March 16, 2004
(← GO BACK)
Yesterday a rumor came out of a survey being taken of Newton users concerning the past, and the future of the platform. The rumor says that Stone Multimedia is surveying Newton users as to why they think the platform died off, and whether they would want to buy a new Newton were Apple to release one. Quite an interesting question that produces a lot of different answers.
Yesterday's world: What was and how it came about
For those of us who have used the Apple Newton, or are
lucky enough to own one (like me for instance) we can claim
with a great degree of certainty that it was, at the time
it was made, the best thing since sliced bread. I own a
Newton 2100. It sports a 167Mhz strongARM processor, 8
megabytes of RAM, two PCMCIA slots, a 480*320 display with
backlight and your choice of AA battery power or
laptop-style rechargeable battery (easily replaceable).
When it comes to software the newton was, again, way ahead
of it's time. It had built-in fax and e-mail support. It
had a comprehensive, expandable and customizable
addressbook. With the Newton Language Kits you could write
in Chinese, Japanese and Korean on a machine that you
bought in the USA. The best thing about the newton though
was the handwriting recognition. When it came to latin
characters Rosetta (the handwriting recognition engine) was
the best. It learned from the user over time so that things
(like my name) could be automatically learned if they were
misinterpreted and then corrected! It isn't easy writing a
greek in latin characters name and having it recognized
using HWR in most systems!
Other PDAs, even after the new millennium could still learn
from the Newton. My iPaq 3870 for instance does not have a
removable battery. I would need to send it in for service
if something happened to the battery. The screen on my
Newton could be both landscape and portrait. Only on linux
PDAs have I seen such built in functionality, PalmOS,
Windows Mobile and Symbian leave something to be desired in
this area.
The newton died off in February 1998, the last models were
the e-mate 300, a sublaptop of a sort, and the Newton 2100,
a PDA, which by today's standards looks more like a tablet
PC. Why did the Newton die off? Well that is a question
with many answers. Some will say that the newton was too
expensive. It cost 1000 US Dollars to buy a Newton 2100
while it cost much less to buy a palm pilot. The specs of
the two machines were different and as a result the Newton
was looked upon as a laptop replacement rather than what
later on turned out to be the typical PDA (a minimalist
agenda replacement). Some people might say it was Steve
Job's fault, that he wanted to get rid of the Newton
because he did not invent it and his predecessor did.
Honestly if the Newton was competing with powerbook sales,
then by all means get rid of it. Apple had a gazillion
product lines. Once Apple streamlined their process and got
out of the red and started making profit again Jobs was
praised, even if the Newton was killed off.
Today's world: Where is the Newton today?
Well, the newton is in many places. There is a huge
community out there. The
Newton-Talk
list
provides daily information and help to new and seasoned
newton users. The
United Network of Newton
Archives
provides free (and demo) software for all of your Newton
needs. This is where I have gotten most of my Newton
Software, and the Newton software that I did not get from
here I was referred to by them. These are just a couple of
the great resources available.
Newton developers still exist. Their products now have gone
to shareware or freeware status and they still keep
developing for the Newton. A few of the notable titles that
have been developed are drivers for Bluetooth, WLAN, LAN,
and GSM PCMCIA cards. With a bluetooth enabled phone and a
Bluetooth card in your newton you are ready to be on the go
and wireless again. There are text input options for greek
and russian, something that was not available before, and
there is software for russian localization of the newton,
just like what the NLK (Newton Language Kit) did for asian
languages. Development of sync software for MacOS X is also
on the move with software such as nSync.
Today's world: Newton Limitations
Despite the best efforts of the Newton community,
limitations do exist. The only GSM cards that can be used
are Nokia GSM 900 datacards (Europe and Asia only) so this
leaves people in the Americas stranded without GSM
connectivity. Also these cards do not support GPRS or EDGE
so you are left in the dust using them. The Infrared on the
Newton is not compatible with the infrared standard
available now given that Ir was just picking up back then
and there were no established standards. As a result you
need to buy and install third party applications or
communications stacks to be able to communicate with
PalmOS, PocketPC and Symbian devices, and these
applications might not be completely up to date as to be
able to exchange data with other devices.
