Rob Haitani

Rob Haitani (born December 11, 1963 in Fredonia, New York) is a well known GUI god. He is best known for being behind the interface of the Palm operating system, though he has played a bit part in a documentary about Star Trek fans (reference?)

Career
Rob started working at Sony Corporation, as reported in Palm Infocenter. Little is known about this period of Rob's life.

Rob's claim to fame was his work at Palm Computing. As described in Piloting Palm, a book about the early days of Palm, he was instrumental in the design of the PalmOS user interface. He is well known for the "Zen of Palm".

In 1998, Rob left Palm to join Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky to found Handspring.

In October 2003, Rob became a Palm employee again as Palm acquired Handspring.

In 2007, Rob left Palm to do a startup new startup, Vitamin D.

References in Literature
* Rob has several pages devoted to him in the book Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge.

Fan Base
Rob has a devoted fan base, including:
* Mike Cane, a writer for Palm Infocenter.

Interesting Facts

* There is a hidden picture of Rob Haitani in the "Giraffe" game distributed by Palm.
* One of Rob Haitani's good friends and coworkers is Greg Shirai. Fans of Love Hina will find this to be an interesting coincidence, since there are two characters in the show called "Shirai and Haitani" who are nearly always found together.
* Rob is a keyboardist and has played in such small bands as: 5 Easy Pieces, buzzOne, Buzz and the Shadows.

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See Also

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