Newton Poetry

It’s interesting to imagine what the Newton could’ve become.

Wikiwikinewt gives us some food for though, including some early prototypes before the Newton came of age.  Or how about the “Cadillac?”  There’s a whole set of Flickr photos dedicated to it:

The web is just full of this stuff.  The Apple Museum has a list of prototypes and codenames.  The Newton’s codename?  The all-too fitting “Batman.”

Here’s what it could’ve looked like:

Sleek and stylish!

The ol’ slab-black, flip-cover look never really went away on the actualy production models, with the obvious exception of the eMate.

And what a shame.  To think that we could be debating Newton styles like we do now with Blackberries or Blackjacks or whatever.

If only…

Cult of Mac had an interesting refresher on Wired’s “101 Ways to save Apple” story that ran in 1997.

Here’s number 15:

15. Dump (or outsource) the Newton, eMate, digital cameras, and scanners.

Huh.  How about that.  Interesting on number 59:

59. Invest heavily in Newton technology, which is one area where Microsoft can’t touch you. Build voice recognition and better gesture recognition into Newton, making a new environment for desktop, laptop, and palmtop Macs. Newton can also be the basis of a new generation of embedded systems, from cash registers to kiosks.

So which was it?  Apple, at the time, was swimming in a sea of “we don’t know what the hell we are.”  If they had stuck to the Newton and really ran with it, it could’ve been Apple’s iPod before there was an iPod.  Let’s face it – the iPod helped save Apple.  Now look what the iPhone is doing.

Speaking of which – how prophetic:

31. Build a PDA for less than $250 that actually does something: a) cellular email b) 56-channel TV c) Internet phone.

Thanks to Cult of Mac for reminding us of Apple’s conflicted frame of mind about the MessagePad.

From Larry Tesler, former member of Apple’s Newton development group:

In my view, Apple prematurely launched the Newton for competitive reasons. From 1990 to 1993, Apple felt that pen computing and handwriting recognition was going to be the next big thing. The first product that satisfied the user’s needs would surely dominate a huge new market.

It was, technically, the “next big thing,” (or, actually, here) but in a different mode than “computing.”

From G4TV.com.  Read the rest here.