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Sculley: Newton Laid the Groundwork for Today's Mobile Industry
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They forced him out, plain and simple. Put all the lipstick you want on that one, but it's still a pig.
Newton
I still have a working Newton (a least it worked last time I checked). They really were so far ahead of their time when they were introduced: not just the hardware but the object oriented OS as well. They were just becoming useful (better handwriting recognition, better speed, etc) when Steve Jobs killed the project. A pity in some ways, although today's technology (iPhone, iPad) is, of course, so much better.
I still have a working Newton (a least it worked last time I checked). They really were so far ahead of their time when they were introduced: not just the hardware but the object oriented OS as well. They were just becoming useful (better handwriting recognition, better speed, etc) when Steve Jobs killed the project. A pity in some ways, although today's technology (iPhone, iPad) is, of course, so much better.
Short version:
Sculley thinks he and/or Apple represents and/or represented the PDA-industry.
Palm, HP & others produced many successful PDAs, before Apple created the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad.
The Newton was like the Lisa-a failure. Apple learned a lot, and replaced other interfaces with the touchscreen.
The most important thing about the Newton wasn't the product itself-- it was the creation of ARM holdings.
I don't think people give Apple credit for ARM-- without their stake, however, it's likely that today's mobile landscape could be quite different.
I don't think people give Apple credit for ARM-- without their stake, however, it's likely that today's mobile landscape could be quite different.
The Newton was exactly a decade too soon. It was just months after it was put to death that Palm came out with the Palm Pilot. They often get the credit for the concept, but it totally wasn't Palm.
The Newton's biggest obstacle was how expensive it was, and in those days there was no such thing as cross compatibility like there is today. Any syncing of data was platform dependent... and that you can blame on Scully with ease. He totally took Apple in the wrong direction.
I don't think the Newton would have succeeded the way the iPod did with any amount of hype though. Again, things were different then. The iPod was also a device the had mass appeal... the Newton was seen as an Apple device with people relating it to Apple computers they didn't own or use. Don't forget, Apple's marketshare went down the crapper in the Newton years. When Jobs came back to Apple, they were literally fighting for their lives. They couldn't afford to invest a dollar in anything that wouldn't show some kind of return. If the iMac hadn't been a hit, there would most likely not be an Apple Inc. today.
You must be young, because this "I just got it yesterday, but now I want something new" mentality is a recent concept. The Newton was in a time when platforms and OS-es could go years without anything "new." If you didn't grow up with saturday morning cartoons, then you're definitely that new generation, which makes me feel old to say.
There weren't even game boys in this time (they came years later). Hand held games were huge and played....1 very bad game. Totally different world.
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No, they fired Jobs. Don't sugar coat it. It would be like telling the founder of a company you're going to work in the mail room now. You're not doing anything of what you did, and they know you're not going to stand for it.
It's done every day. Welcome to how corporate america fires people in cowardice.
QFT.
Back when the PalmPilot, with it's 16MHz processor, was brand new the Newton had a processor on par with what we saw later with the first generation of Microsoft PocketPC PDAs with color displays. It's almost scary just how much processing power the Newton had in comparison with anything else it competed with. Unfortunately, all the really great hardware features the Newton had, which made them so powerful and flexible, also made them *very* expensive. That's why the Newton 'failed'. Up against a PDA which inexpensive enough to be an impulse purchase for business people, it cost almost as much as an entry-level laptop.
It didn't help that Palm (at the time) was still doing things right with regard to PalmOS. They kept things bare-bones and minimalist in order to run on that 16MHz processor, and focused on providing a clean interface (minimizing 'taps' to get anything done).
Why is everyone forgetting Spindler? Scully? Yeah, he just wanted to sell lots of the same, like Pepsi. He was too focussed on the moneymaker Apple II. Scully was no visionary. But Spindler did not change anything right in the 3 years he was there. No, he let Apple slip further and further.
I think this is can't be any closer to the truth. Steve has mentioned that he needed the medicine of getting fired.
Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya
Oh Lord, kumbaya
Keep in mind back in the 70-90s the big players all did this. It was the style at the time. Lock in the customer from end to end. IBM (microchannel hardware, OS/2), Digitial (VAX, vms, PathWorks), MS (DOS, Windows), Apple (hardware, OS). No one wanted to open up except maybe Novell since they didn't sell hardware. It took customers screaming for it to happen. Sculley was doing what everyone was so you can say he screwed up but so did everyone.
Even when Jobs was back and iTunes came out, it was a vehicle to lock in Mac sales. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming to allow a Windows version. Only then, when the dump trucks full of money started arriving, did he and others see the benefit of cross platform. That and the web explosion which made the desktop mostly irrelevant.
