The History of Psion
There’s a fascinating article at The Register on the history of Psion. Here are some snippets that I found interesting…
"Potter approached Gates with a proposition. Psion would make Windows-based hardware, if Microsoft would license its operating system to Psion for free. Microsoft said it never licenses software for free, so the deal never took place," he says. "I still maintain that if that deal had come off, Symbian would never have happened."
"Today, Psion continues to sell an upgraded netBook as a Windows CE-based device to the industrial market. Only a few insiders know it was envisaged as a triple-boot computer with a choice of Linux, Windows CE, or Epoc inside."
"Smartphone sales are way down on the projections made at the turn of the decade, and as most smartphones are bought for their status appeal, the "smart" features go unused. The third-party mass software market that many anticipated, never materialised."
"Symbian, I gather, are currently trying to reduce the number of experienced and expensive employees and they have a micromanaged production-line environment there. It’s ironic that the move towards this was born out of a desire to hit software targets better than in the old Psion days. The best intentions, and all that. The timescales are more predictable, but at what cost?"
Having read the article, it’s interesting how things that happened quite a while ago, still have an affect today.