From: Ed Kummel (tech_ed_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 21:55:30 PST
The Newt, like all Apple ad campaigns, were too
high-brow. The Vinyard owner using his Newt,
right...how many of us own a vinyard? (I can't even
grow tomato plants in my backyard) Or the student
taking notes (I don't know about you, but purchasing a
$1,000 electronic gadget that interfaces with NOTHING
was definatly not in my student budget)
Apple needed to to show a gas meter person gathering
data from within his van, or a doctor pulling up
patient records, or a business man getting flight
updates (via his AllPoints card). But most
importantly, and this is what kills Apple every
time...they need to have a direction that they would
like to see the device go into. Apple always says,
they leave the door open for whatever development 3rd
parties see fit to develop for...well, I don't know
about you, but if I don't see something that it will
fit with a minimum of modifications, I'll find
something else. Apple needed to "seed" the industry.
They needed to create a fertile developer environment.
They needed to create a "think-tank" to guide these
developers. They needed to either create standards and
open them up to the public (ie. licensing) or make the
device interact seamlessly with anything out there.
In all my dealings with Apple and the Newton, it
always seemed to be an experiment...a kinda of "let's
see what happens if..." kinda thing...Orders I
personaly placed for tens of thousands of units were
scoffed and never taken seriously. With the power of
the Newt and the capabilities of the communications
world, Apple had the head-start to be able to make the
Newton ubiquitous.
I guess that Apple really didn't care enough to see it
through...shame really...it could have really been
something. Some times I feel like I'm the good guy in
an old west film where the bad guy forces me to dance
by shooting at my feet. You only have one tune, and
you can only get shot a limited number of times before
you can't dance any longer... and I'm no dancer.
Ed
web/gadget guru
--- Jim Witte <jswitte_at_bloomington.in.us> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I may be beating a dead horse here (well, of
> *course* I'm beating the
> poor horse, I'm just wondering if I'm aiming at a
> spot that hasn't been
> aimed at before on this list.. Uugh. I'll just
> stop now with the
> much-over-stretched analogy.. It's getting much too
> macabre!)
>
> If some group (oh, say we found out we had a few
> kinda-crazy
> billionaires in our midst) wanted to advertise the
> Newton today, what
> would you change about the way the campaign was
> done? I was just
> looking at a couple of the promo shots and wondered
> (I suppose in a bit
> of a reverse-rascist way [forget I said that before
> I get a big foot
> caught in my mouth!]) "Where are the Asians?"
> Arguably the Newton
> would have succeeded if Apple had made a
> stripped-down verison,
> feature-wise and size-wise and sold it for $250-$300
> (like the Palm is
> today). They didn't, but there a bit of a gap
> between Palm/PocketPC
> and even subnotebooks in functionality and
> ease-of-use (respectively? -
> no functionality in palm, no ease-of-use in
> pocketPC?)
>
> Assume that the Newton were being marketed today
> in the same form
> factor as before, and the ONLY thing that was
> different about the
> Newton were increases in component quality (battery
> life, screen
> quality, processor speed) were if it were a bit
> lighter (made possible
> by better components, perhaps even an OLED display),
> had better
> connectivity (software-wise, and physical-wise - no
> silly dongle, audio
> in/out ports as an option), and perhaps a voice
> recognition app
> (meaning it would either have a very good algorithm,
> or more memory).
> How would we do the ads differently, in terms of
> what to show people
> about the Newton, as well as the demographics of
> them (the
> above-mentioned question)?
>
> Jim
=====
May every SPAM you receive magically come true.
-Spencer F. Katt; eWeek magazine
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 22:30:01 PST