The Forgotten Sidekick • Hacker News Board

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#21

Post by spot » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 1:21 PM UTC

Maakuth wrote: post #2

It's pretty much same story with Nokia's devices, older Windows Mobiles, etc. It's not that Apple invented smartphone, they just made it so that normal people could and even wanted to use them. This of course blows the minds of us geeks as we think that smartphones have been pretty neat and usable devices for almost a decade already.

the sidekick was totally usable, unlike winmo (i don't know about nokia smartphones so much). and it wasn't so popular with geeks either, it was with teens. apple's usability is a myth.

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#22

Post by egb » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 1:42 PM UTC

Loved my sidekick 1, but it had an unfortunate build problem -the spinny light-up button kept breaking off from the circuit board and I had to solder it back together a few times but it still gave up the ghost too soon. And it also happened on the replacement I bought after the first died. Hmf.

The keyboard however, was really, really good!

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#23

Post by davidjhall » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 1:47 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #20

Am I the only one who started reading the article thinking of Borland's Sidekick? Oh my... Guess I am really old. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SideKick ) edit: but it's interesting. When the iPhone was first shown, I had a Sony Ericsson P-800 phone. I wondered what was the big deal about Apple's gizmo. And no other phone since got voice dialing as right as the SE...

I thought the same thing when I saw the title! I loved Borland's Sidekick -- especially having an ASCII table and cheat sheets handy when I was coding.

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#24

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 2:06 PM UTC

forensic wrote: post #10

edanm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's been blisteringly obvious for a decade that tablets are the future of mobile computing." Really? When the iPad came out, there was a lot of argument whether it meant anything - lots of people thought it would be a failure. "Just a big iPhone", as so many people said.

That's precisely the point here. There were three kinds of iPad naysayers: 1. iPad sucks compared to the tablets released in the 90s. They had more features. 2. There is no market for tablets, tablets are dead. It's been tried and failed. 3. The iPad isn't useful for anything. It's just a big iPhone. (1) is wrong because it fails to recognize "ease of use" and "style" as features. (2) is wrong because the market was…

[deleted]

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#25

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 2:41 PM UTC

davidjhall wrote: post #23

rbanffy wrote: post #20

Am I the only one who started reading the article thinking of Borland's Sidekick? Oh my... Guess I am really old. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SideKick ) edit: but it's interesting. When the iPhone was first shown, I had a Sony Ericsson P-800 phone. I wondered what was the big deal about Apple's gizmo. And no other phone since got voice dialing as right as the SE...

I thought the same thing when I saw the title! I loved Borland's Sidekick -- especially having an ASCII table and cheat sheets handy when I was coding.

I used it extensively when porting a Clipper application to Dataflex - being able to capture the screens into an editor was an incredible timesaver.

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#26

Post by c0nsilience » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:10 PM UTC

Hey, you guys remember when the Danger server would suffer an outage like every week and how it would render the Sidekicks as bricks? No contacts, no text messages... nothing. The Sidekick was so damn great, right?!

Oh, and who could forget the laggy UI! It took ages to open up applications, but imagine all the things you could while you wait. And don't even get me started on those sweet third-party applications. Alarm clocks! I loved that the Sidekick LX didn't have a native alarm clock and so you had to purchase one for $1.99. Awesome!

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#27

Post by 51Cards » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 3:11 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #20

Am I the only one who started reading the article thinking of Borland's Sidekick? Oh my... Guess I am really old. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SideKick ) edit: but it's interesting. When the iPhone was first shown, I had a Sony Ericsson P-800 phone. I wondered what was the big deal about Apple's gizmo. And no other phone since got voice dialing as right as the SE...

You're not alone, it was my first thought too. Loved that application!

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#28

Post by cagey » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #20

Am I the only one who started reading the article thinking of Borland's Sidekick? Oh my... Guess I am really old. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SideKick ) edit: but it's interesting. When the iPhone was first shown, I had a Sony Ericsson P-800 phone. I wondered what was the big deal about Apple's gizmo. And no other phone since got voice dialing as right as the SE...

Me too (although I preferred Borland's Sidekick Plus: it had a great outliner (my favorite still)).

Re: The Forgotten Sidekick

#29

Post by Isamu » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 3:13 AM UTC

And then Danger (Sidekick maker) was bought by Microsoft and the team was demoralized by the Kin debacle. Internal politics gutted that project and it was dead on arrival.

Anyone notice the Kin device that was like a small Sidekick?