Last week I have offered you a close look at the similarities between the original Macintosh and the PalmPilot. This time around I will extend this analogy even further. I will attempt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the state of affairs in the handheld industry as a whole is a lot like the situation in the desktop workstation business of a few years ago.

As some of you might remember, a British company named Psion developed the first digital organizer back in the early eighties. Ever since then, Psion has been offering a wide range of products. Their merchandise, however, has been off the general public's gadget radar, particularly in the United States. One of the reasons for that is the fact that Psions are probably the geekiest of the bunch. Because of their sheer power and customizability, they are used by so-called power users. In this respect a Psion user can be likened to a UNIX fan.

Then there was Newton. It was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Newton's technological merits were numerous. Unfortunately, it was released prematurely and was destined to become the subject of numerous jokes for years to come. To make the matters worse, Apple has totally mishandled Newton's marketing in a way that only an arrogant established company could. Doesn't this whole story remind you of what IBM did with OS/2? If anything, these two products will forever serve as a proof that the most advanced technology doesn't always win.

The other great PDA that never really caught on was Sony MagicLink. At one point General Magic, the developer of the OS that powered the device, was the darling of the industry. Where are these guys now, you might wonder? They have gone the way of Amiga, leaving a small but rather vocal group of dedicated followers.

You might also recall a number of Geoworks GEOS-based devices, such as Hewlett-Packard OmniGo and Casio Z-series. While they did enjoy considerable commercial success, their departure is hardly missed. They have virtually disappeared by now, going the way of MS-DOS. Lately, GEOS's role has been confined to very specific applications, such as the fabulous Nokia 9000i PDA-in-a-cell-phone.

Of course, there was a number of other handhelds, in fact there were lots and lots of them. I will leave it up to you to figure out the rest of the analogies from the past. In the meantime, I will move forward to examine the current situation in the world of portable computing.

The two of the most prominent players are well known. One of them is 3Com, whose Palm series is still enjoying the status of the industry leader, just like Apple did with the Macintosh in the early 90's. On the opposite side of town the folks at Microsoft are releasing new versions of Windows CE on regular basis, providing a slew of industry heavyweights like HP, Casio, Phillips, and Compaq with a bloated but flashy OS. Perhaps the millennium edition of CE will be the portable equivalent of Windows 95. Only time will tell.

The other significant remaining vendors are the above mentioned Psion and the somewhat lesser known Franklin. The latter is marketing a nifty gadget caller Rex. Rex has experienced only marginal success, perhaps similar to that of BeOS. What makes the two products so analogous is the fact that both are marketed as "complimentary" to something else. Rex is generally used in conjunction with a laptop, while BeOS is supposed to run well alongside of Windows or MacOS.

In summary, the market niches occupied by Windows, MacOS, UNIX and BeOS have their respective equivalents in the handheld realm, namely CE, Palm, Psion and Rex. Everything else hardly gets much publicity anymore, which is definitely a sign of an established market. Or so it seems.

Am I missing something? If you look closely you will discover that I have failed to find a handheld whose appeal is comparable to that of Linux. This is one of the reasons why I insist that today's PDA situation resembles the mid-90's of the desktop business, the time when Linux was still lurking in the shadows.

An open source-powered PDA, anyone?