How did Pen Computing Magazine start? Well, at that time, around 1993, I was a corporate CIO and part of my job was investigating and implementing the latest tech for the organization I worked for, the New York State Dormitory Authority. That included interesting things like the portable computers Jeff Hawkins created at GRiD Systems, SUN Microsystems workstations, emerging network and video conferencing tech, all the cool stuff Apple did, especially with desktop publishing, and so on. I had personally bought one of the first Apple Newton PDAs and, imperfect though it was, it blew my mind! The Newton was like something I had dreamed of as a little boy — a small box that you could stick in your pocket and it had all the answers (well, that really would take another two decades, but the basic idea was there).
So when a friend of mine, a guy from a publishing family, approached me with the idea of doing a magazine completely dedicated to “pen computing” — which at the time was sort of the summary term for tablet computers and emerging handhelds — I quickly was on board. I would create the magazine itself, and Howard would handle the printing, marketing and distribution.
We both chipped in $2,000 for a grand total of $4,000 to launch a commercial print magazine! We actually couldn’t have chosen a worse time. While “pen computing” had been the hot new thing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, excitement had fizzled when it became obvious that handwriting recognition really wasn’t ready for prime time (and, as it turned out, it would never be). But that didn’t stop us. So I created a 100-page magazine, and Howard scored a distribution deal for us, and a printer who’d take a chance on us. It was NOT easy to convince anyone to advertise in a mag on pen computers when word was that the tech was dying.
But somehow we managed to do that first magazine, all glossy and professional, show it at all the trade shows, and drum up interest. In that first issue we reported on the Motorola Envoy, the Apple Newton 110, the IBM Thinkpad 730T, the Toshiba T200CS tablet, the Compaq Concerto, mobile tech, what worked and what didn’t, and so on. People thought we were nuts, and perhaps, probably, we were. But Pen Computing Magazine actually took off. We believed in the tech, were thrilled with it, wrote about its glorious future. That future would actually come, but it would take much longer than we expected. Had anyone told us back then that mobile would take over and well over a BILLION smartphones would be sold by 2025, even we wouldn’t have believed it.
