<I firmly believe that Steven Jobs was quite UNAWARE of this when the
decision was made to cut of the Newton platform. I am absolutley sure
that SJ is NOT professional enough to make his decisions based on
ratio, not emotion.>
This subject is a can of worms only too familiar to most people on
this list. Nevertheless, I have grown away from your opinion and this
is why:
<RANT>
SJ put his heart and soul into Apple and that is why Apple still is.
i think it's the love that clearly goes into apple products that
evokes mac users' emotional response to their system. this is why mac
users struggle on against enormous and illegal commercial pressure. I
can't remember who said 'work is love made visible', but love made
visible in an OS probably doesn't need explaining to us, the last
Newton users.
At the same time, I think SJ made the right professional decision on
Newton. Steve wasn't prepared to risk Apple's future on technologies
that MIGHT continue to hemorrhage money. One profitable quarter for
the Newton division doesn't necessarily make a golden future
especially when you consider the hundreds of millions it took to get
there, and Apple was looking decidedly unhealthy. Other great
technologies like QuickDraw GX and OpenDoc (which really was an
insanely great idea) got axed too, along with Apple digital cameras,
printers, scanners, external hard drives, don't forget. Most of these
were very good products. Also, they couldn't really sell StrongARM
newton devices for much less than $1000. We know it was worth it, but
most didn't. Holding on to the Newton technologies meant that Apple
was likely to live to fight another day without giving the fruits of
its labour (and $1 billion) to others who might turn out to be
serious competition in the future.
When Steve first took the wheel again he outspokenly supported the
Newton platform. Apparently he bought two at the online store. I am
sure SJ took Newton technologies very seriously but decided that the
handheld market was going to prove a tight margin business in which
even key players would struggle because the average person's price
expectation for smaller computers is, well, smaller. It must have
been a very difficult decision to terminate a whole platform, and the
negative message that sent out about Apple would have been a
consideration. But in the end I think that this is one of the many
occasions when SJ has shown great wisdom in taking unpleasant
decisions, and the results speak for themselves because Apple is
thriving and producing the most talked about hardware and OS in the
market.
I heard about Inkwell (Newton HWR for Mac) before the release of mac
OS X. Concentrating on one OS made financial sense. Now all they
need to do is incorporate the best of the Newton interface into OS X
(configurably, of course) until OS X is suitable for a handheld.
Does OS X's dock look a little familiar? Inkwell and the new fast
find feature are a step in the right direction. Global text searching
remains halfway useful. iPod is a tentative step back into the
peripheral business. Linux is now running on a PDA. I am optimistic
that Macs, like PC's are going to get smaller and more Newtonesque. I
think we would have been worse off, (even the *nix and Windos users)
if we had kept Newton and lost Apple.
Sorry for the length of this post and its opinionated content but
these thoughts have been brewing over many years and sometimes you
just have to let it out. ;-)
</RANT>
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