PDA Developers – Volume 4.3 – May/June 1996
PDA Developers, originally PIE Developers, was the premier, independent printed resource for mobile developers in the mid-to-late 1990s. Billing itself as “A Technical Journal for PDA Developers,” each issue contained detailed articles, tutorials, and coding examples covering all major handheld platforms.
Published by San Francisco-based Creative Digital Systems, the journal was expertly managed and edited by Steve Mann (who also wrote a number of articles in each issue).
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Artifact Details
Creative Digital, Inc.
United States
English
May, 1996
$13.95 US, $14.95 Canada
Perfect bound printed journal with light-purple-colored cover and white paper.
In this issue:
- PDA News
- Smart Phones - Turbocharged Net Appliances
- PDAs and Wireless Applications
- PDAs Assist Tourists
- NS BASIC Corner
- Reviews (Metrowerks CodeWarrior 8, QuickFigure Pro 3.0.1, Magic Cap Programmer's Cookbook, Ragout, NS BASIC 3.03, FreeStyle 1.0)
- Lost? The Global Positioning System May Help
- Pilot Programming Primer
- Plain Data, No Wires
- Enhanced Debugging with NTK 1.6
- OmniGo Under the Hood
- Making Soup
- NewtEEN - Extending the Newton's NotePad
- Newton as a Serial Mouse
- Magic Cap Music and MIDI
8.5" x 11" (64 pages)
PDA Developers 4.3
May, 1996
Acquired from publisher
2018-07-26
Organizations
People
History
PDA Developers Volume 4.3, dated May/June 1996, billed itself as "A technical journal for PDA Developers" and sold for $13.95 in the United States and $14.95 in Canada.1
The cover promoted "a huge quantity of Newton stuff," advertising articles on infrared, NTK 1.6 debugging, a 2.0 Soup primer, an engineering notebook, using the Newton as a mouse, and NS BASIC, alongside coverage of Pilot programming, systems integrators, a GPS primer, OmniGo hacking, and Magic Cap MIDI.1
The journal had begun under a different name and a narrower focus. Its predecessor, PIE Developers, described itself as "A Technical Journal for Newton Developers" and sold for $8.95 in the United States; its November 1993 issue (Volume 1.15) was a special reprint of earlier material prepared for the Newton Platform Development Conference held December 7-8, 1993.2 After the journal was retitled PDA Developers, its scope widened from the Newton specifically to handheld computing generally.12 An April 1995 announcement identified the publisher as Creative Digital Systems of San Francisco,3 and by early 1996 the company was styled Creative Digital, Inc.4
The back cover of this issue carried a full-page advertisement from PDA Direct, Inc., which described itself as a single source of hardware, software, and accessories for personal digital assistants and listed discounted memory, software, and peripherals for the Apple MessagePad, Sony Magic Link, HP OmniGo, US Robotics Pilot, HP 100/200LX, and other handhelds.5 PDA Direct took orders through a 1-800-279-4PDA telephone hotline and an online store at pdadirect.com.5
Creative Digital also organized developer conferences under the PDA Developers name; PDA Developers West '96 was held January 14-16, 1996 in San Mateo, California, produced by Creative Digital, Inc. and sponsored by General Magic, Psion, and Hewlett-Packard.4 By March 1997 the company, by then named Creative Digital Publishing Inc., had renamed the event the Handheld Systems Conference; entering its third year, it was scheduled for April 24-26, 1997 at the San Francisco Airport Hilton, with Steve Mann as the company's contact.6
AI generated using primary sources referenced in the footnotes
Footnotes
- Creative Digital, Inc., PDA Developers - Volume 4.3 - May/June 1996 (image scan), May 1996
- Creative Digital, Inc., PIE Developers - Volume 1.15 - November, 1993 (image scan), November 1993
- Creative Digital, Inc., Creative Digital Systems - PDA Developers East '95 (Press Release) (image scan), April 1, 1995
- Creative Digital, Inc., PDA Developers West '96 Conference Details (Pamphlet) (image scan), January 1996
- Creative Digital, Inc., PDA Developers - Volume 4.3 - May/June 1996 (image scan), May 1996
- Creative Digital Publishing Inc., Creative Digital Posts Handheld Systems Conference Final Agenda, March 17, 1997
Oral History
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