## 09 RIP PocketPC and Windows CE
I know that this type of terminal are already dead. I could have said Palm pilot but it's not exactly the same. I told you that I was "working" to fill the Universal Video Game list and many data are missing for many platforms, especially in the 60s and 70s. It was a time when there was no software companies to sell everything with license. But in the middle of the 90s, after the Newton pad and the Tandy Zoomer (another story), it was the hype of the Palm computer or Palm PDA, especially with Palm Pilot. Microsoft soon released its PDA with Compaq or HP under Windows CE, an awful OS in its first versions. After that, there was WinCE 2.0, 3.0, and Windows Mobile when we had smartphones...and iPhones (because it's like to be in the higher caste for their users..). But for the history of computers and games, there's not much left.
Why ? Because for most of the software, tools and games, it was developed by users, hackers, programmers for their own usage. It was released on small (and ephemeral) websites which disappeared after the hype. Smartphones have killed that. I had one for 4 years before my first Android 1.6 smartphone. Three years ago, I tried to start it again but the battery was down and very difficult to find a new one. But sometimes, you find enthusiasts to keep data, spare parts, software. For example, you can find more information on Psion PDA and computers which were less sold. You can even find emulator and software for the Apple Newton (I have made myself caption with the emulator). But for PocketPC PDA, it's like a black hole, except for the main tools. Microsoft left not much on this too and Windows Mobile was sold as other forbidden OS.
That's typical of our relationship with the High-tech today. All is ephemeral, disposable, and nobody cares about the others, about other users. What did all the programmers of their tools ? OK, for a website, it's difficult to keep it online and maybe some of them died. But if Windows Mobile and CE were difficult to maintain, compared to the first versions of Android, all these software could have been kept somewhere. Sometimes, someone has re-made a clone of a game or tool he had on his/her PDA. For example, I discovered a PocketPC version of Everquest, the famous MMORPG of the 2000s. Now it's not the time of MMORPG anymore but we could have seen something like that on smartphones.
And if Microsoft have lost money (and Compaq, HP, Dell, Intel...) in that adventure, it's interesting to understand why, looking at all the structure and the tools made for this. It was like the prehistoric era of the Smartphones and one day all our pocket devices will be replaced by something else (don't tell me...). Someone said that history teach us many things for today. I don't think it's useful in computer programming, today, but it should be, as for buyers of high-tech gadgets (I was one...). I told that also for all our Android APK, lost in another black hole. You're unable to run an old smartphone now because of that. I won't tell you that there were people who died for our use of smartphone/PDA...But I don't like to throw away and forget all this. Our modern human era will surely be studied and I hope that it will finally serve as a lesson, if we haven't already destroyed everything, including our own memory.
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