Blast from the Past: Getting Started with the Newton

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10. Thanks for the info. So it's still basically an issue of personal bitterness instead of marketplace wisdom. What a shame.
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Actually, you need to be careful. I've been a Newton user since 1994, and still have several in use in my home. I've been an apple fan since about 1987, and use them exclusively in my home also. In other words, I'm no Apple basher--but I _was_ extremely upset that Apple dumped the Newton--so much so, that I wrote to Apple, signed all the petitions, etc.

However, we need to try to keep balance on this subject. Unfortunately, there is a fairly vocal contingent of Newtonites ;-) who are convinced that Jobs hates Sculley, and dumped the Newton solely for that. Quite frankly, this is a rather shallow view, and ignores the many realities that were extant when the Newton, along with _many_ other wonderful technologies was dumped--OpenDoc, the printer division being just two of them.

I think that some people have such an emotion response to the dumping of Newton that they cannot see a rational reason for dumping it. Not only that, they need someone to blame for doing what they consider a dumb thing--so Jobs takes the hit for doing it for a dumb reason.

But the truth was, Newton had bled cash since day one--yes, it _was_ improving--for the moment, but the Palm's form factor and price undercut the Newton so badly, that there were no long-term benefits for keeping the Newton in its latest form factor (the 2100). The effort to repackage it in a smaller form factor, and furthermore, to make the necessary modifications to the system to allow it to continue to grow just couldn't be done on Apple's then-current economy. BTW, the NewtonOS, while a beauty to behold, was a disaster under the surface. There are articles on the web, if you can find them, by engineers on the Newon project, who have said that the NOS was hosed. Also, I believe that Paul Guyot, the creator of the Newton emulator, Einstein, has pretty much concurred with this assessment. The only form of the Newton that had any hope was the eMate, but even that required resources that Apple considered to need elsewhere.

Fast forward a few years. Apple is looking at new markets--they're healthy, etc. Do they do a new "Newton" or PDA? Look at the market.... Windows, with their Wince is there, Palm is tanking, sales are not growing. Does Jobs, with one "already-failed" product, wish to jump back in? He has said it. You just don't see people these days, with PDAs in use. Phones--yes, but PDAs? Nope. So, instead of thinking productivity, Steve goes iPod.

IMO, Apple/Jobs made the right decision to drop the Newton. Yes, it hurt--and still frusrates me, and I know they could have done it in a way that hurt their trusting partners less, but I believe the decision was the right one--even killing OpenDoc was correct, especially now that we see where OS X has gone... but we need not be bitter, nor pretend bitterness on the part of others. It was complicated, and not an easy choice to make.
-Jon

The ONLY reason Newton wasn't profitable is because, oddly enough, Apple didn't invest the proper resources. In some circles, it's said that Apple (Steve) came to a choice: Newton or OS X. Given the PDA histaria, and the marketing around the other Macs of the late 90s and early 2000s, I think that Apple could have brought out a smaller, Newton 3.0 unit (plans were always in the works, just like the suspected Intel version of OS X) that would compete heads and toes above the others. Apple would have had what became Pocket PC years before Microsoft and Compaq had the iPaq.

The problem, though, as always, came down to money. To anyone who says revenge didn't play a part at all, then you don't know Steve or the Newton story. Steve Jobs HATED the Newton. The ONLY thing he liked about the Newton was the eMate, which later became the iBook (Rumor has it that Newton might have lived on as the eMate OS where the eMate was a Wireless Network PC).

Really, there are 3 reasons that the Newton was killed off (in no particular order):
1. Money
2. Revenge
3. iBook

The problem Apple was looking at is that, at the time they were looking at the iBook as a $1500 machine, so how could they continue to justify a $1000 Newton Message Pad? The Newton had gotten to the point where it was difficult to distinguish between where the PDA stopped and the computer started. Early on, Apple asked "What is Newton?" and the question was never answered. It was more than a PDA, but less than a computer. How do you market that? Do you take away features to make it more like a Palm? Do you add features to make it more like a Powerbook?

Quite simply, the Newton was, and is, the "missing link" of the computer world.

When are they gonna have a thought interface so a pen or keyboard isn't necessary? :-) The iPhone which is a lot like a Newton is still too big and has too cumbersome of an interface to be totally cool. But it will still probably sell millions 'cause it from Apple. I'm waiting for a product I really need and can easily use.

Is it just me or shouldn't Apple make a Newton-like App for the Nintendo DS Lite?

I think your shortchanging jobs if you think he's passing up a profitable opportunity for Apple (and by definition, himself) because of a personal grudge.

The Newton was the Wrong Product at the Wrong Time. It was never profitable. It was marred by lackluster handwriting recognition in the first version of it's OS, and it took entirely too long for apple to release version 2, which corrected many of the faults with version 1.

Apple started to spin off the Newton division into its own company, but when Jobs resumed control (smartly) pulled it back in. While Jobs knew the Newton would never be profitable for Apple, he also realized that the latest models of it were ready to ship. Why should Apple spin off a product that is ready to ship? Apple had put in all the R&D on the product already - it'd be silly to let the sales go to the spin off.

The Newton isn't around anymore because the palm was a better product for the vast majority of the market.

The Newton came out of a time when Apple Computer, Inc. was a beige box maker chasing after The Enterprise, instead of making things "for the rest of us".

The iPhone is the Newton for iLife activities.

I seem to recall that in one of the SteveNotes he mentioned the newton technology and poof of the dock as being from newton... isn't inkwell also newton?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/inkwell/

There must be at least one Apple developer doggedly dedicated to the Newton having a place in Apple's lore since that little cloud poof that shows up when you're deleting something is written into OS X. That had to be a conscience decision on somebody's part because that animation wasn't anywhere I recall in OS 9.

The newton got only one real bug: compared to todays device it was way too big. But there's not one device (maybe including the iPhone) which got such a clever Operating system. It's not only the handwriting recognition but the the newton uses copy and paste functionality (just drag the things to the side of the screen) and things like this. But one thing of the newton survived: when you delete an item out of the macs dock a small explosion/cloud appears - that was exactly the same which happened when you deleted something on the newton...

Thanks for the info. So it's still basically an issue of personal bitterness instead of marketplace wisdom. What a shame.