Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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?