Apple Newton vs. Apple iPhone

An anonymous reader writes "CNET UK has written a head-to-head piece entitled Apple Newton vs Apple iPhone. Despite the Newton being released some 10 years ago, and despite the iPhone being a phone, not a tablet, the site's editors believe the Newton is the more innovative of the two Apple products. The two devices were tied over four rounds, but in the 'Special Powers' element, where the iPhone was praised for its iPod capability, the Newton countered with its ability to play MP3s, connect to iTunes and 'its ability to work as a phone' because 'Blam! Not even the iPhone can do that.'"

Comments

ok

[nomadic]

I have an iphone and love it. Amazing phone. But like just about everything else Apple has done, it's not really "innovative." They package well, but they never really come out with anything new. The closest thing they probably came to innovating on WAS the Newton.

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[TheRaven64]

The Newton wasn't close to innovating, it was innovating. Newton Soup, the shape recognition, the drag-to-edge copy and paste implementation, the entire hybrid class-for-model, prototype-for-UI language concept, agents, and a number of other things in the Newton were innovative and are still better than most contemporary systems. The iPhone's only selling point is that it has a UI that sucks a lot less than most of its competitors.

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[speedingant]

Problem is, innovation doesn't sell and make large profits in the world of technology. Apple now plays it safe, copies ideas and makes them better and generally useable. Then they sell for a neat profit.

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[nomadic]

Problem is, innovation doesn't sell and make large profits in the world of technology. Apple now plays it safe, copies ideas and makes them better and generally useable. Then they sell for a neat profit.

Which isn't a problem. What I don't like is the part where they turn around and proclaim themselves as innovators.

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[drdrgivemethenews]

I have an iphone (3Gs) and hate it. Terrible phone. Nice toy though. Even though I hate the keyboard, I have to say that the large screen was the innovation that sold me: I can actually read a slashdot story on this device. But so many things are broken, it's just too much. Some of it is ATT, yes.

I'm going to Verizon Real Soon Now, for real phone service, and getting a real GPS, so my locator service will actually work when I need it, not just 1/3 of the time. Those are the two things I really wanted out of a phone, and I'm not getting either of them now.

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[drizek]

The iPhone UI sucks a lot harder than WebOSs, and it is no better than Android.

The ONLY selling point of the iPhone is the ecosystem. Brand loyalty, huge number of apps and huge installed base. The phone itself is bland compared to all the other offerings(most new phones are essentially an iPhone plus a couple other features, like a high res display or a physical keyboard), and the software is about as advanced as Palm OS 4.0. I don't know how Apple can ship a product in 2009 that doesn't support multitasking.

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[rolfwind]

Which isn't a problem. What I don't like is the part where they turn around and proclaim themselves as innovators.

Microsoft has been doing the same for years now. Anyone that believes corporate propaganda should go out and get some fresh air.

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[nomadic]

Microsoft has been doing the same for years now. Anyone that believes corporate propaganda should go out and get some fresh air.

And they are routinely derided for it. Like when they suddenly claimed that they invented symbolic links. Apple is not. It's not really the propaganda isn't what annoys me, it's the mindless worship from their fans that gets to me. And I LIKE Apple products. I think that right now they make the best computers out there. But I'm not going to switch that like to the company. A company is a piece of paper filed with the state.

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[Bert64]

It does support multitasking, it just doesn't support multitasking with third party apps through the official app store. The apple apps can multitask, as can third party apps on jailbroken phones.

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[Darkness404]

Not just the UI, it was the browser that made it sell well. There wasn't a single phone with a decent browser before the iPhone. Opera Mobile was somewhat decent, but compared so mobile Safari, Safari wins. This is a bit less of a selling point now with Android and others have decent browsers, but at the time if you wanted to surf the web you'd better get an iPhone. Yeah, the iPhone wasn't very innovative, but the fact that it had a complete package (ability to play music decently, videos, YouTube, good browser, later addition of apps, etc) made it a best seller even when tied to an overpriced network.

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[E IS mC(Square)]

No. It does not.

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[Rebelgecko]

Well, if it needs a new home, I'd be willing to taking it off your hands, sans SIM card.

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[Ihmhi]

the drag-to-edge copy and paste implementation

Proof that Apple does indeed know how to implement copy/paste.

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[Guy Harris]

Of course the iphone is innovative. Who else but apple would think it's a good idea to blindly execute whatever program it receives by SMS?

Android? (They hadn't finished testing Windows Mobile as of when they published that paper.)

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[poetmatt]

history and every industry that exists today would beg to differ.

Not everyone is successful with innovation, but innovation (and invention) are what can enable success.

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[Guy Harris]

No. It does not.

"Does not" support multitasking for third-party apps through the official app store? Correct.

"Does not" support multitasking for bundled apps? Incorrect, although even those apps are subject to being suddenly terminated if a foreground app needs more memory.

"Does not" support multitasking for third-party apps on jailbroken phones? Incorrect, modulo the previous comment about sudden termination.

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[JaredOfEuropa]

The iPhone was not very innovative from a technological point of view, but what it did to the market is nothing short of amazing. For a phone that sucked so badly in some functions, even really basic ones, it managed to create a buzz and won over many people (like myself) who had previously not used Apple products and were always a little ware of the fanboys. The iPhone's UI is a strong selling point, but I'd say the attractive package was a factor as well. The real kicker tough is the touch screen, without which that wonderful UI would not have been so great. I'm not thinking about pinch-zooming here, but about the ability to whip out the phone and use it without a stylus, even being able to quickly punch out an SMS using nothing but my chubby fingers.

All those things came together nicely for the first time in the iPhone; it's the first phone I've come across that really invites people to use it, especially when it comes to apps and the internet. Mobile data usage has jumped since the iPhone's introduction, and it has taken an astounding share of that usage compared to it's market share, even though many phones with similar capabilities already existed. Without being very innovative itself, it has proven to be a gamechanger in the market.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Not innovative? I'm not sure what does that means, but I don't remember to have seen a (multi-)touch Phone before the iPhone. Now the market is full of them, after the iP

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[Aranykai]

If it indiscriminately terminates processes because the running app needs more memory, its not really practical to say it supports multitasking. You are just trying to redefine the accepted meaning of a multitasking smart phone to fit your fancy.

I might be biased though, I'm writing this from my HTC Hero with Android 1.6

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[mdwh2]

But by this logic, almost every phone on the market multitasks - e.g., my phone's built in mp3 player can run at the same time as the built in email client.

The point is that it doesn't run more than one third party application at once (which really means it's a feature phone, not a smartphone - unless you use the broader definition of smartphone that would also include all feature phones). For years, when people talked about multitasking on phones, this is what they meant - it's only with the Iphone that suddenly the terms have to be used differently, to hide the things it doesn't do, and pretend it's a "smartphone"...

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[noewun]

The bigger issue here is the narrow definition of "innovation"* so often used at /. and other tech-centric places, in which innovation only means innovation in a strictly technological/programming/hardware sense of the word. Behind this conceit lies the assumption that the only innovation which matters is purely technological innovation, and all of the other aspects, including making these innovations easy to use and accessible for wide range of people, are looked up on as somehow less than.

