From: Vaguely Radio (vradio_at_maine.rr.com)
Date: Sun Jan 25 2004 - 13:48:26 PST
My opinion for what it's worth -
I think the reason the Newton (and, arguably, PalmOS) was/is so
fantastic is that it doesn't hinder itself with a desktop metaphor. I
realise, as another poster mentioned, that Windows is trying to
maintain a consistent user experience (aside: I don't know if Windows
has ever been one, but that's a point for debate), but I admire the
simplicity of PalmOS's interface. It's very no-nonsense and stays out
of the way, except for Graffiti's limitations - it's just too bad that
it's so inhuman, like it was designed by a machine. In my opinion,
Newton's interface is the perfect, if somewhat dated, fusion of
humanity with technical flexibility, and the only reason that Palm
devices nowadays outperform in terms of multimedia is that they're
running on brand new hardware innovations, colour screens, finally
faster processors, etc - in other words, brute force. Not very
elegant. And as we all know the Newt is still holding its own quite
admirably. I won't make the obligatory comment about the "dead
platform" that seems to come up in similar posts right about here.
If Apple ever does again design a tablet/PDA, which I would heartily
welcome, I do hope that they don't make the same "mistake" of trying to
duplicate Mac OS X on a smaller device. Granted, Inkwell technology is
there and ready to be used, and I like the flexibility and stability of
the kernel, but I'm hoping they learn from the innovations of the
Newton and design something more of an "updated Newton" vs. a
scaled-down desktop. Perhaps it wouldn't sell as well - unfortunately
extreme innovations such as Newton, or BeOS, or others seem to be
damningly ahead-of-their-time since they appear as such "spikes" in the
development curve, instead of the gradual climb of technology that
people expect - but I do think that people's productivity and fun would
benefit from a reminder of what a PDA is "supposed to do," and that's
not to duplicate the PC experience but to play on the strengths of a
portable device. PDAs should allow quick access to data (no digging
for documents in nested folders) and quick input/retrieval of said
data. To modify Apple's well-worn slogan, the Newton is the closest
that anyone has gotten to designing "the computer for the rest of your
life" - all IMHO of course.
D.
On Sunday, January 25, 2004, at 10:34 AM, Bret Feinblatt wrote:
> Amazing. Microsoft lived on text-based DOS for so long, then moved to a
> mouse-based GUI. Now they can't move beyond it.
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