Re: [NTLK] No Business Case for Another Newton?

From: Ed Kummel (tech_ed_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 14:42:15 EDT


--- Rodney Withers <mryendor_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
> The creation of the Newton opened the flood gates on
> possiblities Apple couldn't speak to. They were
> imposing a new way of doing business i.e. health
> care,
> insurance, police, postal service, and etc. The lost
> opportunity was not only release schedules but poor
> ability to show how the Newton could be the "digital
> assistant" in more ways than just a electronic
> secretary.
<snip>
> When Apple can reveal how their products (Newton) is
> the next essential element to allow someone like a
> police officer to save a person's life, they'll not
> only have demand but a better understanding of a
> consumer's core need.
>
> Apple still has a shot at this because certain
> industries such as pharmcueticals, health care, and
> parcel were growing industries using Newton PDA
> devices when they killed the product. That's big
> money
> folks
<snip>

Self promotion has NEVER been Apple's strong suit.
From my experience in dealing with Apple from a
distribution perspective, Apple seems to have no clue
as to how to let the public know how to use their
products. And when they have been shown a potential
mass appeal, they will outright refuse to create any
kind of incentive to those companies who can do the
most good...and most of the times, Apple, when
confronted with a small player and a big player, will
go with the small player because Apple gets to dictate
terms...Apple is afraid of loosing mindshare so as a
result, they don't allow major players access to their
products.

I speak from experience on this. As I'm sure other
long term people on this list have heard before from
my, in my previous life, it was my job to create
distribution channels for high tech gadgets! The
company I worked for rented wireless communications.
From pagers to PDAs, I played with them all! I had
ample opportunity to sample all the major players in
the handheld arena. From the AT&T EO, the Newton, HPs
OmniGo, IBMs Simon, Sony's PIC1000, running Magic Cap.
My biggest distribution channel participant was
Hewlett Packard. They supplied me with thousands of
"Demo" units with which to "seed" the waters to get
their product in as many hands as possible. Starting
with the HP200LX, I coupled this device with a
portable Motorla ARDIS wireless modem and created a
wireless palm top computer. This continued with
coupling the AllPoints card with the HP300lx (an WinCE
device) and getting an all-in-one wireless PDA! (the
EO had a cellphone option which was very clean and
nicely integrated. the Simon WAS a cell phone, one of
the best designs for a long time...Motorola's Marco
and Envoy both had builtin wireless ARDIS modems...we
even had Nokia 9000 l's that were a pleasure to use!)

But it was the Newton that attracted the most
attention from my end users. Everyone wanted to play
with one.

My end users included people from the US Highway
department, several race-track owners, and Goddard
space center...they wanted something that could
provide reliable telemetry and the Newton fit the bill
nicely. Additionally, companies like Mitel and BDM
were looking at inbuilding use for employee
telemtry...employees walked around with their Newts,
which were equipped with wireless network cards, and
anyone anywhere could be pin-pointed! Plus, when you
got into an office, you plugged the Newt into the
Siemens phone system, and all your information was
instantly available...In all, my end users would have
been responsible for the purchase of hundreds of
thousands of units! I even got my end user's buyers in
contact with high level sales in Apple for the
Newt...but Apple refused to work with any of my end
users. The racetrack and highway department wanted to
take the Newt out of it's case and build them into the
vehicles with only the LCD showing in the dash...Apple
refused to let them do this, claiming reverse
engineering clause in their contract...Apple would not
budge even when the total number of units was
increased to 75,000!
Mitel and BDM, asked Apple for coding help to get
their wireless networks to work with the Newton. Apple
refused to release key hooks to the OS for the same
reason as above! (eventually Mitel DID get the Newt
working wirelessly in their building in Reston...They
invited me over for a demo and it was the coolest!
Something right out of startrek! Open the "Names"
address book, find an employee, there is a new action
called "Find this person" and the room number would
display in a popup window along with their idle time.
)

I even then tried through normal distribution
channels, but none of the Newton dealers had the
capabilities of ordering Newtons in the quantities we
needed (the largest could only order 100 newtons a
week...at that rate, the smallest order ot 50,000
newtons would take over 9 years to complete!)

So, my customers gave up! I did what I could and set
them up with Hewlett Packard...who was only too happy
to create special purchase incentives and distribution
capabilities for any customer I set up for them...

This is something that Apple just doesn't get. and,
they probably never will understand!
Ed
web/gadget guru

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