Hence the constantly renewing Year of Linux on the Desktop, which ignores the fact even the best-packaged Linux distros are at best a mixed bag when it comes to usability. Hence the constant claims that the iPhone/iPod will soon fall from its perch because its focus is ease of use and accessibility and not "innovation". Hence the boiling down of the wide variety of things which must go into a successful product as "cool" or "marketing", etc.

Apple's particular current genius lies in its ability to take technology and package it for use by a wide variety of people who don't care about the technology per se, and a big part of this is the iPod Touch/iPhone's UI, which makes it so easy even your grandmother can tweet away to her heart's content. And I think the reason Apple catches so much flack here, and elsewhere, is that by giving the "sheep" access to the technology, it take away from the n3rd world the special acclaim they have given themselves for having access to that technology.

That thought aside, the fact that so very few tech companies are able to do what Apple does should tell you how incredibly difficult it is to do, and why it is as innovative as any other tech achievement. Microsoft has, quite literally, money to burn and the best they can do is constantly bandage over the larger usability nightmares in Windows and Windows Mobile. Palm had to almost die before they came up with WebOS. Gnome and KDE have a (relatively) large installed base and access to talented people and the best they can come up with is a model which, sometimes, is easier to use than Windows. YOur average cel phone UI is a nightmare of menus, submenus, confusing icons and deeply-buried features. And on and on.

Making technology easy to use is incredibly difficult and every bit as innovative as writing a new OS or designing a new chip. And, while Apple has made, and will continue, to make stupid decisions, when it comes to what they do, they do do it so very well.

*There is a further conceit here, as to the true nature of innovation. There seems to be the idea that "true" innovators are the geniuses who come up with a wholly original idea, develop that idea, get it to market and retire to sleep on a bed of money. Look at this history of technology and you will see that almost never happens. Almost every innovation you can think of is either an improvement on an earlier idea or a new combination of previously established technology and ideas. Henry Ford, to pick one at random, didn't invent a damn thing. He took the idea of assembly lines and interchangeable parts from weapons manufacture, combined it with a newly available urban workforce and clever marketing (any color you want as long as its black) which was actually based on sound logistical planning, and created the modern car industry. It's the same with the computer industry. Progress is the story of incremental improvement and assembly of ideas and not sudden advances out of nowhere.

Or that's my $0.02

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[mdwh2]

made it a best seller

Citation needed. Because the stats I've seen don't show Apple as the best seller - Nokia are still dominant, followed by Samsung, then a load of other companies. And the RIM. Oh, and then Apple.

As for what you say - yes, when the Iphone came out, it was doing things better than phones previously. But that's true of just about all high end phones! It's called progress. When Opera Mobile (and Mini) appeared, they were better than things previously. And immediately after the Iphone, other phones from other companies continued to improve technology. That's the point - there's nothing special about the Iphone, apart from being one in a long line of high end phones from various companies. But for some reason, even years later, all we hear is Iphone Iphone Iphone, and never about any of the interesting developments from major players like Nokia.

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[mdwh2]

Yes, it certainly created a "buzz", but I'm not sure that's anything other than a marketing achievement.

And yes, it's the first phone you've done things with, but you make the classic fallacy (common in "my OS/etc is best" geek arguments) of assuming that everyone's experience is the same. For me, the first phone that I used for Internet access and apps was the Motorola V980 phone. But I don't assume that therefore there's something special about it - I'm knowledgable about the actual reality and history of the mobile market. I don't demand three articles a day on Slashdot about the almighty Motorola V980. (And I'm not sure that the Iphone application technology is anything innovative - doesn't support cross-platform technology such as Java, only runs Apple approved applications, and can't multitask them.)

and it has taken an astounding share of that usage compared to it's market share

Citation needed?

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[RivieraKid]

Not true. Every modern multitasking operating system will, in a low-memory situation, terminate background processes in favour of foreground processes. Other multitasking operating systems will be reduced to the performance of a snail racing through molasses in an attempt to keep everything running.

Neither approach is great from an end-user perspective, but at least when you run out of memory and the kernel kills processes to free up resources, the entire system is usable. The alternative is to lose everything because the system is so unresponsive you are forced to reboot to regain control.

When you're talking about a device with extremely limited resources, with no chance of increasing those resources, somethings gonna give, and in this case, it means that in order for the phone to remain operational the kernel will kill background tasks. It's not a limitation or fault, its a design trade-off based on the limited resources available. In my opinion its the right choice.

If your point is that the iPhone has inadequate resources to be used as a handheld computer, well then, I'd agree but that's another trade-off that Apple made in order to create the device they wanted, and its nothing to do with the iPhone's ability to multitask.

I'd be willing to bet that your Hero has greater storage resources available, either as RAM or FLASH and is therefore using some of that as a page file/device.

Yes, I have an iPhone, and yes, I'm just waiting two months for the contract to expire and I'll be replacing it with a Nokia N900.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The N900 looks amazing. I have a N95, and I'm quite pleased with it, but it's nearly 3 years behind now. I'll definitely be picking up a N900 as well once my contract is out. Full Linux, and Nokia even encourages you to get down into the system and do your own thing. I'm sure it won't catch on like the iPhone with all its trendiness, but the N900 really seems like a kickass piece of hardware and software to me.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Are you comparing best seller by brand, or by model? Nokia's models (except for the N900) are not exciting for the same reason Intel GMA graphics are not exciting.

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[Nursie]

"The ONLY selling point of the iPhone is the ecosystem. Brand loyalty, huge number of apps and huge installed base."

Our THREE main selling points are the the brand loyalty, the huge number of apps and the huge install base. And the web browser.

Damn! Damn! I'll come back in.

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[JaredOfEuropa]

It's not just me, and it's not the first phone people used for Internet access. Email and browsing were possible on my previous smartphone, but I rarely used them because they were so cumbersome; if I was anywhere near a real computer I'd use that. On the iPhone I fing myself checking emails even when I am at my desktop computer. Yes, the user interface makes that much difference (and I wouldn't have believed that at first, either). Quite a few people around the office have an iPhone and they're easy to spot: they always have them out.

Then there's the apps that make information instantly accessible, which is another big improvement. Take the train schedule, on my old phone I had to navigate to the rail company's website, a sucky experience even with a mobile-enabled website. Looking up schedules, adding favorite trains, checking if the train is late, all of that is so much quicker. It makes the difference between having this information at your fingertips, and not bothering to use the phone to find out.

and it has taken an astounding share of that usage compared to it's market share

Citation needed?

iPhones account for 50% of USA smartphone data traffic in 2009 (Note that the second table lists share of data traffic, not market share).

iPhone market share (as % of all smartphones) is 19%

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[Aranykai]

Actually the Hero is somewhat limited in memory. That being said, it gives the choice to the user if they want to do something that needs more memory, unlike the iPhone which will simply terminate the other application. My point is that its deceptive to call the iPhone a multitasking phone compared to what else is out there. I have a couple apps that run constantly on my phone, one of which is an alternative keyboard. The iPhone is not capable of anything like that.

I too considered an N900 but I decided to go with the Hero for cost and the much cheaper data plans from sprint. I lost a few mhz and dont have 700+mb of virtual memory, but I dont really need that in my phone.

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[Anonymous Coward]

"Every modern multitasking operating system will, in a low-memory situation, terminate background processes in favour of foreground processes."

That's not true. Linux does that (at least the default config on most distros). But a lot of OS's will just fail to allocate new memory and keep the background processes, valuing integrity over availability.