In addition to the aforementioned limitations, the NewtonOS
cannot understand more than 32MB of memory on a card so
workarounds need to be devised. It is nice that you can
listen to MP3s or play Nintendo NES games on your Newton,
but naturally you need more memory on the storage card in
order to be able to do that. Finally the screen. Some users
say that they love the big screen. I agree to some degree.
Having a nice big screen to work with makes things easier,
however how can I easily transport this device? I cannot
put it in my pockets because it is too bulky.
Today's world: Lessons learned from other PDAs
Well, quite a lessons have been learned as far as I am
concerned. First of all, when the Newton demised and the
Palm Pilots took over and the PDA OS war kind of started
(magic cap, palmOS, windows CE, Pocket Viewer OS, original
Zaurus-OS, Linux, EPOC just to name a few of the
contenders), PDAs took on a minimalist functionality. Their
functionality, in my opinion, was akin to my original Sharp
YO 32kb organizer. To be fair, the original palm units did
have graffiti (handwriting recognition) and did have the
ability to jot electronic ink. The Pocket Viewer series and
the original Zaurus-OS had spreadsheet and document viewers
These are abilities that my YO organizer did not have, so
in a sense they were a step up from an organizer. There
seemed to be a backlash from consumers when it came to
devices that included everything and the kitchen sink,
devices such as the Newton and the Sony Magic Link. It is
only recently that Compaq/HP and Sony have moved forward in
creating devices that are more well rounded, that can do
more than the minimalist tasks that the PalmOS did up till
the time that the clie's came out. Lesson learned? There is
no panacea when it comes to a device. Just like computers
are customizable to be used from kids playing games to
scientists rendering complex graphical models, so are PDAs
completely depended on user preference.
Secondly now that phase one of the "PDA OS wars" is
complete and some of the PDA OSes that I mentioned earlier
have died off we can see a couple of valuable lessons
learned. In order for a device to succeed it must (a) use
an established operating system like PalmOS, Symbian or
Windows Mobile that have a big library of applications that
users can use, (b) you must use an open operating system
like linux (c) or the company that is making the device,
even if it is using its own proprietary OS, needs to have
enough clout or compatibility with an established OS, or
has to have ported a lot of applications to its OS by the
time of deployment. Also it needs to have commitments from
developers for future applications. Developers today will
not spend time to write and painstakingly debug
applications that will run on hardware that is obsolete in
a year or less. One such example is the the HipTop OS for
danger's hiptop. I have not seen any third party
applications written from this OS and it has been a couple
of years now since its inception. Lesson learned? Pick your
OS wisely!
Tomorrow's world:What should a new Newton device look like?
The rumor that is going around is that apple is, through an
intermediary, polling former and current Newton users to
see why the newton failed and whether they would buy a new
Newton if Apple were to make a new one. Whether or not this
is true, we do not know. Even if it is true, just because
Apple is polling individuals to gauge their interest
doesn't mean that a device will be available on the market
in the next few months. Since a device probably wont be
available for a while here are my totally unsolicited
suggestions.
Hardware:
When
it comes to hardware you need to have some variety. You can
have plain old PDAs and you can have smartphones. Some
people could care less about cellular connectivity so plain
old PDAs would be good matches for them. Personally
anything less than a smartphone is unacceptable to me. No
matter what your personal preference the new Apple PDA
should be connectable to anything. It should sport both
Infrared and Bluetooth in order to be able to connect to
any other device out there. Compatibility and connectivity
are paramount.
Apple should also think of the form factor! Some people
work well without a real keyboard in which case you can
have run-of-the-mill iPaq or Zire style handheld. Some
people prefer a keyboard so give then the option by having
something like the Danger Sidekick, the Nokia Communicator
9500 or the Clie UX-50. Internal memory should vary by the
level of the device, but the OS needs to be upgradeable in
all of the devices. The battery should be removable and
replaceable easily just like the Newton 2100. Nothing is
more irking than having to send in your PDA to get the
battery replaced. Personally I like the form factor of the
Sidekick, if they could only add a touch-screen on top of
that and add a few more features it would make a great
device.
