Re: [NTLK] Another article mentioning the Newton

From: dano <dano_at_well.com>
Date: Fri Apr 07 2006 - 18:35:02 EDT

At 1:00 PM -0700 4/7/06, Ed Kummel wrote:
>>And the infuriating thing is that this part of the article was written by
>>Marks Gibbs! Of all people,
>>he ought to know better!

>Pardon my ignorance as I'm not a veteran, but why would he know better?

From what I can gather, he's a technology columnist. If that's the case, I
would hope he would better understand that while the Newton wasn't ideal, it
did do (and continues to do) some amazing things. To say nothing of Palm
and other companies that were directly spawned by Apple's "failure."

I'm not convinced that lumping the Newton in with Microsoft Bob shows that
he's put a great deal of
critical thinking into his writing. And I don't think you could say his
remarks about the Newton itself do
much for him in the credibility department, either:

>First, the Newton: Way ahead of its time, but compared with Apple's current
>hardware designs, it
>must - like the camel - have been designed by a committee.

So he seems to be saying: compared to Apple's current lineup, the Newton
doesn't look that great.

Well, duh.

The Newton is ten years old (I'll round up a bit for the eMates/2x00s). Of
_course_ it's going to look
bad if you put it directly alongside Apple's current stuff. Ten years is
approximately forever in the tech
world. The products available today benefit not only from Moore's Law, but
from Apple's extensive (and
ever-expanding) experience in pleasing consumers.

Besides which, I think he's committing the fallacy of comparing apples to
oranges. Apple hasn't made a PDA
since the Newton, right? Well then, there's really nothing comparable to
measure the Newton against as
far as Apple is concerned, is there? It's kind of like commemorating the
demise of the local Peterbuilt
truck factory...by interviewing the head of the local Mini dealership.
While both of these products do have an
engine of some kind in them, (and, ten years later, Apple is still building
devices with CPUs in them) they're two different things.

Despite this, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, if
he was on deadline to crank "something" out, then things like this can be
expected to happen. If you have a cranky editor breathing down your neck,
your concern is with filling up space. The critical thinking bit can be
always done by the readers themselves later on.

Best,

James Fraser

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