What could happen is the background process starting to try to grab more memory, failing, and its error handler committing suicide.

Depending on what processes die, it's very possible for a background kill algorithm to render the system unusable, and in my experience that's more likely to be the case (I've seen legitimate OOM errors many times before, usually after accidentally making the process not terminate in a program I'm developing and not noticing the leak until I've run several iterations) and generally I can nuke a couple things directly and then save & exit the rest.

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[Jesus_666]

And SCSI. And FireWire.

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[Anonymous Coward]

those all fall under ecosystem. As for the browser, nokias is better and palms is as good.

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[moosesocks]

Why would GPS service be better on Verizon's network?

I won't contest that Verizon offers better coverage in many parts of the country, but the GPS network is mostly separate from the cell network. I honestly haven't heard this listed as a common complaint among iPhone users.

Also be warned that Verizon's customer support is among the worst on the planet, that Android's app ecosystem frankly sucks (and the platform isn't particularly pleasant to develop for), and that Verizon have continued their time-honored tradition of crippling their phones with the Droid (app storage limited to 256mb).

I'm not a huge fan of Apple or the iPhone. I just happen to really, really despise the effects that Verizon's business practices have on me as a consumer -- I've been with them for 4 years, and will switch the moment that another provider can provide both a good smartphone, and decent coverage around my house. The Droid is certainly a legitimate competitor to the iPhone, although it does have a few very notable shortcomings that have to be considered.

The Palm Pre also comes tantalizingly close to hitting the mark, although I fear that the Pre's hardware issues, and the tremendous (and possibly unjustified) hype surrounding Android may doom WebOS as a platform. There's simply not room for 3 competing mobile platforms.

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[Darkness404]

Hm, odd because in browser stats Apple has -nearly half- of browser marketshare for smartphones (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/01/iphone-continues-to-slam-mobile-web-competition.ars) and the other thing is you have to realize the scale here. Apple has one phone (well, it had 2 previous phones but they are discontinued), is on one network for many countries, and was released in 2007. Nokia has many phones, Symbian has shipped since 2003 and you can get them on just about any network. Samsung again, has lots of Windows Mobile phones, on many networks and many of them were before 2007. RIM has a multitude of phones, on just about every network, and was made, way before 2007. So I'd say the iPhone was a best seller, yeah, Nokia may have a larger marketshare, but not many of those phones are in use. If you have a product that only came out in 2007, and have 50% of the smartphone browser market in Jan. of 2009, I'd say that was pretty impressive for only having 2 phones, one discontinued after the other came out and being on 1 network per country and not even selling phones in some countries.

That's the point - there's nothing special about the Iphone, apart from being one in a long line of high end phones from various companies.

There are few other phones of this decade that have so revolutionized the marketplace. Ok, before the iPhone how many other captive touchscreen phones were there? How many phones with good browsers? With a large amount of apps? With a decent UI? The success of the iPhone kicked Android development into high gear, that in turn influenced major phones on every large network save for AT&T, the success of the iPhone also gave rise to millions of clone devices, or similar devices. About the only phone that I can think of with the same impact was the Motorola Razr (and perhaps that old monochrome Nokia phone with Snake on it and those exchangeable faceplates, but I think that came out before 2000)

But for some reason, even years later, all we hear is Iphone Iphone Iphone, and never about any of the interesting developments from major players like Nokia.

Um, perhaps because there hasn't been -any- interesting developments from Nokia? I mean, aside from the N900, most of Nokia's phones have been relatively uninspired. The other major players have been uninspiring, yeah, the BlackBerry is great if you want E-mail, but it relies on the aging BlackberryOS, still lacks polish, and their last major redesign (Storm) was a failure (yeah, Storm 2 is better, but the original Storm sucked), Windows Mobile is still crap. And Android is moving ahead but still lacks the polish/apps/support of some of the other phones.

If you want a browser, get the iPhone. If you want a phone that has promise, get Android. If you need something super-reliable get a BlackBerry. If you for some odd reason need an obscure Windows Mobile app get Windows Mobile.

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[drerwk]

Apple II ?
Hypercard ?
Quicktime ?
Finalcut ?
Desktop publishing ?
All seem pretty innovative to me.

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[SailorSpork]

Iknow we're comparing Apples to Apples, but are we really comparing apples to apples? I mean... you know what I mean...

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[salesgeek]

In most sane multitasking OSes (and even 16 bit Windows) the way it works is the application needing more memory calls malloc (or whatever your language calls "hey OS, give me some memory), and an error is thrown. The application needing more memory either handles the error or that application fails.

The kernel does not and should not go around magically killing background processes. That decision is left to the user (and it should be left to the user).

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[fbjon]

You do realise that the marketshare you linked to is for the US only? The situation looks different when considering the world smartphone market. Just sayin...

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[Dog-Cow]

You are simply 100% wrong.

I have an alternative keyboard available on my iPod Touch. Of course, it comes with the base software, as part of i18n support. But, before OS 3.0 added cut/copy/paste, I had an alternative input method that created a clipboard. This is something that Cocoa natively supports, though you need to Jailbreak to get in on the iPhone. Apple won't approve an "app" that is an input extension.

I have an app that allows me to keep any app, Apple or 3rd-party, running. The OS supports this just fine. I use it to keep a few apps running constantly.

In short, you're a biased idiot who knows nothing about the iPhone and its OS.

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[Dog-Cow]

A modern Linux kernel will, by default, allow programs to allocate memory forever, or until there's not enough kernel memory available to track new allocations. There is also an OOM killer, but I don't know if it's enabled by default.

In any event, Linux does not work as you describe.

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[Dog-Cow]

I hate Java with a passion, so not having it isn't a lack for me. However, I run non-Apple approved apps and I multitask them all the time.

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[TheLink]

Nah, the selling point is the low latency, "no tearing" scrolling on the iphone that just follows your finger (and my guess is psychologically more likely to be treated as part of your body[1]) ;).

If you look at the scrolling on other phones you'll find they lag a bit, or tear a bit, or are a bit jerky. That breaks the illusion/magic/coolness.

I can imagine Steve Jobs (or a lesser incarnation) yelling the developers if they try to get away with the jerky stuff you see on other phones...

It's stuff like that that makes many Apple products different.

They're not the most functional, or most reliable (and definitely not more secure). But some parts are very very polished.

[1] You don't easily give up parts of your body even if they are flawed in some ways.

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[mysidia]

"Does not" support multitasking for bundled apps? Incorrect, although even those apps are subject to being suddenly terminated if a foreground app needs more memory.

Sounds like a platform that doesn't care about user data loss or reliability, if background apps are subject to random termination....

Some types of possible background apps (e.g. pager, or app that polls the monitoring system for your data center to display alerts on your phone), might be more important to you than the foreground app you're playing with.

For background apps to silently die could be bad; they should allow the user to determine app priority, and provide enough resources to share with background apps in a reasonable way (without random app terminations)...

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[kimvette]

If a *nix box doesn't have swap space and runs out of memory, causing apps to terminate, then we can't say that OS X in general, Linux, or even Solaris can multitask.

No one is trying to redefine "multitasking" here except you.

