I have no followed this thread much, but here's my
take on the entire Jobs as CEO position:
1) The Newton was "let go" as a pure profit decision.
The Mac was sinking and fast, if it died so did the
Newton and all other parts of Apple. The Mac, ebing
the cornerstone of the company, came first. Also, the
MessagePad was too expensive, did more than the market
called for, and was just too head of it's time. The
PocketPCs were copying the Newton, because they saw
that it was a good form factor and a good overall
idea, but Apple was targeting a work horse on the Mac
market (AT FIRST) that was more artistic and wasn't
looking for a PDA.
2) It needed new connectivity software to work as well
as a Palm does with any desktop., It had sync
problems, and that was one reason they let it go.
Developement of software isn't cheap.
3) OS 9 is gone (thank goodness) and replaced with a
new, modern, and much nicer OS - Mac OS X. Love it or
hate it, I run it on a G3/233 and it runs flawlessly..
where 9 would crash a lot, X hasn't crashed itself
yet, not has any other app installed on it. The UNIX
foundation, Bluetooth, the APIs and open standards
have made it a very nice productive platform for high
end graphics, Apple's existing graphics base, home
users, schools and made way to bring the Mac into a
corporate environment - complete with a nice rackmount
server.
It also brought forth the iMac, and the new line of
hardware: iBook, and aided in the switch from legacy
hardware to the new standards of FireWire, 802.11,
USB, and Bluetooth.
4) I don't like the "Switch" ads too much myself, but
thaey are true. Anyone can use a Mac and not suffer
from the OS itself caving in during work. The people
are simple, real, and they are just saying "I don't
know what I'm doing, the PC wasn't working right but
my Mac doens't need any repair" - to be honest, I'd
rather see Apple focus it's attention on keeping
itself alive with the Macintosh than to have seen NOS
3.0 followed by "We're going out of business"
I've used Plams, CE machines, Newtons, PCs and Macs..
I'll always use a Mac, and I really like the Newton
for it's use of hardware and software.. it's big, it's
bulky, but it works really well and it does what I
want it to. Granted, Palm OS is really inticing, it's
not quite as strong as my Newton - it doens't handle
names and dates as well, it can't be used as an alarm
clock, and it can't render web pages, serve web pages,
and VNC.
Just my $.02
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Dec 02 2002 - 22:02:24 EST