If Apple does venture into the smartphone business as well
they need to be careful not to fragment their market like
they did with the Macintosh market in the 1990's by
producing a lot of similar products. I would suggest that
they make smartphones that are quadband GSM and UMTS in
which case they can market the phones globally at the same
time. For the CDMA crowds out there they should make a
triband CDMA phone so that they could market it
concurrently in all countries that run CDMA like the USA,
Canada, Australia, Korea and Japan.
Finally for hardware they need to think of what is more
important for them. Do they want to make a digital
assistant and entertainment device? (like a clie for
instance) or do they want to make something businesslike
(like a communicator 9500) ? or perhaps a combination of
both? Again, my totally unsolicited opinion is this: radio
tuners are available built-in into conventional phones, use
them! You've got quicktime, use it! You've got affiliations
that gave you the iSight camera, use them to make a good
mobile camera!
Software
Well,
software is the section that will turn a lot of heads.
Should Apple revamp the old NewtonOS or should they license
another OS ? If they license another OS which one? The
choice of operating system seems to me to be the most
controversial one. Should they choose an operating system
made by their "rival" in the desktop OS market (windows
mobile)? Should they choose an OS from the established PDA
OS makers (cobalt)? Should they go with an OS that has been
in the mobile communications market for a long time
(Symbian)? Should they choose something free (linux) or
something new (HipTop OS)?
The choice of OS depends on two things, as far as I am
concerned. (1) What kind of a device do you have? and (2)
software, software, software! You can have the best OS and
best hardware out in the market, but without extra third
party software you are almost certainly dead in the water.
My personal opinion would be to choose Symbian 8 as the
operating system. Symbian has been time and again tested as
a PDA and smartphone OS, it has a following with major
phone manufacturers, it has software already built for it
and thus this software can be easily ported. The other
advantage of Symbian 8 is that it does both PDA and Mobile
Phone functions from one processor! Most other OSes require
two processors. Linux or a BSD would be another option
given that Apple has already gone *NIX with its desktop
platform.
Then there is the dilemma of built-in software. What to
include? what not to include? Well, obviously you should
have some sort of PIM functions. Apple should port the
Newton's addressbook and combine features from the MacOS X
addressbook. They should work on a PDA version of iCal and
get ideas from the Newton calendar and incorporate
functions and ideas that work well with other PIMs on other
platforms (both built-in and third party). Take Rosetta and
make it better. You had great success making it understand
roman characters, now how about making Rosetta understand
cyrillic, greek, hebrew, arabic, chinese, japanese, korean,
extended roman and other alphabets? This also means that
the OS needs to be fully unicode as well as the
applications for the OS. In addition, make the OS
localization modular like it is in MacOS X and from the
get-go have it localized in as many languages as possible.
A note-pad application with a voice recorder is also a
no-brainer. One thing that I really liked in the old Newton
was an app that linked appointments and reminders to people
on your contact list and it created a "today" screen for
any given day that you wanted. I think this would be a nice
addition to the revamped platform.
Now what about other applications? Well, minimalists will
like the aforementioned applications but people like me
will look at them and cringe! For people like me Apple
could bundle a CD-ROM with applications like iTunes for
Newton, iMovie (VLC like application), Safari for Newton,
PowerMail (IMAP,POP3,SMS, MMS, EMS, FAX client), Image
Viewer application, Document viewer that supports all major
formats and all text encodings (VERY important! you do not
want to be reading gibberish if someone sends you a greek
document!), a world-mate like application, calculator
(simple, scientific and maybe financial & graphing).
Now for add on hardware, if the device supports a TV tuner
or a radio tuner it should have a TiVo like application to
record programs for later viewing. If there is a built-in
camera the application should be able to take both still
photos and videos. As you can see I am an "everything and
the kitchen sink" kind of user.