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[bkk_diesel]

Reg: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, not just from us, from our fathers and from our fathers' fathers.
Stan: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.
Reg: Yes.
Stan: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.
Reg: All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return? (he pauses smugly)
Xerxes: The aqueduct?
Reg: What?
Xerxes: The aqueduct.
Reg: Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That's true.
Masked Commando: And the sanitation!
Stan: Oh yes ... sanitation, Reg, you remember what the city used to be like.
Reg: All right, I'll grant you that the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done ...
Matthias: And the roads ...
Reg: (sharply) Well yes obviously the roads ... the roads go without saying. But apart from the aqueduct, the sanitation and the roads ...
Another Masked Commando: Irrigation ...
Other Masked Voices: Medicine ... Education ... Health
Reg: Yes ... all right, fair enough ...
Commando Nearer The Front: And the wine ...
General Audience: Oh yes! True!
Francis: Yeah. That's something we'd really miss if the Romans left, Reg.
Masked Commando At Back: Public baths!
Stan: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now.
Francis: Yes, they certainly know how to keep order ... (general nodding) ... let's face it, they're the only ones who could in a place like this. (more general murmurs of agreement)
Reg: All right ... all right ... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order ... what have the Romans done for us?
Xerxes: Brought peace!
Reg: (very angry, he's not having a good meeting at all) What!? Oh ... (scornfully) Peace, yes ... shut up!
[From MontyPython's LifeOfBrian]

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[zz5555]

Are you nuts? I don't think anybody would say that Linux doesn't support multitasking, but it will kill processes when it needs more memory (see the OOM killer). I think you're redefining the meaning of multitasking to fit your bias.

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[Aranykai]

My point was the phone didn't support this as sold. Claiming the iPhone supports multitasking is akin to claiming an eeepc is a gaming laptop. I dont care if you managed to get warcraft running on it.

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[gobbo]

I'm almost a fanboy (transcoding video on one mac and moving 900GB on another, while updating linux mint on an old xp box and posting on a win7 netbook ATM) but have to point out that Apple bought FCP, then made it theirs.

But Hypercard still rocks.

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[Guy Harris]

And SCSI. And FireWire.

Apple invented SCSI? News to me. FireWire, yes, but SCSI, no. They may have adopted it to a greater extent than other personal computer makers, but they didn't invent it.

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[R3d M3rcury]

Nokia may have a larger marketshare, but not many of those phones are in use.

This is absolutely true. I know plenty of people who go out and spend their hard earned money on Nokia phones and then just throw them away.

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[Anonymous Coward]

well said. GP is troll, but will get a pass because he is an iphone fanboi too.

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[imroy]

in browser stats Apple has -nearly half- of browser marketshare for smartphones

As another posted noted, those stats are only for the US. The US has been slow to take up mobile phones for several reasons, so it's not representative of the global market.

But anyway. I'd like to quickly address the assumption that mobile web browser stats can be used as a way to measure mobile phone market share. I have a Nokia 5220, a simple GSM/EDGE phone with an S40 interface. I rarely use the built-in (WAP?) browser because the screen is small and loading modern web/wap pages over EDGE is still quite slow. And it sometimes runs out of memory on complex pages. But I do however have quite a few Java apps that use the Internet to send and receive various bits of data. Through these apps I use up most of the credit on my pre-paid account. So just because the iPhone has shown up on some web browser stats probably doesn't mean as much as you think.

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[smash]

Same. And yes, apple do not do anything much new. However what they DO do, is take an existing technology (or multiple) and integrate them tightly into devices that "just work". My iphone is used as a GPS, mail reader, map, telephone directory, notepad, web browser and for various other small applications. And unlike my previous phones, it does all of those tasks pretty damn well.

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[vurtigalka]

You do realise that the marketshare you linked to is for the US only? The situation looks different when considering the world smartphone market. Just sayin...

Worldwide it got 31%, about the same as Symbian. GP's point still valid.

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[smash]

you get used to the keyboard, you just need to trust the auto correct and/or realise that you can move your finger to the correct letter before you release the tap (if you miss). I agree with the screen comment though - it really is the first mobile I ever saw that was actually usable for reading email and browsing the web. I had a demo of a couple of crack-berries, and really do not want....

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[mcvos]

The iPhone's only selling point is that it has a UI that sucks a lot less than most of its competitors.

That's a pretty big selling point, though. Before the iPhone, smartphones sucked. In fact, any non-make-a-phone-call functionality on any kind of phone sucked. iPhone showed the way in slick, easily navigatable UIs. Nowadays everybody's doing it (or trying to), but in simple, easy to use UIs, the iPhone did show the way.

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[mcvos]

most new phones are essentially an iPhone plus a couple other features, like a high res display or a physical keyboard

And either being bigger and clunkier, or having a smaller screen. iPhone's screen size compared to form factor has unequaled for a long time. It was the only phone with multi-touch for a long time. It really was a very excellent device for its time. It's only the in last few months that other phones are surpassing it left and right.

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

The Newton was a cheap ripoff of the Palm Pilot.

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Every one? I guess it's possible windows 7 might have started that at some point. I know win2k didn't. Not very modern though :)

One thing worth noting--the reason linux does this, and the reason why the OOM-killer (the most retarded thing in the whole OS in my opinion) has to exist is that linux lies about memory. It lets programs malloc() more memory than actually exists in the system (ram+swap). When you run out of memory in THAT situation, there is no malloc() call you can return failure for, because there's no failure return value for "x = 5;"

Linux, thankfully, can disable this nonsense:
echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory
echo 91 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_ratio

It's still a really stupid idea to make your OS such that processes die when you run out of memory. And I haven't ever noticed thrashing so bad that the machine had to be rebooted--it just takes a little patience.

win2k forever!

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true, sadly. I don't post hate against apple on /., though I definitely harbor an awful lot of it. I hate them because they made computers and mp3 players accessible for everyone. You are exactly correct. However, the specific reason why I hate them is not that they let lots of people into the tech "secret society", per se, but rather because in doing so, they (and this goes for everyone who makes things easy, not just apple) somehow manage to make things HARD for people who actually know what they're doing.

Suddenly, the old ways, which were actually quite simple once you learned them, are hidden behind a worthless layer of "easy". Suddenly I can only seem to do things in the one way the UI simplifier thought I should. This kind of "do it my way or fuck you" attitude is what I despise so much about apple.

For an example, look at mp3 players. It is no longer possible to buy a large capacity mp3 player that isn't either an ipod or an ipod-without-a-scroll-wheel. Every single other player has done everything they can to mimic the ipod interface, which I always thought was simply awful. (Not everyone uses id3 tags, damnit!) Thank god for Rockbox.

A lot of my other examples would be from windows, because (as you might imagine) I avoid Mac like the plague. But I run into it all the time--thinking "this would not be hard at all if the technical details weren't hidden behind a worthless wall of "easy". Why does adding simplicity have to increase the complexity so much? Punching in an ip address and port is much simpler than UPnP and systems like that. Why is expecting people to learn little things about the internet protocol so much to ask? The phrase "It just works" should really mean "it just works if everything you have was made by the same company and you only want to do things that company says you can". I like to be able to do MORE with my tech, thank you.

Yes, yes, of course--"computers should be smart enough that I don't have to deal with those details!" Well of course they SHOULD be but goddamnit they *AREN'T*! Not even close! And with the way we're going with making them that smart, it's going to be a long time yet, and I bet once it's here, computers get a lot less useful.

Sorry for the rant. I'm feeling extra angry tonight.

