Re: [NTLK] Quote of the day!

From: Mark Harter <willmark_at_mac.com>
Date: Fri Jul 13 2007 - 08:43:12 EDT

Thomas you hit the nail on the head.

Lets suppose for a minute that ulterior motives had nothing to do with the decision to kill the Newt (i f for one don't think it did but I'll play along)... You're the CEO, you're coming back to a company that is not just hemorrhaging money... its hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter. What do you do to get some immediate relief? You axe a project while innovative, has lost the company a BILLION dollars in the space of a less than a decade... We can argue till were blue in the face about this. Fact remains Apple had MANY more problems, and of a higher order of magnitude to deal with rather then the Newton. Namely the crumbling OS that was OS7. People can piss and moan about "big old nasty Steve Jobs" all they want. Fact is he SAVED Apple in spite of many (read: Sculley, Spindler) attempts to kill it. And if killing off the Newt helped, then fine by me. Apple is too important as a company to risk over ANY project. And that means ANY project... yes the iPhone included. Looks like this time
 aroudn Apple has hit it out of the park.

Don't get me wrong, much like Thomas I am a Newton fan and have used both the MP120 and an U2000, however that doesn't blind me to the reality of the situation, YMMV. Also all this bitching about the iPhone, blah, blah, You know what it sounds like? Whining. Because Apple ignored a miniscule market segment and that segment's beloved device didn't get what they want (How many Newts were ever sold? Apple and by extension Stve Jobs should be vilified??? How many Newton users where there at its zeneith? My guess is Apple sold more iPhones than Newtons on opening night then in the lifetime of the Newton...

I've hinted at it in the past and now I strongly believe it. Many here, even if they won't admit it simply dismiss the iPhone because its not the Newton. I've seen the same shenanigans on PageMaker forums for 6 years where people won't use InDesign. If Adobe had branded ID PageMaker 8, they'd be just fine. Had Apple called the iPhone the Newton II or some such I doubt we would be having this discussion. Sure I have seen some legitimate gripes, But it astounds me that some are dismissing the iPhone and some haven't even touched it!

By the line of reasoning of some here (as I see it) , John Sculley should be hailed as the "Second Coming" and deified simply because he gave is the glorious and most holy Newton... Give me a break. Sculley isn't in the same league as Jobs. Talk about "RDF" Calling Steve "$Jobs" is likewise childish. Get a grip Apple is a company like any other, and companies exist to make money.

And in closing before I get jumped on I'll repeat this again from the beginning of my post. "Don't get me wrong, much like Thomas I am a Newton fan and have used both the MP120 and an U2000, however that doesn't blind me to the reality of the situation".

Mark

On Thursday, July 12, 2007, at 06:58PM, "Thomas Brand (T2)" <thomasbrand@mac.com> wrote:
>I am probably going to get a lot of flak on this board for saying this
>but I think Steve made the right decision by canceling the Newton. Now
>hear me out I am a huge fan of the Newton and its technology, but at
>the same time I don't think Apple would be the striving company it is
>today without the drastic slashes that were made by Steve to the Apple
>product line. Steve made Apple concentrate on what it does best,
>inovate, and he forced that inovation to whee Apple needed it most,
>its core business of computers. Sue the Newton was and still is a
>landmark product but it had to many lacking features such as true
>portability, proper syncing, and a reasonable price point. Palms met
>this requirement for most people but even now history has proven jobs
>right that finnancially it was a good idea to get out of the PDA
>business until the technology was truely ready for a powerful mobile
>and networked experience.
>

>
>

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Received on Fri Jul 13 08:43:14 2007

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