Re: [NTLK] Letter from Steve Jobs

> But the collective failure of the company as it is now has
> blinded them to the fact that the main thing "wrong" with the Newton
was
> timing: they came up with the idea before all the technology was in
plac
> to carry out the underlying idea,

I disagree with all due respect. Front and foremost the main thing
"wrong"
with Apple back at the time the Newton was conceived was the fact that
Apple
had no marketing worth mentioning. My own impression with ALL Apple
hardware
at that time was that Apple much preferred keeping it, having spent so
much
work, money and effort on making it.

If I hadn't been given an OMP at an Apple developer conference
(details in
the "Stories" section of the site in the signature), I wouldn't be
writing this and nobody on this list would have ever heard of me.

We used a lot of Macs at that time, and successful purchases were
often an
adventure. I remember a time when the Powerbook 540 (not sure if at
that time
Apple notebooks were already called Powerbooks) was introduced. I had
saved
a bit, and with what today would amount to a couple of thousands of
USD in my pocket I drove to Hamburg
to buy one. At that time Hamburg was a city of approx. two million
people,
featuring exactly ONE Apple store. Said Apple store did not have the
new 540.
The shop assistant said they did not get one. Instead they were sent
the 540's little
brother, with a shitty black and white display. But even Little
Brother couldn't
be demonstrated because it arrived DOA due to incorrect packaging. Of
course,
Little Brother was the only one they got.

My money never left my purse. 100m down the street was a PC shop. One
of probably a couple of hundreds in Hamburg at that time. It wouldn't
have been
a problem whatsoever to buy a laptop in any of them. Which I didn't,
because I much
preferred Macs. In the end I spent this money on something completely
different.

As for customer service, Apple also left much to be desired.
I once had a brand-new Quadra at work. Unfortunately some criminals
that were
never caught stole all the hard disks and RAM modules from the Macs in
our
office. Unfortunately they were fairly dumb and also stole the ROM
modules,
which looked quite similar to the RAM modules. The ROM modules were
not available
as a spare part even for a company like us who bought dozens of Macs
anually.
In the end we had to throw away about a dozen brand-new Quadras, which
amounted
to a loss of a couple of TENS of thousands of USD, because without
their ROM module Quadras are fairly useless. Which was a major step
towards replacing
Macs with PCs, which we eventually did. Apple obviously couldn't care
less.

Another thing wrong with the Newton, at least in my opinion, is the
fact
that it does not fit in my trouser pockets. And everything that does
not fit
in my trouser pockets I will soon leave behind somewhere because I'm
not used to lugging
stuff around on a regular basis. I do use my Newton often, but always
in a stationary
way. At home, in the car, in a hut, in a tent, you name it. Still, my
outdated
Palm is always in my trouser pocket to remind me of dates and allow
easy access
to addresses. In my whole life I have never left anything behind that
lives in my
trouser pocket.

Last but not least, an important feature I have always missed is
decent
synchronization with at least the major standards like e. g. Microsoft
Office. Please refrain from any comments, I hate it like most people
forced to
use it. But it has for decades been the standard where I work, which
is unlikely to change.

With the Palm, synchronization requires but one press of a button. It
takes a
couple of seconds, and after that the Palm will wake me in the morning
because I have
a date I am not even aware of. Apple's synchronization, even with the
Newton
Connection Kit with is significantly better than the OS 2.x Newton
Connection
Utilities, never came even close to this.

Strangely, HWR has never been an issue for me. I am amazed that it is
so good, and
I love amazing people by demonstrating it, but being used to the speed
of touch-typing
I have always found it inacceptably slow. I am much faster with the
Newtons
on-screen keyboard, but even this drives me often crazy because text
entry is,
compared to that made with the help of a decent keyboard, so bloody
slow.

I see no reason why I shouldn't be using my Newton like today for the
rest of
my life. But I will positively never use it for what I'm using my good
ol'
Palm Pilot for.

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de

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Received on Thu Jan 8 03:38:51 2009