On Wednesday, February 13, 2002, at 07:58 PM, David Orriss Jr wrote:
> The Newton had an uphill
> battle almost from the first minute within Apple. Not many people were
> *that* interested in it at Apple - and many people never wanted it to
> even
> get off the ground.
This is almost certainly true. For example, think how much the PowerBook
group much have loved the Newton... And then as now, the PowerBook was
Apple's highest grossing product.
> If let's say... 10-15 original engineers who designed the Mac - along
> with SJ had left in the first two to
> three years of the Mac's existence I'd be willing to guess it would have
> been a serious loss for them. We might not even have *seen* the Mac (in
> it's current form, anyway).
Actually, most of the Mac team did leave Apple after the 128k came out.
Which is why making any major changes took a few years. (The 512k just
took advantage of a RAM expansion feature built in by the original team.
Even the 512ke and Plus had very few changes... just device drivers for
the updated floppy drive, and then the SCSI port.) Out of the 47 people
to "sign" the inside of the original Mac case, 29 left Apple during the
80s. Ten left before the original Mac even shipped. Of those who stayed,
most took extended "sabbaticals" (back when Apple allowed employees to
take paid sabbaticals) and/or moved to other departments. They were
burnt out.
sj
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