Well… In fact, Dunlevie and Hawkins had already interviewed many candidates. Anyway, Donna was invited for an interview at Hawkins’ place. Jeff liked Donna’s position, while Donna was all excited about Jeff’s idea. June 15, 1992, she started working at Palm Computing. She later said, “One of my great purposes in life has been to create an environment where Jeff Hawkins could work.” This bunch of a genius technician and a talented manager was typical for those days. Atypically, they managed remain friends until today.

So, they got to work and first decided that the company would only concentrate on developing software for further licensing. They didn’t want to make computers themselves, and thus required powerful hi-tech partners. They did find partners. The Radio Shack trading network, owned by Tandy, was supposed to sell their device. Casio, approached via Tandy, was to assemble the device. Geoworks, Intuit and America Online agreed to port their software for the thing.

What they made was the Zoomer. It appeared in Radio Shack stores, cost about $700 and was powerful enough to compete with PCs (!). It had a tiny keyboard and a somehow working PalmPrint and supported faxes and printers (maybe as an inheritance from the GRiDPad). Anyway, all this, namely high price and lack of user-friendliness, was just the beginning. Yes, because the main idea behind the Zoomer was the fact that it was the first PDA targeted at the mass market. This fact should have concealed all the deficiencies, which might be fixed soon. Fate decreed another way, though.

In August of 1993, two months before the release of the Zoomer, Apple rolled out its Newton, which wasn’t very warmly welcomed. Mostly because of its far-from-perfect character recognition system. Considering that there also appeared other PDAs of the first wave – from GO, Sharp, HP, Toshiba – Palm was in no advantageous position. No one needed just another lame PDA from an unknown company. By the end of 1994, this market had consumed about one billion dollars (about half of them was the money invested by Apple into its Newton project). And none of the companies was a success! This was a total defeat, for Palm as well as for others. Meanwhile, there was a potential demand, and in fact, it was simply colossal. People wanted PDAs, but PDAs didn’t work!

Ed Colligan

Hawkins and Dubinsky were really lucky to get a third key player into their team. Young Ed Colligan became the marketing manager of Palm Computing in June 1993, that is, the same month that the company announced its Zoomer. Ed could literally sell anything to anybody, but he didn't cope with Zoomer sales. It was hardly his fault. Well, no one really blamed him. Hawkins remarked, “It was the slowest computer ever made by a man. It was too big and too expensive. We did a bad job.”

Fortunately (thanks to Dubinsky!) Palm Computing had just enough money for a second try. Having read the questionnaires of Zoomer buyers, Hawkins was stunned: nearly all of them were PC owners and they didn't want any replacement of it. More than a half of people who bought a Zoomer did it because of the separately (!) sold utility for connecting it to the PC. They didn't need another PC! They wanted an addition, an enhancement to their PCs.