How Did Palm Blow It So Badly?

The news about Palm seems to be nothing but bad these days. The company seems to be heading toward becoming another beloved but doomed technology pioneer, like Commodore or Compuserve.

These things are fascinating because Palm -- when it was driven by Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky -- had such a huge lead in the handheld space. It created the first successful handheld computer, first operating system that actually worked decently on a handheld -- and then, unusually, even came up with a second act -- the Treo. Hawkins developed it as part of his follow-up company to Palm, called Handspring, but then sold it back to Palm. It all happened long before much of anyone heard of Blackberry. Long before the iPhone. But Palm's lead is gone.

FWIW, I have a Treo with the Palm OS.