These old stories are a bit like the Foundation characters who go into cryogenic sleep for a hundred years and then reemerge for a little while. Kind of funny.
I wonder if AVP is today’s Newton. Maybe next time this story is posted we will know the answer to that question.
These old stories are a bit like the Foundation characters who go into cryogenic sleep for a hundred years and then reemerge for a little while. Kind of funny.
I wonder if AVP is today’s Newton. Maybe next time this story is posted we will know the answer to that question.
History is generally evergreen. Videos die, specs change, so they get a spruce prior to taking live again.
So, the iPod, iPhone and iPad all derived from Newton...
That says more about Steve Jobs than anything else: Steve was not a great creator or new technology. Instead, he took existing technology and mixed it, matched it, improved it and refined it until he had an "insanely great" product that he could stand on a stage with and very proudly show off to the world.
The Newton was clearly great technology for its day. But it wasn't a great product. It was big and clunky and not very usable by the average person. In short, it was (from Steve's point of view) crap. But the underlying ideas, objectives and technology were not.
So, product by product, Steve took that idea and that fundamental technology and mixed it, matched it, refined it and made it an "insanely great" product. Thanks to all that worked to make this possible going all the way back to Xerox PARC!
I basically agree. Tech types like inventors rarely have any business or marketing sense. Look no further than Woz. It takes someone like Jobs, Gates, Musk, Bezos to build a company. The story goes that when Jobs saw what Xerox PARC was doing he instantly knew it was the future of computing. Bill Gates typically bought his technology, like DOS. Gates famously said about the GUI, “I broke into the house intending to steal the TV but when I did I found that you (Jobs) had already stolen it.”
Except "when Jobs saw what Xerox PARC was doing" reached out to Xerox to get access to the technology and Xerox agreed for exchange of Apple Stock. This has been confirmed by everyone involved at PARC. They were pissed because all their work was being given away by the board at Xerox that only cared about making new xerox machines. Jobs was allowed to come in with his engineers and they were required to answer all their questions.
IBM, Motorola and Intel had multiple chances to still be in the mobile game today in a big way all the way up to 2005, imagine that, with just a little vision and creativity.
IBM, Motorla and Apple had patents on the PowerPC processor and all 3 had different ideas on where the processors should be heading. IBM just wanted raw processing power regardless of power usage. Motorola just wanted powerful low power cpus for networking devices (aka headless). Apple wanted low-power but with the multimedia features (AltiVec). When Apple joined with Intel (and not AMD) they shared their patent portfolios but not at the level of MS and Apple (see Quicktime Lawsuit Settlement). Intel created those low power CPU for Apple Powerbook lineup until they stalled. Meanwhile Apple has been in the ARM cpu business since 1990.
I had high hopes for the 2 that I owned. Wanted to use it to take class notes in graduate school, but it...just didn't work well. Interestingly, some of my classmates had (by today's standards rudimentary) laptops, and some students complained about the noise their keyboards generated (click clack clack(. There was talk about banning them in the classroom. I had a Duo230, but didn't use it during class. I just needed to listen in class, and write simple notes in my text or in a notebook. The Newton input with the stylus was just...not yet invented.
I wore out 2 duo keyboards on my way to my doctorate...and the most important thing I learned: get a cheap external keyboard for when you are using a laptop on a desk at home. Cheaper than the internal one (oh, and don't forget to get the kind that uses the ADB connector.)
Even the iMac is connected to Newton as Ives did the eMate 300. The color, materials, and design language moved straight to iMac.
I remember travelling by train through Africa with my Newton as the only non-native person. People really got Newton. They had no phones and didn't use computers but this... and well... I became very aware of my (lack of) color.
And working for a distributor. Apps on floppies, handwriting recognition, the fact that TCP/IP wasn't part of it (you had to buy it). But mostly I remember the data soup for storing files. Great idea but you couldn't sync it easily to anything else.
Palm and their series of PDAs came with a sync button on the cradle. It worked. But the Newton interface was outstanding and almost magic. The "draw line to get new sheet", the way letters were erased, drawing - it was all very elegant and coherent.
Obviously Newton had to go in order to save Apple. But the Apple at the time was more adventurous. Crazy concepts like Newton and OpenDoc tried to transform how we work instead of just staying with the desktop metaphor and iterating. It was all very interesting and I really would like to see part of that in Apple.
I was working in wireless telecom in the early 90s. I met with General Magic and Apple to talk about cooperation on products. Nokia, Nortel, AT&T and probably a lot of other companies had a "personal communicator" or "personal organizer" project very similar to GM and Newton. It usually had a top secret set of models, powerpoint decks, and a video that showed it in use (faked). The technology just wasn't there yet. Wireless cellular data ran at about 1-2 kbps, batteries were Nicad, screens were b&w, processors were weak. The companies that managed to cobble together a practical product were successful for a time: Palmpilot, Blackberry, Ipod, MP4 players, etc. The real killer was putting it all together with an app store, wireless communications, and a decent user interface, and that was the Iphone in 2008(?).
Comments
I wonder if AVP is today’s Newton. Maybe next time this story is posted we will know the answer to that question.
Except "when Jobs saw what Xerox PARC was doing" reached out to Xerox to get access to the technology and Xerox agreed for exchange of Apple Stock. This has been confirmed by everyone involved at PARC. They were pissed because all their work was being given away by the board at Xerox that only cared about making new xerox machines. Jobs was allowed to come in with his engineers and they were required to answer all their questions.
IBM, Motorla and Apple had patents on the PowerPC processor and all 3 had different ideas on where the processors should be heading. IBM just wanted raw processing power regardless of power usage. Motorola just wanted powerful low power cpus for networking devices (aka headless). Apple wanted low-power but with the multimedia features (AltiVec). When Apple joined with Intel (and not AMD) they shared their patent portfolios but not at the level of MS and Apple (see Quicktime Lawsuit Settlement). Intel created those low power CPU for Apple Powerbook lineup until they stalled. Meanwhile Apple has been in the ARM cpu business since 1990.
I wore out 2 duo keyboards on my way to my doctorate...and the most important thing I learned: get a cheap external keyboard for when you are using a laptop on a desk at home. Cheaper than the internal one (oh, and don't forget to get the kind that uses the ADB connector.)
I think that means that I am really old
It was actually almost unusable to be honest - but I loved it - it was a glimpse into the future
I remember travelling by train through Africa with my Newton as the only non-native person. People really got Newton. They had no phones and didn't use computers but this... and well... I became very aware of my (lack of) color.
And working for a distributor. Apps on floppies, handwriting recognition, the fact that TCP/IP wasn't part of it (you had to buy it). But mostly I remember the data soup for storing files. Great idea but you couldn't sync it easily to anything else.
Palm and their series of PDAs came with a sync button on the cradle. It worked. But the Newton interface was outstanding and almost magic. The "draw line to get new sheet", the way letters were erased, drawing - it was all very elegant and coherent.
Obviously Newton had to go in order to save Apple. But the Apple at the time was more adventurous. Crazy concepts like Newton and OpenDoc tried to transform how we work instead of just staying with the desktop metaphor and iterating. It was all very interesting and I really would like to see part of that in Apple.
Great to see so many other Newton users here :-)
30 Years Later - Apple Intelligence! AI!