Apple Discontinued the Newton 25 Years Ago Today

[darngooddesign]

\What today? pffff ... yeah maybe on a table. The Newton was a HUGE device and most likely killed by Jobs not just due to poor sales but how bulky it looked. A brick, compared to the 3COM Palm Pilot was was beginning to debut at that time and comparatively the HP, Acer and other WinCE PDA devices were slightly lighter and thinner.

Funny enough with the expansion capabilties ... the Newton's spiritual successor, I think arguably was, the Compaq iPaq.

Considering how bulky the iBook G3 was, which was fine and I really liked mine, I doubt that was the reason. SJ could have pushed Apple to develop a smaller/slimmer Newton if he actually cared about that product. But I think he just wanted to trim the fat, Apple wasn't exactly flash with cash at that point, and slash all the projects from his predecessors.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Pocket PC was also a huge failure ahead of it's time and not quite there yet.

Microsoft really should have been the leader in tablets and touch - yet they blew that like they do everything.

No PocketPC's ONLY success was licensing and huge marketing push at the time when S60/UIQ and Java smartphones were difficult to program for and IDE/SDKs were terrible and reliant on first party.

Add to that a huge OEM in HTC - before they started making and selling their own phones - they produced for Orange, Vodafone etc. When people realized paying $600 for a device that reduced the promise of what their actual PC could do, abysmal battery life and no direct connection to corporate space like what the BlackBerry could do (on-premise corporate Exchange email, contacts, calendar & notes, corporate intranet pages with auto authentication using domain credentials) and not suffer a Pull-ActiveSync experience those started to drop in favoured eyes. Terrible touch-screen experiences didn't really garner better than PDA 2 -film touch screens.

Feature phones from SonyEricsson, Nokia etc getting better camera's and soon WiFi modules .. Even after great devices such as:
Motorola Q / Motorola Q10, etc. or Nokia's E71 which all were much better than the BlackBerry 8810/9900 Bold/9780 which now supported microSD cards media playback and cameras at a MUCH cheaper retail and subsidized cost in N.America ... and failed OS progression ... PocketPC PE and Smartphone Edition's just ended dying a fast death.

Proper devices that would've excelled such as HTC building a real-hybrid PC/PocketPC device that was lighter than the TyTN (?) using a dual OS (Windows 7 + Windows PocketPC PE.

Compared to the iPhone, yes. But back then, before the iPhone, it *was* the PDA market leader and it was *THE* geek mobile OS - the Linux-based Sharp Zaurus was very rare outside Japan. Remember, back then there were no mobile devices with desktop OS'es - the OQO came out later. That is, if we wanted to have something REALLY powerful in our pocket for gaming (tons of console emulators etc.) / Internet (Web, mail etc.) / MP3 / video player / eBook reader / generic computing device, we chose WinCE / Pocket PC. Palm OS, Blackberry and Symbian were waaaay less "geeky" / powerful with WAY worse 3rd party SW support (video players, games etc).

BRUH! you pulled out the Sharp Zaurus?!!!!!??
I almost completely forgot about that damn thing!

What's amazing is Apple had a vision of a digital AI assistant over 13yrs prior to Siri debuting in the iPhone yet showcased in 1987 with the Apple Knowledge Navigator concept commercial.

 

[darngooddesign]

…What's amazing is Apple had a vision of a digital AI assistant over 13yrs prior to Siri debuting in the iPhone yet showcased in 1987 with the Apple Knowledge Navigator concept commercial.

Heck, Apple had the Penlite MacOS tablet prototype back around 1991. It was basically a PowerBook Duo tablet. It was never produced, but Apple sold the rights to Assistive Tech which they turned into the Freestyle.

 

[enterthemerdaverse]

Considering how bulky the iBook G3 was, which was fine and I really liked mine, I doubt that was the reason. SJ could have pushed Apple to develop a smaller/slimmer Newton if he actually cared about that product. But I think he just wanted to trim the fat, Apple wasn't exactly flash with cash at that point, and slash all the projects from his predecessors.

I didn’t understand the toilet seat iBook until I learned that before he went to Apple, Jonny Ive designed home stuff like kitchens and bathroom stuff.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Heck, Apple had the Penlite MacOS tablet prototype back around 1991. It was basically a PowerBook Duo tablet. It was never produced, but Apple sold the rights to Assistive Tech which they turned into the Freestyle.

Oh I thought you were going to talk about the Newton eMate which did have a stylus and full qwerty keyboard: which DID sell to the educational market.

 

[darngooddesign]

Oh I thought you were going to talk about the Newton eMate which did have a stylus and full qwerty keyboard: which DID sell to the educational market.

I love the eMate, its the proto-Bondi-Blue Apple.

 

[indychris]

Hahaha! Me too! I had most - while the Newtons were my favourite, the Psion devices came a close second. The Sharp PDAs were good too, and they also did re-badged version of the Newton MessagePad (called ExperPad if I recall correctly).

I also picked up an old Amstrad PDA (Pen Pad) in the 90's but have no idea what i did with that lol. It was actually not bad for a budget device! Can't believe that was all 25-30 years ago now...

Tell me about it! I don't feel old, but my electronics history tells a different story!

 

[StyxMaker]

I only had the iiixe, but used it for years. A month on two AAA batteries was great.

My IIIxe went into a time vault after I switched to a Pocket PC. The time vault will be opened sometime around 2075.

 

[millerj123]

My IIIxe went into a time vault after I switched to a Pocket PC. The time vault will be opened sometime around 2075.

We tried a couple different Pocket PCs. I always found they sucked for my use cases, comparatively. Reminded me of the CueCat or AOL Keyword: just die.

 

[millerj123]

«Who wants a stylus?»

If you also employed Fitaly, you had a keyboard on the Palm that was designed to type fast with a stylus. I finally bought an external keyboard that the palm slotted into.

 

[VulchR]

Not exactly. Palm said it would not longer develop new PDAs, not that it would no longer develop new handheld devices. The company shifted exclusively to making smartphones.

OK - I stand corrected.

Still, the iPhone, not the Newton, changed things and that is all I was arguing above.

 

[VulchR]

Not sure what you are implying but Palm was in deep deep trouble even before the initial announcement. It wasn't like Palm was running around saying, "We're #1! We're #1! Oh wait, Apple released what? Peace out!"

Palm had quite a few years of phoning it in, no pun intended. Insider stock tip, when you see a company change it's logo and identity multiple times as Palm did in the early 00's, you know they're done.

Fair enough. Actually I loved my Palm PDA and was sorry to see them implode like that. Still I think the iPhone was the final nail in the coffin.

 

[Razorpit]

Fair enough. Actually I loved my Palm PDA and was sorry to see them implode like that. Still I think the iPhone was the final nail in the coffin.

Please don‘t misunderstand, I agree the iPhone did. I just think it took a little while longer. It’s a shame because the new Palm OS was a giant leap from where they were with the legacy system. Don’t know how old you are, I’m guessing we’re similar in age, but I compare it to the jump from a Commodore 64 to an Amiga. Hmm, what else was out there at the time that killed that off? 🤔 😉