Re:ok

[Jesus_666]

Oops. Don't know how I managed to confuse Apple and Shugart.

Re:ok

[darthflo]

The N900 is shaping up to become a truly kick-ass device. With all that openness and technological superiority (it's a full linux distro on a mobile device; not just a mobile stack on a linux kernel), it could be to Android what Betamax was to VHS. Milestone ("Droid") for me, please.

Re:ok

[jonadab]

> Every modern multitasking operating system will, in a low-memory situation,
> terminate background processes in favour of foreground processes.

Actually, they usually terminate the process that's using the most memory, or at least that has been my experience.

What the OS *should* do in a memory-starved scenario, IMO, is autosuspend/hibernate some processes to disk (assuming there's enough disk space, which is unlikely to be a problem on a modern system) so that they can be recovered later if more memory becomes available.

And they *sort* of already do this, with virtual memory and swapping, but the implementation could be improved significantly. Among other things, to cut down on thrashing, processes that are swapped out in a low-memory scenario should not get time slices or be swapped back in until memory becomes available (or until the user pulls that application to the foreground, if such can be determined; I don't think most current operating system kernels have a mechanism for knowing whether an app is in the foreground, which is... unfortunate; the window manager and/or shell should be providing the kernel with information about that). Additionally, automatically suspended/hibernated processes should probably be written to files on the filesystem and their mapped virtual memory released. Admittedly this means an extra copy operation (plus another one to put it back later), but it also means you don't have a bunch of inactive processes cluttering up your virtual memory space, which seems like a good trade-off to me. Alternately, additional swap space could be created on the fly (which a handful of kernels, notably NT, already do, available disk space permitting). That's not as aesthetically "clean" as moving suspended processes out of virtual memory entirely, but it might perform better.

Re:ok

[Sockatume]

Actually plenty of "feature phones" multi-task on third-party Java apps too, these days. I think Nokia's the only one that's left behind on that, but they're moving S60 into their feature-phone market anyway.

Re:ok

[Steauengeglase]

Who still goes on about the "Year of Linux on the Desktop"?

Re:ok

[RivieraKid]

When you call malloc, on a modern OS, all you're doing is allocating address space. It's the virtual memory manager's job to then make sure there's some available to you when you actually start to use it. I can allocate 4GB of memory on a computer with only 2GB because the virtual memory space is that large. It isn't until I attempt to use it that I'll find there's a problem.

The kernel's job is precisely to manage resources on the computer, and that is why it is the kernels responsibility to terminate runaway processes. Only older OS' without a good VMM would allocate all the memory on demand whether it is being used or not.

Re:ok

[RivieraKid]

Actually, they usually terminate the process that's using the most memory, or at least that has been my experience.

While that may tend to be the end result, Linux at least does try to be a bit intelligent about what the OOM Killer terminates.

Re:ok

[RivieraKid]

Wow, that's the first time I've been called a troll or Apple fanboi on slashdot. I must be new around here, huh?

Not only did I agree the iPhone has insufficient resources, but I said I'm replacing mine as soon as the contract is up. If that makes me a fanboi, well, all hail Steve Jobs.

It's interesting that your only contribution to the discussion is to call me a troll. What can I say... well said?

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd for them to call you fanboi from your post. The Digg readers must be out in force from the US holidays, and in the mad holiday-sales rush, trampled all over their reading comprehension skills. Or they clicked 'reply to this' on the wrong post (yours, instead of the GP you were responding to).

Re:ok

[MikeBabcock]

I'm no iPhone fan, but now you're claiming Linux isn't a multitasking OS. Linux also (optionally) kills apps just because of memory needs, the infamous OOM killer.

Android also kills background apps because of memory pressure, and does a miserable job of it sometimes but that's fixable. Its also Linux.

Re:ok

[MikeBabcock]

I think you're looking for this. Not all browsing is done from smartphones.

Re:ok

[Painted]

...and I think you'd have to attribute Desktop Publishing to Aldus (Pagemaker), Adobe (Postscript), and Canon (Laserprinting)- though it was Apple that swept all those goodies together in one pile.

Re:ok

[drizek]

the iphone will be the runt of the litter for another 7 months. Do you think that will affect sales?

Re:ok

[drerwk]

Wiki claims Jobs asked Adobe to adopt Postscript for laser printers. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript and the apple laser writter was the first postscript printer. MacPublisher predates Pagemaker. So it sure seems like Apple can claim the first wisiwg dtp solution.

Re:ok

[DJRumpy]

"The iPhone UI sucks a lot harder than WebOSs, and it is no better than Android.

The ONLY selling point of the iPhone is the ecosystem. Brand loyalty, huge number of apps and huge installed base. The phone itself is bland compared to all the other offerings(most new phones are essentially an iPhone plus a couple other features, like a high res display or a physical keyboard), and the software is about as advanced as Palm OS 4.0. I don't know how Apple can ship a product in 2009 that doesn't support multitasking."

The iPhone multitasks just fine. It doesn't allow third party apps to do so unless you jailbreak the phone. Had you actually used one at any point, you would know that, simply by launching the iPod app. It will run happily in the background while you do other things, as does the mail app, and SMS. As to how it multitasks is just an implementation. Saying it doesn't do so because it doesn't fit your ideal for managing background apps doesn't make it 'not so'. Many OS's will simply stop a low priority background thread if the user launches a foreground task that needs the memory. Personally, I don't know why folks are wanting multitasking outside of the Apple apps. I've never felt a need other than the supplied apps. Knowing the way things work in the windows world, every app you installed would find some Apple equivalent of the System tray to load useless tasks which suck your battery dry within an hour. I prefer less hassle. The only other client I would need it on is AIM, and they will happily forward it to me as a reply-able SMS, so the point is mute.

In order to get those huge number of apps and installed base, it has to have something other than those items you mentioned. I bought one, and I had owned no previous Apple products. Just saying it's popular due to 'fanboys' is patently ridiculous and tells me your more interested in just hating Apple rather than actually using one of their products. This whole 'fanboy' bit is silly. If you buy something, anything, chances are that you are a fan. Most people who hate a product don't buy it. Working in IT, I've met all kinds, and I wouldn't classify any of them as raving lunatics. They are all people who just like Windows PC's, or Macs. They don't rave. They don't pray at the Alter of Steve. They prefer a brand and they stick with it until they find something better.

The iPhone is popular because it's pretty much a PC in your pocket. You can actually browse the web on it, the UI is arguably better than the current crop of contenders since none of these iPhone 'killers' has actually done any slaying yet. All of these followers exist in an attempt to clone the iPhone UI, and none of them have succeeded fully yet (although some of them are getting close). The app limits on Android need to be resolved before they can be considered a serious contender.

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the funniest things I ever read was The Irish Times Technology Editor writing that Apple invented Midi.

Re:ok

[hesiod]

He didn't call you a troll: his post's GP was Dog-Cow's, #30242430.

Re:ok

[RivieraKid]

My bad - clearly I don't understand how threading works on /.

Obviously I *am* new around here ;-)

Re:ok

[Mista2]

Most of the other competitors are also racing to make the cheapest phone, so you get crappy batteries, overheating chargers, plasic screens and creaky flexible cases. I stuck with nokia for a long time on my phone simply because all of their chargers and accessories worked well with every model. Now with iPhone, I can charge it on my PC, in it's dock on my stereo, and in my car, and now OS3 gave it stereo bluetooth, I can get audio out on many devices too. It also has a standard 3mm earphone jack, I can play on any stereo on the planet with a simple RCA adapter cable.

