Out of genuine curiosity, what touchscreen device would you say then was actually the first one that mattered?
I assume by "mattered" Gruber meant mass market popularity, which IMO was mostly because Apple did get many things right in their touchscreen. (I owned a bunch of touchscreen devices before my first iPhone and they all sucked from a user experience perspective - missed taps, sluggish response, lack of multitouch, requirement for a special stylus etc).
I'd say that Palm manufactured a large number of "touchscreen devices that mattered" years before the iPhone. Just because it wasn't high-resolution and capacitive doesn't change the fact that for a long while, Palm Pilots were a staple of business.
Ah, fair point. The Palm didn't come to my mind because I didn't buy one - I personally felt that the device & the stylus-based interface were too clunky - but you're right, it was still a touchscreen device that mattered.
