How many times has Palm distracted, divided and plundered the company with spinoffs, acquisitions and mismanagement?

Palm's official timeline provides another view of what went wrong.

From 1995 to 2000, many of the timeline milestones use the word "revolution" and feature multiple design awards for innovation. The company was an unstoppable, invention-crazy company focused like a laser beam on product greatness.

The news in 2000 was all about the rapid growth in developers, from 31,000 early in the year to more than 100,000 by September.

After that, the "milestones" are bland corporate blather about partnerships, new markets and boring new product launches. The "revolutions" and design awards moved from Palm's history page to those of other companies.