Newton Poetry

Tony Kan at My Apple Newton:

In summary, a $502.5m outlay resulted in a return of $842.5m or a profit of $340m. This analysis doesn’t include the portfolio of patents and other intellectual property that the Newton project generated and from which Apple continues to benefit to this day.

Depending on your perspective, the Newton was hardly a failure.

The perspective part is key, right? Because Kan is right, at least when it comes to financials and intellectual property.

But how about success in terms of business sense or popularity? Or even enjoyability?

I’ve heard it argued in a few places that, had Steve Jobs not killed off the platform, new Newtons like the eMate could have taken off. So maybe later it would have made business sense, with some tweaks and modifications here and there. A smaller size, perhaps, or a color screen. More support. Or, good lord, a lower price. That’s where I think the “failure” term gets thrown around a lot: the Newton wasn’t all that popular. It didn’t take over Apple’s business in a transformative way like, say, the Macintosh did. Or the iPod. It wasn’t a smash hit (I almost wrote “success” there).

There’s no question that people who used the Newton enjoyed it. They still enjoy it today, even if it’s not an every day machine. For current Newton users, the MessagePad was anything but a failure. Some see other devices’ handwriting recognition and interface and scoff. Those are the failures.

But when John Gruber postulated that the iPad has all ready outsold the entire Newton product line, he was probably right. The closest numbers anyone, including Grant Hutchinson, can come up with is about 200,000.

The iPad sold more than that on its first day.

Jesus Weeping God – we’ve been down this road before.

Forbes.com has yet another “Newton was a smelly sock” article and photo series focusing on Apple and the Bandai gaming platform. And guess which pioneering, monochrome product is also featured?

That’s right, the Newton. And don’t forget to include the photo gallery, you pimps. Up yours Forbes – again.

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.