Not really a calculator, but I saw that someone posted a series 3 :)
I wish this form factor was still a thing.
Yeah, I know Gemini exists but the software is already rotting...
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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i know this is a trope at this point, but i really miss the pre-Android/iPhone of handheld devices. Palm & Handspring did some cool shit, and they were fun to use and not yet obnoxious... Symbian and Maemo devices that walked a fine line. we need a DIY reboot of PDAs and handhelds that aren't smartphones that doesn't mistakenly try to focus on being a smartphone.
I'm not the biggest fan of smartphones ever but what could you practically do with a device like that which you can't do with a modern smartphone?
It's like the difference between using a beautiful damascus paring knife to cut an apple, and using a Swiss Army knife to do the same thing. The Swiss Army knife will do the job, but the paring knife will feel better cutting it up. There realistically isn't anything that the electronic organizers can do that a smartphone can't, but the organizer was designed from the ground up to do exactly what it does, and nothing else. There is a joy to using something that was crafted for a specific purpose. Just like I have a bunch of calculators on my phone, I still never leave the apartment without a real calculator. And I've never reached for my phone when I've needed a calculator except for in an emergency when I was too far away from my desk.
Do you do lots of maths for your day job?
Not too terribly much. I'm a network devops engineer, so a lot of my day is just parsing JSON. Stuff pops up from time to time, though, and I'm grateful to have my collection. I'm also going back to school at the age of 48 for a BS in Physics, so I'll be putting them through their paces over the next few years, too!
Go you!
Thank you! I am so excited, but terribly nervous, too!
Look super suave
partly it's not about what it can do that a smartphone can't, but exactly the opposite. there are lots, and lots, and lots of things smartphones can do that PDAs can't. and i neither want to do any of them, nor have constant notifications and advertisements trying to get me to do them.
but the big thing for me is that they were designed local-first. my data lives on the device. i sync it to my other devices. i can't accidentally lose access, get suspended, have my account closed due to a change in ToS, get my account locked out because i accidentally visited from a VPN or used a VoIP number -- all of which, now, are at best massive inconveniences and at worst result in major data loss for no reason. it didn't need connectivity to do it's job.
when i can refuse to connect my smartphone to an IP network and still have it do everything i need it to do, i will back off :p
i have an android phone here that i've slowly been trying to make behave more and more that way, looking to tools like SyncThing and DECSync and anything that's designed similar. it's close, but it still causes enough annoyances that i'd rather just have a PDA.