alt Hacker NewsToday's swiping keyboards are nothing like the original Graffiti or Graffiti 2. Those used shapes/gestures derived from the actual letter shapes, while the swiping gestures supported by the on-screen keyboards of today rely on gestures derived from the QWERTY layout of the on-screen keyboard. Because both were simplifications of the completely different input methods they were emulating: pen vs keyboard.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Palm Pilot UI (all the parts that were actually on the screen instead of below it in the dedicated writing area) looks thoroughly 90s: the basic buttons, drop-down boxes, tabs and dialog box layouts, scrollbars that aren't trying to hide from you. The main UI elements missing from the Palm Pilot that were present in eg. 90s Mac OS or Windows are the free form desktop layout (instead of the smartphone-like app launcher grid), and the persistent on-screen menu bar or taskbar.
The Palm Pilot UI was unquestionably designed around the assumption of higher precision than today's touch-oriented UIs. The stylus was not considered optional. The lack of capacitive touch sensing for gesture recognition meant the UI was much more reliant on precise button taps where today's smartphones would use swipes and other gestures for stuff like scrolling or "back".
Um. Swiping is almost exactly like the gesture letter shapes, except now they are word shapes. Swiping “shape” is always the same gesture on the keyboard, you can learn these gestures and type really fast.
To your second paragraph: of course it looks “throughly 90’s”. It was the 90’s. Did an LLM tell you to say this? I have no idea what scroll bars have to do with anything. I can tell you they were a pain to use. That hasn’t changed.
To your third paragraph: the stylus wasn’t optional. They didn’t just “lack” capacitive screens. It didn’t exist yet at scale. This was what Apple brought to the market. You couldn’t really have them if you wanted them. That being said, I used these interfaces while walking, riding in a car, and sitting still. I never had trouble tapping the right thing because the buttons were huge in the UI.
You do bring up a good point about there not really being swipe gestures to go “back”. I don’t use them today, so I’m not as familiar with that type of behavior other than to say it is really annoying when done by accident, usually while picking up the device.