PalmPilot

Jeff Hawkins and Palo Alto Design Group, 1996

  1. Extraordinary products are invariably born of extraordinary generalists supported by extraordinary specialists. In the case of the PalmPilot, the extraordinary generalist was none other than Jeff Hawkins, entrepreneur, inventor, and self-made neuroscientist with design and fabrication skills honed from early childhood. Jeff Hawkins comments: “[My family] designed boats, built boats, lived on boats; most of my family lives on boats today. My father was sort of this consummate inventor. If you’ve ever seen the movie or the play You Can’t Take It With You with Jason Robards, it’s about this crazy house where they had a great time, but it’s really crazy … I tell that story because all ...

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