![]() It tried to do - and did do - a lot of things. The Newton is the classic tech example of the Swiss Army Knife. It’s hard to overstate the importance of having that kind of anchor and product focus. But the failure had more to do with the fact that the Newton didn’t have a single feature, like the actual phone feature of the iPhone, to help anchor it and make it something a broad audience would understand and desire. In many ways, it’s true - Newton was ahead of its time. Tech historians often refer to the Newton as a device ahead of its time and a predecessor to the iPhone. The most important (one) thing the Newton taught me The Newton got me a job, but it did something else even more important for me. And that internship later led to a full-time job within the Mac product management group. She liked my initiative and offered me a summer internship in the Newton group at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. And I told her the Newton was trying to do too much. I told her I thought the Newton’s business ads and the product feature set were out of sync - using the scientific calculator as the prime example. But the calculator inside the Newton was instead a scientific calculator designed for engineers.Īfter a few months of tinkering with the Newton, I decided to share my opinion about its shortcomings by going right to the source: Apple itself. I went to an Apple Newton developer’s conference and tracked down a woman who worked in product management. When Newton was released, I was in business school and all my budding entrepreneurial colleagues had an HP financial calculator. Engineers? Business users? Consumers? Based on the ads at the time, it seemed like Apple was most serious about targeting business users:īut the Newton’s product features certainly weren’t aligned on a single type of user. One example: the on-board calculator. I don’t believe the company itself knew what to make of the market nor who it should target. The wide feature set created a marketing challenge for Apple. But the unpredictable software became arguably its greatest failure - it even became the subject of the satirical Doonesbury comic strip:Īnd, of course, the Simpsons had their fun as well: ![]() The Newton’s handwriting recognition was its most highly anticipated feature because it was the first device to have this capability. It also included a memory card slot so that the device could run additional software. The Newton promised to be a note taker, a fax machine, an email platform, a personal address book, a calculator, a task manager, a sales tool, and more. Second, what made the Newton the first of its kind was that it could do so many things. First, the Newton represented a new product category - the personal digital assistant (PDA) - and no one really had a reference point for what to expect from it. I think those failures could be distilled to two facts. The failures of Newton are well documented. A first of its kind product that did (too) many things And perhaps more importantly, it taught me something that became a foundation for how we create mobile and connected experiences here at ArcTouch. It wound up helping me get a job at Apple. As it turns out, the Newton did a lot more for me than I expected. Why not just let me buy it?”Ī few minutes later, I walked out the door with a smile, knowing that perhaps I was the first person in the world who had purchased a Newton. And I’m ready to pay you right now for one. “But,” I argued, “if the Newton is going on sale tomorrow, you must already have stacks of them in the back room. The salesman at the time reminded me the Newton wasn’t going to be available until the next day. So, I walked into a nearby electronics store and threw down my credit card to make the purchase. I’ve always been kind of a nerd when it came to being among the first to acquire new gadgets, but the fact that this new gizmo was so utterly portable somehow made my yearning stronger. Perhaps it was because I’ve always had mobile in my blood - even before “mobile” was really a thing. It’s hard to explain my desire to be among the first to own it. ![]() The Newton was scheduled to go on sale the following day, which was the opening day of MacWorld, held in Boston. I had to - just had to - get my hands on the Apple Newton MessagePad. In my mind, failing in this mission was not an option. Twenty-three years ago, on a Sunday night in August 1993, I was on a mission.
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