That aside the glass screen has remained scratch free and is easy to clean, the solid case means nothing has broken or fallen off, and the reall metal trim has not worn out and faded so it looks as good now as it did when I bought it 2 yeas ago, unlike the palm it replaced which alshouth a good handset, looked like it had been through the wringer after only 6 months inmy pocket.

Re:ok

[Mista2]

And all-in-one computers, and miniturised desktops like the mini, and display port, and mini display port, colour matched screens, laptops with 7 hours battery life. Apple tends to have innovated very well. However iPods were nothing new, they were just the best marketed and most successful portable digital music player.

Re:ok

[mcvos]

the iphone will be the runt of the litter for another 7 months. Do you think that will affect sales?

The runt of the litter? There are still a lot of phones that are worse than an iPhone, and I bet it's still a very nice device for a lot of people. The resolution is good enough for a lot of things. Not everybody needs a real high end device.

The only problem is, the iPhone does have a high-end price.

Re:ok

[CountBrass]

You can't really use the word 'only' and then list 'many' advantages of the iphone: ecosystem, brand loyalty, huge number of apps, huge installed base.

What you missed off that list is: it's also an iPod and the touch-screen (and supporting gestures).

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Nokia 5220, a simple GSM/EDGE phone with an S40 interface. I rarely use the built-in (WAP?) browser because the screen is small and loading modern web/wap pages over EDGE is still quite slow. And it sometimes runs out of memory on complex pages.

I kind of think that was the GP's point.

Re:ok

[ncc74656]

the software is about as advanced as Palm OS 4.0

Having come to the iPhone from a Treo 650 (which ran Palm OS 5.something), I'd have to disagree with that assessment. There are some quirks where Palm OS comes out ahead (why can't I assign a category to a new contact (or change the category selection) on the iPhone, but have to sync and make the assignment later in Address Book? Likewise with calendar events and iCal), but I kinda like having a nearly desktop-strength web browser instead of the woefully underpowered Blazer.

Re:ok

[bhtooefr]

Wait, I thought Time Machine was a backup solution, not an actual time machine.

(The MessagePad came out August 1993. The Pilot 1000 and 5000 came out in June 1996.)

Innovative?

[girlintraining]

I'd have to say that neither is truly "innovative" because that would imply something new was present in either of them, rather than a remix of existing technologies and/or incremental improvements on them (such as minaturization). The only really innovative thing I've seen out of Apple in awhile has been the touch wheel on the iPods; Which was quite a departure from existing human interface designs at the time. The word "innovative" has been quite overused in this field.

Re:Innovative?

[Monkeedude1212]

Apple just likes the word because it begins with an i.

Would it be ironic that we over-use the word innovate, or would it be ironic if we created a new word to replace innovate?

Re:Innovative?

[Tumbleweed]

Apple just likes the word because it begins with an i.

I expect they'll change their name to iPple as soon as they realize they need to, to outrun their bad reputation with app developers.

Re:Innovative?

[Evets]

Even that touch wheel wasn't really something they thought of. They won the race to the patent office, but not by much.

Re:Innovative?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I guess if you don't think usability can be innovative.

Re:Innovative?

[halcyon1234]

I expect they'll change their name to iPple

I like to ate, ate, ate... Apples and Bananas
I like to eat, eat, eat... Epples and Benenes
I like to iat, iat, iat... iPples and Bininis
I like to oat, oat, oat... opples and Bononos
I like to ute, ute, ute... upples and Bununus
I like to yte, yte, yte... ypples and bynynys (sometimes)

Newton wins?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Shouldn't the iPhone get points in this comparison for not being the equivalent of carrying a Dell laptop's giant powerbrick around in your pocket?

I know this article was written all in fun, but - you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that'd want to carry a Newton around instead of an iPhone. Or a Newton instead of even a Windows Mobile device.

Re:Newton wins?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me. Slightly nearsighted, slightly clumsy, like to be able to read instead of squint. Yup, still carry my archaic newton.

Re:Newton wins?

[LordLimecat]

Based on what Ive read and remember of such devices, Id much rather the thing be useable and have an OS designed for getting actual work done than use windows mobile. My one experience on it with the Touch Pro (which everyone raved about) was awful; it seems to me that when it takes 4-5 clicks to actually begin making a call on a phone, and you can easily hang up simply by bringing it to your face, the maker has lost touch with what the device is actually supposed to do well.

You may have a point with the iPhone, precisely because the iPhone doesnt do things that it cant do well. The same cannot be said for winmo. Its also the reason i will continue to love my blackberry despite how slow it can be at things like web browsing-- it does its primary functions very well (phonecalls, calendaring, contacts).

Re:Newton wins?

[MikeBabcock]

I own two Newtons. Both fit in my jeans pocket, even if they are much larger than my Android phone, or an iPhone. Of course, the first is an original Newton from 1994.

The Newton was innovative. It could do fascinating things with very low power requirements on a very legible screen, and most of the things it could do well the iPhone still doesn't do. "Assist" alone was an excellent feature that many people never saw in action. For example, you're on a blank notes page and you type "Remember Brian's birthday on wednesday" and tap assist. Your calendar pops up on the next Wednesday starting from tomorrow and puts a reminder up "Brian's birthday".

Simple enough? Sure. Easier than scrolling, tapping and creating the memo yourself? Definitely.

I brought my Newton along to a major event around the time Microsoft was pushing their tablets and I showed it to the Microsoft evangelist who was trying to convince me the tablet was amazing. I showed him shape recognition and started doing diagrams on the screen at full speed. He was a little shocked, especially when I pointed out (again) that it was over ten years old.

People have even written driver interfaces for the Newton to allow the use of huge flash memory drives to use it as an MP3 player. Do I wish Apple would bring it back? Maybe not the way it was, but I was one of many who hoped the iPhone would be at least as capable as the Newton was. And yes, it had E-mail support, but no browser built-in.

Re:Newton wins?

[CountBrass]

Actually I disagree.

I wouldn't touch a Windows Mobile Device with a barge-pole. The UI is clunky, the OS is so amazingly slow - I often wonder if the Microsoft engineers gained degrees is 'making decent hardware really slows - and it's completely unreliable.

And I've yet to find any device, let alone a WMD, that's in the same league as the Newton when it comes to making notes.

Newton Can't Play MP3's? Rubbish!

[phase_9]

You can rock some serious MP3 Action in all it's 128kbps 22Khz Mono glory! - http://40hz.org/Pages/MADNewton

10 Years? Try 16 Years!

[Uire]

The original Newton - the MessagePad - was released in 1993. Heck, The Steve *cancelled* Newton more than 10 years ago. Really.

21 minutes later...

[iamapizza]

It's been 21 minutes since this article was posted. Where's the next Apple Slashvertisement? I keep refreshing the front page but there are no new stories. /wrists

Re:21 minutes later...

[Brett Buck]

Hey, that's an excellent point - an article that concludes teh new hotness from Apple is inferior to a 10-year old product you can't buy is an oustanding and ingenious viral ad campaign. Color me impressed!

Re:21 minutes later...

[MightyMartian]

Study reveals 7-bit ASCII superior to 8-bit ASCII because you get a free bit with every letter!

