Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple’s Newton Was Ahead of Its Time — and Flopped. Will History Repeat Itself?”.
All this time, it’s just four Double A’s Double A’s here 25 years ago, this week, Apple put an end to the Newton. This is the first Gadget to be referred to as a personal digital assistant. It was an early portable work device, portable being an interesting word. It’S kind of big, it’s an ancestor to the iPhone. Some say it was ahead of its time. Some just call it a failure. This week, Mac Rumors wrote about how it has been 25 years since Apple canceled, the Newton, and when I found out we had one in the CNet office.
I had to have a little fun looking back on its role in computer history, and I wanted to do a video on it, seeing what I could learn from this Relic in the office and see if you can still do anything when the Newton launched in 1993. This was a whole new product category for Apple. It was a totally Innovative achievement, a handheld computer, and yet it flopped it’s an interesting time to look back on the Newton, because Apple this year is expected to once again launch into a whole new product category. With a mixed reality, headset, as we go down memory lane, the there’s one more thing we should be thinking about, has Apple learned its lessons from what went wrong with launching something brand new.
Or will history repeat itself, I’m Bridget Carey – and this is one more thing. The Newton is about the size of an iPad Mini. It was designed as something you can carry in your pocket to get work done. It’S got to be a very big pocket, though it’s a handheld computer with a stylus.
It’S just hanging out over here pops right out. It was designed for notes and contacts and calendars and messaging, and you could even send a fax yo. You got a fax machine. The Newton had a killer feature handwriting recognition, scribble a word and see converted into text, but that killer feature may have been what actually killed it, because the Newton was lampooned for being bad at translating handwriting. The dunesbury comic strip made fun of it and it was even a joke on The Simpsons paid off. Take a memo in your Newton beat up Martin, the handwriting feature was said to be improved in later versions, but it seems the Newton could not shake the reputation of having rough edges and was it even worth the price it went on sale for 900 in 1993. Can you imagine dropping that kind of cash to do digital notes and messaging if you adjust to inflation, that’s more than one thousand eight hundred dollars today. For some perspective, the Newton came out during a different era.
Remember that Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985.. There was a power struggle with the board of directors and clashes with the CEO, John Scully. The Newton began development two years after jobs was gone and the first units shipped in 1993.. Now there was not a term for what kind of product this was Apple, coined the term personal digital assistant or PDA.
It’S a term that we throw around now to describe things like the Palm Pilot. The message pad went through a few iterations over the years. In fact, improving the look of the message pad was Johnny Ives first design project Newton was also the name of the operating system. You could find the Newton OS on a few different models of Hardware. Some were not made by Apple and apple. Had a Newton educational, spin-off product called the emate, this model I have here is the message pad 2100 and we even have the original box.
It came in it’s a review unit dated November 1997., now 1997, meaning this was the last version of the message pad. Therefore, the best version of the message pad and I’d like to see how far I can go with it, let’s see if we can make it work and turn on it is battery powered, but I just think it’s so old. It needs to be plugged in. Let’S see what happens? Oh wow, it’s horizontal! Okay, all right! I have never used something like this before PDS.
Just weren’t a thing for me, Stylus is pretty good. I like the feel of it. There is a program on here called handwriting instructor. The screen is a little harder to read than I expected feeling kind of old all right. Let’S see a tutorial uh how to write on your Newton advice, tap anywhere on the screen share. Let’S try! This handwriting was a big deal, um back when this came out.
Now we just use voice dictation, it’s Siri, okay, so practice, let’s see ah strike one hello world. Okay, so if you don’t have um the patience to fix it, there’s also an ink version. Okay, oh okay. I just kind of made it nice same as my hierarchy. How do you delete something you just scribble it out to delete it there’s a little bit of a learning curve here, let’s see what other apps we can find here we got a calculator clock. It’S Monaco tapping. This does nothing actually says. Why does that mean? Oh, this was another world: oh net Hopper. It has a cute frog.
Are we going on the internet net? Hopper? 3.2? Oh, I better call the support phone number, which is really big and bold. The easiest thing to see battery is down here this little. This little guy pops out and let me turn this off first.
So, oh all this time, it’s just four Double A’s. Are you serious who’s got some Double A’s here all right. We found some new batteries here we go four double A crazy. So, what’s funny is I have gone through the getting started guide and nowhere in here does it say about any other app or how to use an app like Maps. I saw nothing um, so there’s a learning curve here, turn the back Lighting on and off when it’s on slide down and hold the power switch for two seconds it. Oh, I just learned how to turn it on.
I could see better. Oh, it’s like a little bit of a green Hue of backlighting. If you want to send a message to someone else, who also has a Newton there’s a little way to beam it to someone else, you know now we just use FaceTime texting. This is the early stuff. This is history, just coming with it, just like showing like what it has it’s, not that this is mostly math, calculating help, No Easy App Store here, all right back to business, so the year that this final model came out. It was an interesting year for the company. Jobs was back at Apple right at the start of 1997, and it didn’t take long for him to get rid of this thing upon his return in May Apple, spun off Newton into its own wholly owned subsidiary company toward the end of 97. Things were not looking good for Newtons CNET came out with a story in December about how the development team was in turmoil and just two months later February, of 98 Apple announces. It is scrapping the Newton and discontinues development.
Instead that year, the company puts his focus on the colorful iMac. It’S been documented that jobs was not a fan of Newton. It was a project of the CEO.
He did it like. It had a stylus which he was against, and maybe it was just something that had a lot of baggage with high prices, limited features and a bad reputation with handwriting bugs, perhaps too ambitious for its time, making it an easy thing to cut. We may have to be thinking the Newton for what we like today about the iPhone.
It took a lot of innovation and experimentation to get Computing down to this size, but I do worry that Apple may be facing some similar challenges with the rumored mixed reality. Headset that we could be seeing later this year, nothing is official, but Apple’s headset is reported to cost three grand, that’s double the cost of what meta sells its Quest Pro headset for and if there’s any hiccups, like the Newton had with handwriting will this headset get Lamponed and dismissed for not being useful for the high cost VR and AR have a struggle right now with consumer demand. Essentially, people are asking: what is the point, if not for gaming, the latest reports suggest that Apple May unveil its headset at the WWDC developers conference, which would imply that this product is a work in progress that needs good developers to create good programs for it.
But will it have a killer feature to Stand Out Among the crowd of other VR headsets sets? I don’t really see people being wowed by pixel display quality, even if it is Top Notch, a killer feature would have to be apple, showing that it could do something. No one else can do, maybe Apple will once again try to stand out and how a device is controlled in a new way. Much like how the Newton you know had its little stylus with handwriting.
That was a novel thing back then, but will people give Apple time to perfect the headset with a version 2 or will it be dismissed as something too expensive and not useful enough? Just at the start, thanks for coming on this little history Journey with me, I never used pdas and clearly we have come a long way in 25 years. If you did use the Newton or other pdas. Please do jump into the comments.
I want to hear about your memories with it and if you are looking ahead to fresh new stuff from Apple, do you think we’re ever going to see apple? Take such a big innovation leap like this again, thanks for watching .