The first tablet. Part 2

Translation of the second part of the article on Apple Newton (first here )



What killed Newton



MessagePad devices were smaller than laptops (especially laptops of the mid-1990s), but they were not pocket-sized either. A Palm Pilot - were. Newton cost around $ 800-900, Palm Pilot $ 300-400. Of course, the price was not decisive in the collapse of Newton: many successful devices cost much more. The main thing is that Apple could not explain in a nutshell why Newton is worth this money.

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The original Palm Pilot went on sale in 1996, that is, three years after the original Newton. Therefore, it cannot be said that they directly competed with each other and that the Newton sunset began with the release of the Pilot. However, the success of Pilot asked the direction in which Apple had to move after the debut of Newton in 1993: less and cheaper. Instead, Apple decided to keep both size and price, and took the path of increasing functionality and performance. If by 1995 Apple had a device based on Newton, but the size of a Palm Pilot and for $ 400, today the world would be completely different. (If Newton were a hit, Apple wouldn't have had so many problems in 1996. She might not even have had to buy NeXT and call Jobs back.)



I think it's normal when the first product is ahead of its time, when it is ambitious. But the main thing here is not to overdo it, not to be ahead of your time so much that subsequent versions of the product will no longer be able to improve the concept in practical terms. Yes, Newton has improved every year - but in the wrong direction. His ambitions grew. Look at the iPhone: the difference between the first iPhone and today's 3GS is progressive, it’s all in the practical dimension. Performance, memory, price. This is evolutionary improvement, not a functional explosion.



Newton is a product of the offline era, its debut coincided with the beginning of the Internet revolution. Today, all computers are communication devices. Newton was not created that way. I do not mean that Apple had to invent Wi-Fi in 1993. I'm talking about something else: the lack of wireless communication has become an important factor, due to which Newton did not attract the mass consumer. At first, Palm Pilot was not an Internet device either, but it wasn’t necessary for him, because it was cheaper.



Newton had incredible technology. But one thing is when something works well, and another thing is when something works at all and is therefore unique. Many today remember about Newton only one thing - his terrible handwriting, which the Simpsons and Dunsbury had a good laugh about. However, Newton damn well recognized printed letters. Personally, I had a MessagePad 130 model, and later I bought a Handspring Visor on a Palm OS. Recognition of letters on the MessagePad was no worse than the graffiti on the Visor, and without cracking characters. But here I personally didn’t work on Newton personally. But it was surprising that he existed at all and worked somehow. Everyone understood that Apple did a gigantic job. But the technology was still raw, it could not be put - and they set. I think Newton’s reputation would have been better if it hadn’t been written at all, just printed.



One of the hallmarks of Apple under Jobs is that they promote only completely honed functionality, even if you have to leave something unfinished behind (a simple example is copying and pasting to the iPhone). The design of the iPhone is dictated by purely pragmatic considerations. Here is the iPhone or iPod touch - what functionality do they offer to the consumer? To answer this question, just look at the bottom of the home screen, in the dock of applications: calls, mail, Internet, movies, music. This is what we are doing on the iPhone. This is what people love, it fascinates them.



And what can you do with Newton? Notes, calendars, addresses. All major functions on the Newton are minor on the iPhone. To make matters worse, Newton did not have a good synchronization, and this finally sentenced him as a substitute for a paper notebook and organizer. It was an island in the middle of the sea, not a bridge connecting the user and the data somewhere else. The situation with the Palm Pilot was much better (especially in Windows, where synchronization worked especially well). The Palm Pilot relationship with the computer was clear and understandable: the computer is the main device, the Palm is the periphery. Newton's relationship with the Mac or PC was hazy. He played his role and size: Newton was, though portable, but clearly not pocket.



I have long had a theory that at some point the Newton team succumbed to pride and set out to make Newton something more than just a peripheral for a Mac or PC. Similarly, the original Mac was initially incompatible with the then very popular Apple II. For Apple, Newton was the Big One; they no longer thought of it as a satellite device next to a Mac or PC. Such pride is not necessarily bad or wrong, in the case of the Macintosh it worked. But it is always a risk: you go all-in and you can lose everything. What happened.



It’s wrong to assume that Newton was killed by the “high price” and “big size”, especially in the light of the current mythical tablet: according to the Wall Street Journal, it will have a large 10-inch screen and a price tag in the region of $ 1000. I don't think Newton was too big and expensive; but it was too big and expensive for its capabilities . That is why Palm won, and Newton lost. Apple wanted to create a “tablet computer”, but the functionality was at the level of a handheld peripheral device.



Success or failure never determines just one factor. It is always a balance of many factors, always concessions. Palm with Pilot made concessions much smarter than Apple with Newton.



And today there is no company that can make concessions better than Apple. And certainly it is impossible to say that today Apple does not understand the difference between a portable device and a pocket device.