NewtonTalk.net June 2009 archive: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iP

From: <Reilly001os_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue Jun 16 2009 - 03:15:14 EDT

I guess they felt they couldnt define a market if someone was already there..... Or they just didn't know how yet since later the first iPod clearly (re)define music players after products already existed. I had one of the early and later Rio players (the later was called Rio One) which I loved but man they had a junk battery door! First time I dropped either unit the door broke and I had to use this big half inch thick rubber band to hold it closed.... I told people I put the big rubber band on it as a bumper LOL. I really loved how those devices only used one AA battery though :-)
Joe Reilly

Joe Reilly
-----Original Message-----
From: James Fraser <wheresthatistanbul-newtontalk@yahoo.com>

Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:39:38
To: <newtontalk@newtontalk.net>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iPhone OS 3.0

Hello,

--- On Mon, 6/15/09, Reilly001os@aol.com <Reilly001os@aol.com> wrote:

>But I guess really nailing down what is a PDA (and where it started)
>will be different to each of us just like how we use our devices will be >different.

I suppose that's been one of my exasperations with this part of the thread: most people are defining what a PDA is from the viewpoint of 2009 rather than 1993, the year the Newton debuted. And the term "first to market" describes the PDA market as it existed in 1993, not as it exists today.

It's easy enough to attempt to define what a PDA "ought to be" *today,* what with so many products having come out in the 16 years since the long-promised Newton finally hit the market. But what were expectations in 1993 about what constituted a "PDA?"

The primary problem for Apple was that Sculley's January 1992 CES speech created a product category when Apple had yet to have an actual product to fill that category. So what made a device a PDA circa 1993 was more a wish-list of capabilities rather than a set of technical specifications.

And specifications exist not only so that engineers know what a given product is expected to do, but also so that consumers have an idea of just what kind of product they're looking at, and how it might compare to other (perhaps similar) products.

Anyway, I wanted to locate, haul out, and peruse my copy of "Defying Gravity" to see if there were any references made to early Newton competitors before I posted again. And sure enough, the GO device that I mentioned earlier is referenced, (pg. 00:34) with a journalist noted as "carrying the PDA made by GO" at the Jun 1993 CES when the Newton would not hit store shelves for another two months.

But the one I found the most intriguing was the machine that made the front cover of one of the May 1993 CeBIT's daily newsletters (much to the dismay of the Newton's marketing team). The headline on the newsletter read "First to Market?" and, yes, apparently the folks at Amstrad *did* beat the Newton to market, albeit only by a few weeks, with the PDA600:

http://blakespot.com/nino/images/penpad2.jpg

Which, I think we can agree, looks uncannily similar to a Newton and features handwriting recognition, one of the Newton's big claims to fame. At any rate, it was actually the *second* device to be marketed as a PDA to be available on store shelves to consumers (after the GO device, released in April).

It's also only fair to point out that the Newton emerged from a group that went by the name of Personal Interactive Electronics (or, ahem, PIE, making them the Apple PIE group) rather than a "PDA group."

Finally, Karen Sipprell, the PIE Divisions marketing communications director, is quoted in the book (00:61) as saying:

"We're at the juncture right now where we know how we're positioning this.
We're calling it a mobile communicator with intelligent assistance. And that's slightly different from what we said originally - that it's a personal digital assistant."

This backpeddling raises the question: why would Apple suddenly feel the need to *not* call the Newton a PDA after all their talk of PDA's (indeed, after inventing the PDA concept)? Because their competitors already had products on the market (or that were close to hitting the market) that would fit the then-current definition of such a device. And it was, apparently, perceived by Apple that these other devices would fit that definition at least enough to affect Apple's sales. So they sought to reposition the product as "not a PDA," but something that purported to be different.

So, yes, what you and I might define a PDA to be in the year 2009 might be two different things. But the point I'm trying to make here is that Apple was not first-to-market with a device that a consumer of 1993 (when they were first trying to sell the things) would recognize and accept as being a PDA.

If Apple had been, then there would have been no need for Apple's marketing folks to call the Newton a "mobile communicator with intelligent assistance." That's the sort of strategy marketing people will employ when they sense that the product their company is keen to release now has competition. And, unfortunately for Apple, the delay of more than a year-and-a-half between Sculley's speech and the actual product release created the opportunity for competitors to attempt to out-Apple Apple.

Whether they succeeded in doing so or not is no mystery: they didn't. GO and Armstad are little more than historical footnotes today. But Tony Kan's reference to companies ending up face down in the mud with an arrow in their back served to evoke my sympathy for these now nearly-forgotten firms.

I like Apple, (short of drinking the Kool-Aid, that is) but they've always made their money, not from being the first on the market with a given product, but from being the first on the market with products that consumers both want to buy in large numbers and (perhaps most importantly) feel they can incorporate into their lives better than comparable products offered by other firms.

Best,

James Fraser

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