Re:21 minutes later...

[Monkeedude1212]

I keep submitting this story called "How Incredibly Amazing is Apple?" With nothing but the link to the Apple Store copied and pasted 50 times over, but for whatever reason the Mods just won't post it.

What gives?

Re:21 minutes later...

[Hurricane78]

Ok, I looked at the history, and there was on average exactly one iPhone-mentioning “article” per day posted, since the 14th. And before that it does not get much smaller.

So you have to wait til’ tomorrow. Sorry. How about some porn to wank to: http://images.google.com/images?q=iphone :D

Re:21 minutes later...

[martas]

you forgot to include a comment comparing apple to MS or any other apple competitor, that's why.

Re:21 minutes later...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I keep submitting this story called "How Incredibly Amazing is Apple?" With nothing but the link to the Apple Store copied and pasted 50 times over, but for whatever reason the Mods just won't post it.

What gives?

Just mention Firefox somewhere.

Re:21 minutes later...

[Yvan256]

Next marketing stunt for Post Cereals: Alpha-bits, now available in UTF-8*!

* not all characters are included in each box.

Re:21 minutes later...

[Anonymous Coward]

Waiter, there's a UCS-16 in my cereal.

Have to agree, from experience...

[andhar]

I had a Newton Message Pad 100 (the very first model) which I bought cheap in '94 on a whim. It was already totally outdated when I bought it. Still, in its lifetime, I printed from it, sent and received faxes from it, all kinds of stuff you'd normally need a computer for. Totally handy.

Come '96 and I'm in grad school and I take every note for the whole two years on that thing and it was GREAT. I mean really, had it been a pain would I have kept on the entire time? Having a pretty big screen meant you had plenty of room to scrawl out those notes on the screen, and as I had maybe not 'neat' handwriting, but at least consistent handwriting it worked great.

In 1996, being able to search your notes on the computer saved me so much time that I could have a band. So maybe having a Newton didn't get me chicks, but at least the band did!

Then, in 2000, I was still using it. But I accidentally left it on a conference room table after a meeting and it disappeared. It actually got STOLEN. In the 21st century.

Re:Have to agree, from experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

>

Then, in 2000, I was still using it. But I accidentally left it on a conference room table after a meeting and it disappeared. It actually got STOLEN. In the 21st century.

It apparently had an off-by-one bug.

Re:Have to agree, from experience...

[RiffRafff]

I used my MP2000 daily until a month ago. It suddenly lost its mind and all the data on its internal memory (stuff on my two pcmcia cards was okay, including a backup). It restored okay, but now I'm not sure I trust it. Maybe it was a fluke. I dunno. Still, there's something to be said for all that screen real estate.

Re:Have to agree, from experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then, in 2000, I was still using it. But I accidentally left it on a conference room table after a meeting and it disappeared. It actually got STOLEN. In the 21st century.

No.

Re:Have to agree, from experience...

[mcvos]

Then, in 2000, I was still using it. But I accidentally left it on a conference room table after a meeting and it disappeared. It actually got STOLEN. In the 21st century.

Sounds to me like you left it in the 20th century.

Re:Have to agree, from experience...

[MikeBabcock]

I passed mine around in class as a way of sharing notes. The girls loved drawing little pictures on fresh notes and passing it back to me. They all learned to draw a long horizontal line to start a new note. I still have all of those notes, in both my Newtons, as well as my actual notes from school.

Re:Have to agree, from experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

2000 was the last year of the Twentieth Century

"Blam! Not even the iPhone can do that."

[tacarat]

I really liked the part where the guy championing the Newton slapped KO'd his opponent with a link. She had previously written an article citing "The iPhone is the worst phone in the world".

I'm sure they had great make up sex later on.

Successor to the iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear it is going to be the Apple Lagrange.

10 years?

[espiesp]

I thought the Newton was way closer to approaching 20 years?

Re:10 years?

[MichaelSmith]

The funny thing is that I clearly remember reading an article from the early 1990s about Newton application developers complaining about having to write all their apps in Apple's scripting language with a limited API.

Re:10 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was confused by this as well. According to Wikipedia, the first release was in 1993. They ceased development, which I presume to mean fired/relocated everyone involved in the project, in 1998.

This article was f-ing unreadable

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this crap? Newtons way older than 10 years and I really didn't appreciate their trying to hip by personalizing each side (Flora? who? vs. some dude) where I don't even know wtf they are yapping on about. Unless I really cared about the "journalists" involved, which I don't, I couldn't get into their game here. Was expecting a decent read, not a textual equivalent of mythbusters/some_other_reality_show.

Re:This article was f-ing unreadable

[Steauengeglase]

It is cnet. They haven't been notable or interesting in 10 years either.

Apple Iphone 1G

[pdh11]

Since the first Iphone as such has become known as the "2G" and the second as the "3G", I suggest thinking of the Newton as the Iphone 1G. (OK, so there were a few different versions of the Newton itself. But at this distance in time, I think we can ignore that.)

Peter

Re:Apple Iphone 1G

[Anonymous Coward]

I can ignore the fact that there were many generations of Newtons, but how could I ignore the fact that (afaik) it was never a phone? It could be considered a 1G iPod touch.

Re:Apple Iphone 1G

[Guy Harris]

I suggest thinking of the Newton as the Iphone 1G

It supports various analog cell phone technologies such as AMPS? :-)

Re:Apple Iphone 1G

[makomk]

It supports various analog cell phone technologies such as AMPS? :-)

Apparently, with the right 3rd party add-in card, yes.

Re:Apple Iphone 1G

[bhtooefr]

Technically, that makes it the iPhone 2G, and the original iPhone the iPhone 2.5G. *headassplode*

But, that card is GSM900 only, making it utterly useless in some areas.

Re:10 Years? Try 16 Years!

[julesh]

The original Newton - the MessagePad - was released in 1993. Heck, The Steve *cancelled* Newton more than 10 years ago. Really.

That's the submitter's error. Article says the Newton was 10 years old last time they did such a comparison, against an early windows mobile device.

Sometimes packaging is the innovation

[rolfwind]

Um what? If the iPhone was nothing new, when it was released and even now, you wouldn't have competitors scrambling to catch up. If there was no innovation, there wouldn't be anything to catch up to.

Re:Sometimes packaging is the innovation

[mdwh2]

Er, they're not scrambling to catch up on. Or okay, I'll bite - what are they scrambling to catch up? (And before you reply, I want actual features or objective examples, not undefined things like "Well it does it better, it just does", because obviously there's no way we can discuss or measure that.)

Re:Sometimes packaging is the innovation

[c_forq]

Web browser. Android may have caught up, I haven't used it yet. The new Nokia coming out will have caught up. RIM is still in the dark ages, but are/have hiring people to fix that.

Newton Users Can Run Their Choice of Apps

[CritterNYC]

One thing they left out in the app comparison is that Newton users can add in any apps they wanted. They're not limited to the ones approved by Apple in the gated community known as the App Store.

Re:Newton Users Can Run Their Choice of Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not limited to the ones approved by Apple in the gated community known as the App Store.

Neither are iPhone users. You can use any app a developer is willing to send your way (you'll get a couple of files that you drag and drop on iTunes, and that's about it), and you can even develop your own apps if you want to. The App Store is just a convenient way to get into your phone apps that have been approved by Apple.

