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Second Post-Apple Newton Life?
An anonymous reader with a lot of time on his hands writes "As seen on Slashdot b e f o r e, the Newton refuses to die. Since Apple discontinued it, it got ATA, WiFi, Bluetooth, Zeroconf and even a NES emulator. Now, several Mac news sites r e p o r t, Newton users founded an association with John Sculley, who pushed the Newton at Apple, as its honorary president. They're organizing a conference in Paris in September. How long until all these users switch to new hardware?"
The Newton does the same job of my Palm Tungsten - and even surpasses it (my Tungsten E doesn't yet have WiFi support, and I can pick up a second hand Newton for quite a bit cheaper). Clearly though, this is a niche market. My Newton is too large for me to use regularly, but it's a great curiosity.
I think of the Newton like the NES - the games on the NES were great, and are still very popular (take the recent GameBoy Advance NES special edition). The NES formed the basis of many great consoles to come. But even though the NES is still a great machine (like the Newton), I probably would prefer to play on a PlayStation. Although, the flaw in this (rather basdly though out) analogy between the Newton and the NES would be one of them sold extremely well...
Which new hardware, exactly, will they switch to? A close co-worker of mine refuses to lay his Newton to rest, asserting that there are no modern products that compare. This is a subjective opinion of his, of course, but it establishes the sentiments that the users of this ancient PDA seem to share.
Funny how the lousy 1 character links (Thanks Michael!!! not) are just 2 stories above a story about lousy UI design. Go figure.
What ever happened to letting us know where the links to go? For some reason, I have a feeling that single character links are not what Tim Berners-Lee had in mind for this thing.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Some people may know me as the anti apple advocate however after using a newton (5 years ago) I must admit I was impressed by its ability to recognize handwriting, battery life, forward thinking construction and the fact that it was so ahead of its time(and still is in some ways)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Amiga.
Look at how long the Amiga fans have been holding onto that platform. If it wasn't for them, I would probably no longer remember what an Amiga even was. Same can be said for OS/2 - look at eComStation. Great products tend to outlast vendor interest.
...continuing to support ... Is there a good reason, other than 'I hate everything that Microsoft does no matter what and nobody will ever change my mind
Um...Palm?
why does Apple continue to shun these users when there is clearly a market for an new Apple handheld computing device?
Economics
How long until all these users switch to new hardware?"
Considering the number of Amiga fan sites, and people that still use Amigas - not any time soon.
cluge
AnygryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Most computer users have gotten very used to the windows/mac/gnome/kde/cde/etc way of doing things. Sure, they all look different, but I'll bet you can figure out the basics and successfully get general user-level stuff after a little aclimitization. It's all the same ideas in different skins.
The Newton interface is different. Whether you love it or hate it, it's still interesting to see that there are other ways of doing things.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Now that the PDA market is in full swing, apple could get back into it and make some money.
:(
They created the market, if they only had the patience to stick it out
You really cant replace a Newt with the dismal offerings of today. It was designed from the ground up as a handheld device, what we have today uses desktop OS's grafted onto a palm sized device...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Newton Community is a very interesting case of users continuing to support a product which for all intents and purposes should have died years ago.
Why, exactly, should Newton "have died years ago"? You buy a product to satsify a need. If the product satisfies that need, and continues to do so, why stop using it?
Most of us have literally bought into the notion that only the latest, greatest version of a product can possibly meet our needs. Along with that comes the idea that only a product that's actively supported by its manufacturer is suitable for use. We're "consumers" because we buy a thing and use it until it's all used up -- we "consume" it -- and then we go buy another thing. This is great for an industry whose financial health is based on "upgrades." If we didn't all go buy new computers every few years, the computer industry would be in much worse shape than it is. But it's not necessarily in our own best interests.
Newton is a case where a product designed well and implemented well served its purpose well, and continues to do so. The manufacturer no longer supports it, but that doesn't really make a difference to those for whom Newton currently works.
If Nokia suddenly went out of business, would you instantly run out and buy a new phone? If Palm went belly-up, would you trash your Tungsten and buy something else? And if you would, why?
What makes iPod famous, is also it's simplicity. So that's not really a good idea to add functionnalities :)
And if they didn't do that? If they just reintroduced it at it's original specs? Wouldn't the price be lower since the hardware is older and hopefully cheap by now?