Then there is the syncing issue. My opinion is that from
out-of-the-box it should support Windows, MacOS and Linux.
The sync should be done by way of SyncML and the linux code
should be GPL'ed or Apple Licensed in order to have more
people develop for it. This way no matter what platform you
are running you can use one of these PDAs/smartphones.
Penultimately, there is the issue of the User Interface
(UI). What UI should Apple adopt? The Cobalt UI? The
Windows Mobile UI ? The Symbian UIQ? Or should it stick
with the classic NewtonOS UI? No matter what OS Apple
chooses to use in implementing their new Newton they should
rework the old Newton UI. Personally I think that it is far
more superior than any mobile UI out there. Why? Well
Windows Mobile is taking paradigms from Windows Desktop.
What works on the desktop might not work on a PDA. Cobalt
is coming out but the UI is almost the same as PalmOS 1.0,
from what I've seen. It does seem to have good new things
added to it but the "new" UI looks like the old UI. Symbian
UIQ looks nice but when compared to the NewtonOS UI, the
NewtonOS UI beats it. I am not saying that the Newton UI is
without fault. GUI designers and UI gurus at Apple need to
look at the current Newton UI and find ways to bring it
into the 21st century and to learn from past mistakes of
both the NewtonOS platform and other OS/UI platforms.
Then finally (drum roll please), there is the issue of
existing applications! I know that there might not be THAT
many Newton users out there but is there a possibility of
porting the existing applications for the Newton to the new
platform? If you cannot port them, could you make a
"classic" like environment for the new Newton that will run
old Newton applications? I am sure all the Newton fans will
really appreciate this. Also when you make the selection of
the OS, would you be able to make a VM to run the
applications of that OS unaltered, assuming that you go
ahead an use the Newton UI on top of another operating
system like PalmOS or Symbian. This could save time and
money in porting costs and users could choose from a wide
base of pre-existing applications.
It costs how much?!?!
I've left the cost section for last given that his is
another thing that rallies people to act all weird. Cost
was a deterring factor with the old Newton, but is it going
to be one with the new Newton? In the old Newton days
organizers (like my Sharp YO) cost a maximum of 150 US
Dollars. The Newton cost 9 times that! Ultimately most
people do not compare functionality to price, they compare
product A and product B in terms of price. The entry level
Newton should be priced at or near to 90 US Dollars. This
could be a good entry way for new users and also existing
users that do not want all the bells and whistles like
digital cameras, FM/TV tuners, cell phone ability and GPS.
Then as features get added the price would go up. The
maximum price (for an unsubsidized smartphone) should be no
more than 900 US Dollars. Subsidized I would estimate the
price at 500 or 600 USD. Some people may cringe what I
mention these prices but if you are getting a quadband GSM
+ UMTS phone with a decent camera (still + video) with the
ability to view multimedia and carry around some of your
music collection, it's like having 4 devices in one.
A
2MP camera
costs around $150, a regular
quadband
cellphone
, unsubsidized could go for around 400, a
"connected" PDA
could go for about $300 or$ 500 (depending on how connected
you want it to be), an
MP3 music player
goes for about $100. If you do that math, the max price is
about 1250 USD, then add in some more costs to make all
these devices into one and you have a device that would
cost you around $1400, all things considered. Isn't 900USD
(or 600USD subsidized) better?
Enough Day Dreaming - Back to the Present: Conclusion? All
things considered, Apple will have an interesting
experience should they decide to come forth into the PDA
market again. They had made a marvelous product before and
I am sure they can do it again. To make things more
interesting than they already are, Apple managed to take an
OS (NeXTSTEP) that wasn't their own and make it their own.
Apple is more than capable to do the same with their new
PDA platform should they choose to go that route. Even
though this is a rumor, and most likely not culminate to
anything of interest, it is still interesting to pay
attention to what is going on and give your input because
one thing has been proven by Apple. You never
know...
Originally Published in:
http://www.newmobilecomputing.com/story.php?news_id=3774
Date: March 16, 2004
← GO BACK