Hardware Makers Unhappy With Tablet Sales

rocketjam writes "According to The Register, hardware manufacturers, tired of continued low sales of the much-hyped tablet PC, are beginning to speak out, complaining that Microsoft has not marketed the platform enough and has over-priced licenses for its Windows XP Tablet Edition. The predicted demand for the devices has not materialized; faced with the tablet's premium pricing, consumers have continued to opt for lower-priced notebooks."

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Newton didn't fail; Apple management did

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From Pen Computing Magazine #22, June 1998

From Pen Computing Magazine #22, June 1998

Why Did Apple Kill Newton?

(C)Copyright 1998 David MacNeill

Early Friday morning, February 27, 1998, Apple Computer made official what the Newton cognoscenti had strongly suspected for six months: the Newton handheld computing platform was dead.

The rather terse press release gave the basic facts: Apple will cease all Newton OS hardware and software development, no more products will be made after the existing stock is depleted, and Apple will continue to provide support to users. Brief mention was made of development of a new low-cost Mac OS-based mobile device in the future, but no details were offered. But the most galling omission was the lack of an answer to the question on the minds of hundreds of thousands of shocked, angry Newton owners: Why?

Before I attempt to answer this question, let's take a quick tour of the mercurial five-year career of Newton. This will serve to prepare you for the several explanations we will be considering.

A brief history of Newton
During its turbulent five-year life, Newton technology was close to death several times, yet always managed to survive. Department heads came and went, but the essential concept of the personal digital assistant (PDA) was too compelling to die easily: A small, inexpensive, pen-based computing device that would accompany you everywhere, and that would learn enough about you to make informed assumptions about how to help you keep track of the myriad little bits of information we all must carry. It would be simple enough for anyone to use, a true computer for the rest of us.

I was fortunate to participate in the Newton beta test program and to co-author and deliver the training materials used to launch the product. The moment I saw that beta unit my life changed, and I wasn't the only one. I still remember the excitement of holding a pre-release Newton NotePad (as it was labeled then) in my hands for the first time, said Clinton Logan, ace developer for LandWare. Truly unique products like that don't come along very often.

For those of us who bought into this vision, it seemed like the future was arriving ahead of schedule. Like the buyers of the original 128K Macintosh, we gladly paid the high price of admission just to participate in this achingly cool dream that had taken physical form. We loved it and made it work for us in ways unanticipated by its creators, which is the true measure of great computer design.

What is Newton ?
Newton had an identity crisis from the very beginning. Former Apple CEO and Newton champion John Sculley first showed the prototype to the press in Chicago on May 1992, where he described not only the device but also their platform strategy. A central theme in Apple's advertising and promotional materials at the time repeatedly used the phrase What is Newton? Some have suggested that Apple never actually answered this question to anyone's satisfaction.

Consider the name change. The product was originally called the Newton NotePad to suggest its personal assistive features, but that was later changed to MessagePad to emphasize the product's communications capabilities.

We had always intended for Newton to be a platform, not just a product, said former Newton Systems Group chief Gaston Bastiens, now CEO of Lernout & Hauspie, an eminent speech recognition company. Unfortunately, all the press took away with them was the handwriting recognition aspect, which was over-emphasized. The whole thrust of Newton was to be a personal communicator as well as a personal assistant. From a conceptual point of view, John was absolutely right. The infrastructure for two-way wireless at the time was not there; we all knew it was a couple of years away, but it was always part of our platform strategy.

John Sculley generally gets both the credit and the blame for the origi