Chris,
I must say that I like the concept, but I am wary of whether it is doable.
I would be happy to devote some time to this, as I am sure would many
others. I think the strength of this mailing list is incredible, and this
may be an indicator that this might just fly.
The first steps as I would see it is to develop some business objectives
and a business plan. Being a non-profit does not exempt you from needing to
make money, and in fact if you are non-profit it will be very hard to find
funding from VC firms.
The costs of hardware manufacturing are quite high, necessitating a volume
product. Whether the Newton is really a viable volume product is a moot
point. Jobbs voted no on that one, and I think he was right as a competitor
to the Palm/Pocket PC. The potential niche I see is to take on the Tablet
PC: trying to run XP means a beefy processor, hard disk etc, meaning weight
and battery life suck. This is where the Newton could be strong, providing
a lean OS with many advanced features that will run in an eMate form factor
or Tablet form factor.
Software development would I think be easier, as it is not so capital
intensive, just look at all the Linux development that is going on. it just
needs some enthusiasts with some time on their hands. perhaps a Linux port
for the Newton would allow us to take advantage of that world ?
Anyone else got thoughts on this subject ? Perhaps we could even create
some Yahoo groups to discuss different aspects of this.
Cheers
Mike
At 05:00 PM 12/2/2002 -0600, Chris Myers wrote:
>My proposal is to create a non-profit corporation that can facilitate Newton
>development. This will then create a legal establishment that will be
>responsible
>to a board and responsible to its members. This legal status will enable
>us to
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