I think you're judging pioneers by the standards of later arrivals. It would seem terrible now, but compared to the options then, I was very happy. Internet! In my pocket!
I do think the PalmOS was showing its age at the time, and a bad app or extension could cause a lot of trouble. But having used PalmOS for years, getting things reasonably stable wasn't hard for me. And as a nerd, I'm pretty tolerant of crashes.
So no, it's not a joke. The Treo was a solid nerd smartphone for me.
Yeah fair enough, I just know that I could never get the internet to be useful. The email in my pocket was OK, but the Blackberry did it much better. The Apps were trying, but they just couldn't quite get there. I remember the whole frustration of the experience was because the Treo was so close to being a nice phone and yet literally so far away from being there. I was also an original Handspring user, so very familiar with the PalmOS, but that was another major annoyance - nothing had changed since my Handspring in 2001! Sigh.
I do think the PalmOS was showing its age at the time, and a bad app or extension could cause a lot of trouble. But having used PalmOS for years, getting things reasonably stable wasn't hard for me. And as a nerd, I'm pretty tolerant of crashes.
So no, it's not a joke. The Treo was a solid nerd smartphone for me.