Rainy Day Magazine was nice enough to share a few photos from the early days of the Newton, including a photo of the original development team (above), the “core team” (including John Sculley), a prototype Newton, and a congratulations gala of some sort.
Nice to have some recognition for the original gang that put this device together. We can only hope that, as the Newton improved over time, so did their haircuts.
“I thought the handwriting recognition ‘bugs’ were a PLUS– great way to write surreal stories and poetry, write out your ideas and they got translated to weird madlib gibberish.”
– Boing Boing reader ill ich. I like to remember the early days of this blog, when that’s all I did: poetry translated by a Newton MessagePad 110. Since then, I – how should I put it? – moved on.
[Via NewtonTalk on Twitter.]
Here we see a great switcher message, and a kick-off to the “digital hub” strategy Steve Jobs laid out at Macworld the year before.
[Via David Kendal’s tip.]
Neat brochure designed by The Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Looks like it’s geared toward college students.
[Via Daring Fireball.]
“A signature of Apple’s design philosophy is not to just fire-hose features into a product. They like to believe that if they add something, it contributes way more value than what its presence will cost the user, and that the feature is consistent with the ‘story’ of this product. I’ve seen Android tablets with every kind of port and other hardware feature built-in. Mostly, their purpose is to be something that the marketers and the users can point to and say ‘See? Look what this has that yours doesn’t.’
Sometimes they actually enhance the device. Mostly, though, they’re like a third nipple. Good for conversation, but functionally useless.”
– Andy Ihnatko. Feature lists are great, but they’re not everything. I’m keeping track of some Android fans that say, because the iPad is missing some items, it’s going to be a failure. They tend to concentrate on the wrong thing, like iMac haters did when Apple dumped the floppy disk.
So to heck with the iPad – you’ve dreamed of someday winning an Apple Newton MessagePad in some random site’s giveaway.
Well, ThinkGeek has heard your plea. They’re giving away an MP100 and a $1,000 shopping spree from now, April 1, until midnight.
I know, I know – it’s probably a joke, right? Especially considering second prize is an iPad. But Think Geek says, “And while the Newton may seem impossibly awesome, we promise it’s true–this contest is NOT a joke.” Who am I to doubt them? Besides the $1,000 grand prize, the bundled Newton is a heckuva money saver.
When you click through to enter, ThinkGeek asks if you want to receive their updates and promotions, so it could be a genius marketing scheme. Just don’t get me wrong: by “scheme” I mean “I’d love to have one.”
And here I had thought of doing something like this as an anniversary prize or something…
[Via Splorp.]
Steven Levy’s concise, polished view of the tablet revolution in this month’s Wired (I’m a magazine subscriber) gives a nod to the Newton in one of the “tablets through the ages” sidebar. It was the polite thing to do after talking about Apple’s iPad, the failed Windows Tablet, and the possibility of a Google Chrome OS tablet in the near future.
What’s amazing is that Apple has released some high-tech dopamine in tech pundit’s pleasure zones. Some connection has been made between the iPad, the future of computing, and the hypothalamus – and Levy says the victim will be the graphical user interface we know and (perhaps) love:
One thing we do know is that a heated battle is breaking out over the grave site of the GUI. While unveiling the most heralded Apple product since the iPhone, Jobs presented a powerful and compelling vision of what comes next.
This is the fascinating part of this whole storyline: that now, at the crux of touchscreens and cloud computing and the gee-whiz interface Apple has created, we’ve reached Nirvana.
Which makes me wonder about other visions of the future, particularly Google’s. After playing around with a few Android devices, I can imagine some powerful tablets featuring Google’s mobile operating system. Forget Chrome OS; Android, to me, offers a much more compelling option if you want to pit the iPad against a true rival.
The open app system, the configurability, the relative polish, the touchscreen interface. It’s all there. For some, the iPad’s computing appliance metaphor is what they’ve always wanted. Less details, less trouble.
But for geeks, an Android-powered tablet is a something to think about.
In any case, it’s nice that the editors at Wired gave the Newton a bit of credit for helping to usher in this Tablet Era – and rightfully so. Rarely is a technology born in the water fully-formed. There are incremental steps along the way. The plow led to the horse-drawn plow led to the John Deere A (that my father, and many farmers, collect) to the modern giant thresher. And just like farmers like to admire and appreciate the classic John Deeres (my dad used to drive one in our town’s Independence Day parade), we can appreciate the quirks and personality of the Newton.
Also, those classic tractors are still useful and running well, with some maintenance. We keep our MessagePads and eMates chugging along as well, even when iPads have passed them by.