Sadly, we're going right back to lock in once again. Phones locked down, 'App stores' lock in (Even MS is going hardball with Windows ARM), basically controlled ecosystems. This time though, people are embracing it and see it's a good thing that device A only talks to software A all controlled by the vendors.
!! EO 880 / PenPoint was the 1st PDA
Newton got it's handwriting recognition concept from PenPoint OS, from GO Corporation. GO and Apple failed, Palm learned the lessons and constrained the handwriting recognition to 1-letter at a time. Both EO 880 and Newton were harware constrained -- the object-oriented classes just had too much overhead. GO Corporation invented its own class manager on top of C, as C++ hadn't yet taken off. Newton and EO 880 had great technology -- definately ahead of their time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EO_Personal_Communicator
Newton got it's handwriting recognition concept from PenPoint OS, from GO Corporation. GO and Apple failed, Palm learned the lessons and constrained the handwriting recognition to 1-letter at a time. Both EO 880 and Newton were harware constrained -- the object-oriented classes just had too much overhead. GO Corporation invented its own class manager on top of C, as C++ hadn't yet taken off. Newton and EO 880 had great technology -- definately ahead of their time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EO_Personal_Communicator
I disagree strongly that that Mac was ahead of its time in the same sense as the newton.
The newton was ahead of its time in the sense that even the bleeding edge of technology of the time did not well support the goals of the device
The original Mac worked very well. The graphical UI was a revelation. WYSIWYG word processor was a revelation. And it all worked well -- much better than anything that had come before. The Newton was great when it worked but it didn't work nearly often enough.
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Too bad you didn't bother to read the article. You would have seen that he was referring to the creation of the ARM platform.
I agree that Scully can't claim responsibility for the success of ARM, but certainly his support was necessary for the birth of it. He helped lead the create of a great technology. (It happened not to be the Newton, but instead a real-world RISC processor.)
In many ways Newton vs Palm was a replay of the Lisa vs Mac. On one hand you target business which is generally highly conservative. On the other you go barebones keep the price down and general market appeal high. Enough people are progressive and about to use tech to help them get their work done that you can slide in the backdoor of the business via pockets and brief cases.
Then with NeXT Steve took a punt at the LISA/Newton Business model of targeting the organisation more than the people. Mac OS X basically the same system except targetted with it's design ethos at the general people, including getting itself in to the back packs of the college kids.
With iOS Apple's business plan has been clear from Day One. It's a system for People, if the People make it useful in business then that is a good thing but the business demand comes from the staff up.
I'm willing to give him more credit if he planed all these himself. As far as I know, he didn't. It's just a by product of how things turned out to be. I don't see any intend there.
He never said he would have caused Apple to go under.
"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
Big difference.
How the heck did you get to that conclusion
Even if Apple owned 40 odd percent of AMD, you dont seriously thing that would stop other companies using the ARM architecture do you? Learn basic business sense for your own good buddy. Android would still have existed, as would Blackberry, WP7 and every single other ARM based device.
Apple still co-own a lot of rights on the PowerPC architecture, did that stop Microsoft using it for the XBox 360? No.
Heck... back in 1994/1995 when Apple was still heavily invested in PowerPC for its own in-house purposes, Apple's partial ownership of the PowerPC architecture didn't stop Microsoft from targeting PowerPC in Windows NT 3.51.How the heck did you get to that conclusion
Even if Apple owned 40 odd percent of AMD, you dont seriously thing that would stop other companies using the ARM architecture do you? Learn basic business sense for your own good buddy. Android would still have existed, as would Blackberry, WP7 and every single other ARM based device.
Apple still co-own a lot of rights on the PowerPC architecture, did that stop Microsoft using it for the XBox 360? No.
How the heck did you get to that conclusion
Even if Apple owned 40 odd percent of AMD, you dont seriously thing that would stop other companies using the ARM architecture do you? Learn basic business sense for your own good buddy. Android would still have existed, as would Blackberry, WP7 and every single other ARM based device.
Apple still co-own a lot of rights on the PowerPC architecture, did that stop Microsoft using it for the XBox 360? No.
Because if Apple still owned 47% they would have had a lot of influence on how ARM licensed their technology. Back when XBox 360 came out Apple wasn't concerned with console gaming (still isn't) that in tern was just more money in the pocket of the company they helped start. As for Android most of their phones if not all run on ARM processors as do most mobile phones now and as Steve was ready to "go thermonuclear war" on Google he would have used his influence with ARM as a weapon against Android. I think that's pretty good business sense.