The Pilot has a 160x160 pixel monochrome LCD tactile panel, with a "Graffiti input zone" presented in the bottom third of the screen.

After a calibration test presented during the initial power up, the Pilot would boot and be ready for use and synchronization.

Connecting and synchronizing the PDA was initially done through a utility called Pilot Desktop.

A version of Pilot Desktop (renamed to Palm Desktop) now exists for use with the Mac platform and open source support exists for use on Linux distributions (one of the preferred development platforms for Palm OS)[citation needed], as well.

Palm was later involved in a legal battle where Xerox filed suit for David Goldberg's "Unistroke" patent.