with amazing tech vision and business savvy, but fails by omitting too many details. For example, the simplicity and "Zen of Palm" were even more Zen for another, yet smaller and as simle device, the PCMCIA-sized Rex (or whatever it was called) but it is not even mentioned. Why did the other pen computers fail exactly? The book can be summarized thus: "Jeff thought of this cool thing and Donna made it happen, and it was very hard at first, but nobody else could do it as well as them anyway." No mention of exactly whose intellectual property Palm put together (I am referring to the Grafitti lawsuit but the OS kernel was supposedly not theirs eihter). Everything controvesial or interesting is missing -- don't read the book.
Rating:
Summary: A good read on start-ups, mergers and more
Review: This book covers the complete history of Palm and Handspring (which was founded by folks from Palm). One of the authors worked at Palm through the bulk of the period, so the insight is real and relevant. Though the writing style is not at the level of other fast-paced, informative business stories (The New New Thing or Blockbuster, as two examples), it does cover the essentials and moves steadily forward. If you love your Palm or like high tech business profiles, this book will not disappoint you.
Rating:
Summary: A good read on start-ups, mergers and more
Review: This book covers the complete history of Palm and Handspring (which was founded by folks from Palm). One of the authors worked at Palm through the bulk of the period, so the insight is real and relevant. Though the writing style is not at the level of other fast-paced, informative business stories (The New New Thing or Blockbuster, as two examples), it does cover the essentials and moves steadily forward. If you love your Palm or like high tech business profiles, this book will not disappoint you.
Rating:
Summary: Pleasant page-turner with interesting business insights
Review: This book represents a powerful collaboration between industry veteran Andrea Butter and well-liked technology journalist David Pogue. I really enjoyed the book's engaging, fun, yet substantive style. It doesn't shy away from describing technical issues in detail without getting overly abtruse. The only possible blemishes are: 1) as others have pointed out, the ending is a little abrupt, but then, any ongoing printed history runs that risk; and 2) the book steers clear of passing any judgments on the various controversies surrounding Palm, Handspring, and the handheld industry. It bends over backward trying not to offend anybody, which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view. All in all, a good-natured, well-researched book that definitely makes you look at your PDA with more respect and curiosity.
Rating: 
Summary: Piloting Palm Pulls Punches
Review: This is the story of the handheld PDA and its development. Originally an idea of
Jeff Hawkins, he brought Donna Dubinsky on board as CEO to start a company to develop what became the Palm Pilot. Along the way both struggle to get enough capital to continue to make the product a success. They eventually get backing from
3 Com and while the capital is available, dealing with 3Com management becomes a major issue. Both eventually leave to from Handspring, and the story stops about a year into the new company, with Palm the dominant supplier of PDAs, but seemingly mismanaged, and Handspring's future uncertain. The punches are surely pulled when describing the investors of capital in the business (there were many) - why would the story be so torturous if there had been more belief among the major investors in either the product and/or the management?
Another issue which I read into the story, is the sheer difficulty of working with the vision team that is Hawkins/Dubinsky - each non-Palm manger who is brought in by
3 com to develop the product seems to be confused, visionless or plain wrong. I began to have sympathy for the folks who had to manage Palm during the long-running dispute that led to their departure. From this book's viewpoint it looks as if only the original team of true believers could deliver the product, the process and the profits. I was not convinced. Hawkins seems to have developed the operating systems and handprint recognition software that was the basis of the original product. He and Dubinsky argued against licensing this software while at Palm and yet were the primary beneficiaries of such a license when they formed Handspring. Hawkins in particular seems obsessed with the product rather than the system, and this I feel must limit the
Proliferation of the PDA concept - surely the reason that the PC overcame Apples' first mover advantage was the decision by IBM to license the operating system. Most of the early Palm personnel were ex-Apple, so maybe the lesson was not well learned.
[There is, incidentally, a deliciously vicious description of the failure of the Apple Newton, the first attempt at a mass market PDA]
I came away from the book feeling that Hawkins/Dubinsky were an excellent, driven duo, who can inspire fierce loyalty and overcome challenges to develop a product, but their vision may not be wide enough to make the PDA a ubiquitous system, as opposed to a handy device for technophiles.
Rating:
Summary: Piloting Palm Pulls Punches
Review: This is the story of the handheld PDA and its development. Originally an idea of
Jeff Hawkins, he brought Donna Dubinsky on board as CEO to start a company to develop what became the Palm Pilot. Along the way both struggle to get enough capital to continue to make the product a success. They eventually get backing from
3 Com and while the capital is available, dealing with 3Com management becomes a major issue. Both eventually leave to from Handspring, and the story stops about a year into the new company, with Palm the dominant supplier of PDAs, but seemingly mismanaged, and Handspring's future uncertain. The punches are surely pulled when describing the investors of capital in the business (there were many) - why would the story be so torturous if there had been more belief among the major investors in either the product and/or the management?
Another issue which I read into the story, is the sheer difficulty of working with the vision team that is Hawkins/Dubinsky - each non-Palm manger who is brought in by
3 com to develop the product seems to be confused, visionless or plain wrong. I began to have sympathy for the folks who had to manage Palm during the long-running dispute that led to their departure. From this book's viewpoint it looks as if only the original team of true believers could deliver the product, the process and the profits. I was not convinced. Hawkins seems to have developed the operating systems and handprint recognition software that was the basis of the original product. He and Dubinsky argued against licensing this software while at Palm and yet were the primary beneficiaries of such a license when they formed Handspring. Hawkins in particular seems obsessed with the product rather than the system, and this I feel must limit the
Proliferation of the PDA concept - surely the reason that the PC overcame Apples' first mover advantage was the decision by IBM to license the operating system. Most of the early Palm personnel were ex-Apple, so maybe the lesson was not well learned.
[There is, incidentally, a deliciously vicious description of the failure of the Apple Newton, the first attempt at a mass market PDA]
I came away from the book feeling that Hawkins/Dubinsky were an excellent, driven duo, who can inspire fierce loyalty and overcome challenges to develop a product, but their vision may not be wide enough to make the PDA a ubiquitous system, as opposed to a handy device for technophiles.
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