Those of use who wanted to make the move into the smartphone world were relegated to the Treo with its 1.74″ X 1.74″ screen or the Centro’s 1.56″ x 1.56″ screen. Palm was definitely making a statement here. The phone is more important than the PDA. Those of us who wanted to consume content with increasingly presbyopic eyes were simply out of luck. It wasn’t until the iPhone came along that the smartphone world rediscovered larger screens. While these were clearly targeted at multimedia, gaming, and browsing users, physicians grabbed these up from the very beginning.

Finally, Palm left you behind by letting Palm OS stagnate for two years before finally putting it to rest about a year ago. As the previous owner of probably a dozen Palm devices starting from the original Palm Pilot, and the developer of an equal number of original Palm OS apps, I can say that I’m glad to have moved on with no regrets.

Among the innovations that the iPhone platform has brought is the process of purchasing and installing apps directly onto the device – something that Palm never got around to doing in all those years of the Treo and the Centro. In fact, the whole idea of third party apps festered during that era. I’m pretty sure most Centro users never downloaded any. If you use an iPhone or an iPad, you know that it’s all about the apps these days.

So, so-long, Palm, it’s been real.