[NTLK] Museum of Failure as Journalists

[Larry Yaeger]

On Jan 26, 2024, at 7:54 AM, Carlos D. Santiago via NewtonTalk <newtontalk at newtontalk.net> wrote:
> For all Steve’s montras, he did well, but we all have our faults. The best case I can describe him re: the newton was expediency - often the good often gets tossed with the bad. 

"Expediency" is pretty close to my understanding of the Newton's cancellation.  Not so much for cost cutting as for engineering and design talent.  At the time, Jobs said he was closing down Newton to be able to apply those personnel resources on what he saw as the company's core business and way forward.  And based both on what he said and what he in turn did with those resources I believe him.

Oh, Steve had a blind spot when it came to pen computing.  I personally worked on three different pen-based Mac projects, one of which made it to 100 or so units of hardware and a full set of mods to Mac OS, not including the software-only release of "Ink" / "Inkwell" for the Mac.  In every case (except Inkwell) the projects were cancelled before they saw the light of day.  At a minimum, Steve didn't have any interest or faith in pen-based interfaces, and I think he was outright prejudiced against them.

But if you look at the Mac products that immediately followed the Newton, you can see the Newton's influence.  That first curvy iMac with colorful, translucent plastics was reminiscent of both the Newton and the eMate.  Heck, even the iMac name is derivative of eMate.  And that first iBook G3 "Clamshell"'s DNA obviously came from the eMate.  That first iBook is basically a scaled-up, possibly even prettier eMate, with MacOS instead of Newton OS.

I believe low-level power management became a major focus in the Mac product lines about this time, and am fairly certain there was some Newton engineering talent at work there.

Bottom line, I believe Steve actually appreciated and respected what had been done on the Newton but wanted to redirect that talent along the lines he wanted to take the company.  In many ways I hate the decision, because the Newton was so good and it was finally getting profitable and was highly regarded in quite a few vertical markets, even if it hadn't become the ubiquitous personal product we'd hoped.  I'm convinced it could have paid for itself, and would have pursued some new form factors that would have made headway with the personal/home market.  (At one late point I'd finally got the then head of Newton, Inc. to agree to at least look into a hand-held size.)  But I'm also glad Steve saved Apple, and he is totally responsible for that.

All that said, calling the Newton a failure rankles.  (Personally, I believe it could have been a success from the beginning if they'd simply downplayed the handwriting recognition and pushed the onscreen keyboard.)  Comments and jokes about its bad handwriting recognition, without any reference to its subsequent improvement, are especially annoying.  It was a beautiful product, with a myriad of uses, featuring incredibly new UI/UX technologies that should (and at least sometimes do) give it a significant place in computing history.

- larryy