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Long live The King of PDAs
x136 writes "Despite being cancelled over four years ago, the Newton Messagepad is still getting better. You can now connect to an 802.11b network, install packages from OS X, and play the MP3s that you transferred from iTunes to your Compact Flash cards. It's pretty hard to imagine how great the Newton could have become had it not been abandoned."
Unable to give URL, probably it even was a paper interview. Anyway it was in russian - you see, pen input interface was developed by Russians. The interview was after the second version is out and it is clear that PDA have selling problems. Public opinion was that PDA is selling bad because of the pen input problems.
Developers told that the product software (and probably hardware too) was build in extreme hurry: people worked 24 hours a day to meet deadline because such was the company policy. Consequently not everything was perfect in the first release. This was fixed later but generally good product already got a bad fame.
Also all magazines repeatedly told the PDA is selling bad without naming any sources or reasons. No doubt it started to sell bad - who would buy such a product? I see a hand of Evil Empire here because WinCE 1.0 was already ready to start.
Particulary concerning pen interface developers said they were often blamed for a bad quality of input though it was caused not by a bug in their program but by lack of resources and bad resource management. You see, if the thing starts garbage collection or something right while you are writing no doubt you'll get bad results. Hovewer user had no means to say one from another.
Developers had not time to negotiate this problem and was forced to release 'as is'. And, probably, Apple had not tested it throughoutly before first release because of the deadlines. Knowing how IBM is working inside I well believe it though it's pity there's so little difference because Apple always claimed to be 'Not IBM'.