Early-1990s handwriting recognition tried to read ordinary writing and was famous for getting it wrong. The trick that worked was turning the problem round: people learned a simplified alphabet, one stroke per letter, written in a box, and the machine read it almost every time.

The rest was deliberately small: a date book, addresses, memos and a to-do list, quick to open and fast enough on a slow chip. At the end of the day you dropped the organiser into a cradle and pressed one button to copy everything to and from your desktop computer.

The buttons under the screen are printed on the glass: the touch layer is bigger than the display, and the printed icons are just places to tap.