The system does have its limitations, but, well, let's give some credit where it is due.

Re:Newton Users Can Run Their Choice of Apps

[fermion]

I am sick and tired of everyone whining about apps. First, stop being lazy and call them applications. By calling them apps you are just feeding into the Apple marketing machines.

Second, there are a shitload of applications out there, the vast majority are shit, but some are really useful. I never care about a machine that can't do what I don't want it to do. I don't care that my care can't go 100 miles an hour. I don't care that my fridge isn't cooled by NO2. I don't care that my pencil is not self powered. Sure these things would be cool, but why go online and whine about it. If it is an issue, buy or build a machine that does what you want. If it is not, then move onto things we can fix.

Third, writing stuff for the newton was non trivial. I did some playing with it. It was not ultimately something I wanted to get invovled with. OTOH, the iPhone development process seems quite easy. If it were possible to write personal applications to run on personal devices I would do so. Fortunately, as mentioned, the iPhone has applications that can do most anything, for a very resonable cost. And multiple personal devices are licensed.

In the end there is only one critical difference that matters here. The newton has limited sync ability with other machines. You had your data on your newton. You had your data on your desktop. Both machines were wonderful on their on. Both were gully networked, both had good, but diffrent filesystems. They did not work well together, at least not out of the box.

Palm was the company that solved this problem. A machine that was a assistant to the user, an intermidiary between your computer and the rest of the world. The iPhone took the best parts of the newton, the palm, with a phone hacked in.

Connectivity is they key. It is why the Kindle is the tablet, and everyone one else is just a reader. Even if ther is no app for that.

Re:Newton Users Can Run Their Choice of Apps

[Purist]

The App Store was the only innovative thing iPhone brought to the table! Any phone can run crap that you dig up from god knows where that may or may not run reliably and you install in some arcane way. The innovation of the iPhone was that Apple used it's cache to strong-arm the wireless provider and be the first platform to provide an organized and easy way to deliver/deploy REAL applications to the device that leverage wireless bandwidth. Prior to iPhone, applications were either UTTER CRAP developed by the wireless provider in an effort to scrounge supplemental income or fringe hack stuff that you had to be an expert on the underlying hardware and software to install and use. Happy Thanksgiving!

Re:Newton Users Can Run Their Choice of Apps

[bowstreetrunner]

Or whatever webapps they like, without any restrictions...

quality journos?

[arikol]

Wow... just.... wow

That must be the worst written article I've read this month. Or possibly ever.

Hey, I know, let's next compare a raft made of barrels to the International Space Station and let's have the raft win because it has easier access and is cheaper to make and maintain.

Again. Just... wow

Re:quality journos?

[Anonymous Coward]

The apple newton is more than 10 years old. Development started 20 years ago and I had one in 1993. This article is crap.

Re:quality journos?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISS doesn't float. So yes the raft does win, as you can buy and use them for something.

Re:quality journos?

[commodoresloat]

yeah that article was seriously pathetic. Disappointing, too, as it would be interesting to read something insightful about this topic. I am still a big fan of the Newton and I wish Apple would come out with a modern version of the emate 300. I think there would be a lot of very interesting things to say about comparing these products, not as a "which is better?" smackdown but rather in terms of discussing some very promising technology from 15 years ago and the extent to which that promise has been realized (or not).

Re:quality journos?

[vosester]

As much as I hate CNET’s cheesy articles this was obviously meant as a joke fluff piece.

Look at the banners depicting the fight. It was just a whimsical piece of old tech vs new tech.

Overall it has shown we may have more pixels and pretty colours now.
But we have not come that far, innovation wise since the 90’s.

Re:quality journos?

[Jesus_666]

this was obviously meant as a joke fluff piece.

Well, it was a CNET Crave article. I think Crave is intended as a (not so stealthy) stealth parody of tech media. Either that or it's Slashdot's equivalent of Idle: So intentionally bad that it makes the rest of the website look much better in comparison.

Re:quality journos?

[troll8901]

Kudos to vosester and jesus666 for stating the main point: it's a joke article.

I think it's Slashdot's fault for treating this CNET article so seriously. Even CNET's graphics show it's obviously not meant to be taken seriously.

NOW I'm angry at Slashdot (not to mention trying to contain yesterday's dinner). This should be under Idle. (For once, kdawson is innocent!)

Re:quality journos?

[arikol]

But the joke was badly done (idiotic, even).

More work seems to have been put into the pictures than the text and the text sounds like it was written by fratboys, bot the level of humor and the quality of the text itself.

Listen, here I'm going to write a joke article headline:

Researchers found out today that the Mona Lisa is made of poo!

That was pretty bad, eh?
Both because of the joke not really being a joke (too bad to classify as one) as well as the text being poorly written, it sounds like it was written by a 12 year old.
Jokes (and joke articles) require more than just writing something non-factual or nonsensical.

CNET. PLEASE oh please, if you are going to have a parody section, hire writers capable of writing parodies.
I'm having much more fun criticizing the quality of the article and the writers than from reading the article itself and consider the snarky comments in this thread much more entertaining.

Re:quality journos?

[drinkypoo]

I am still a big fan of the Newton and I wish Apple would come out with a modern version of the emate 300.

Yes, so does everyone else, since it would be called a "netbook" and run OSX. You CAN get such a thing, but you have to buy the hardware from someone other than Apple and tweak the OS to make it fit since Apple sees themselves as more fit to tell you what you want than you are, and doesn't actually offer any product in that market... probably because they couldn't slap enough markup on it along with the Apple logo to justify its production.

The device you want is already here, depending on the form factor it's a netbook with a touch screen, or a large handheld like the Nokia N800. Or with a phone built in, the N900. Apple, of course, will not bring you such a device. It has too many buttons, and last time they brought you a small device with a lot of buttons it failed. They won't try again any time soon.

Re:quality journos?

[MikeBabcock]

You never used a Newton, did you? I have netbooks, I have an Android phone, and I have two Newtons.

I can still demonstrate things that are easier to do on the Newton than on a tablet, notebook, iphone, etc. Some of them aren't even possible except on a Newton.

Re:quality journos?

[drinkypoo]

You never used a Newton, did you?

No, I couldn't afford such things at that time. When they started to show some promise, the product was shitcanned. Of course, Palm Computing had discovered that it was possible to kick out a much cheaper product that was arguably more useful... Which kind of suggests that the Newton was never really that good of a product, and more of a tech demo in your pocket.

Re:quality journos?

[MikeBabcock]

I don't see how it suggests anything of the sort really. What I saw was that Steve Jobs came back to Apple and got rid of all the projects associated with certain people he disliked in the company. In fact, at the time, Newton was its own company and he first brought it back into Apple and then canned the project to be vindictive IMHO.

Palm was a software company who made graffiti for the Newton long before they ever made hardware, and a significant number of their engineers were brought over from Apple after the sudden vapourizing of the Newton project.

Most Newton users never migrated to Palm, at least not for long, because they'd used something better and couldn't go down so many rungs and be happy. I had hopes for Symbian at the time but I don't think they ever saw anything but the business market clearly.

Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[Hurricane78]

Ok, can we please stop the daily iPhone “story”? It’s getting silly, because it’s so in-your-face clear that it’s just viral marketing. I know that that is the area Apple is really good at. (Not the products. The dreams about them.)

But I don’t think even the most crazy fanboy can still stand the annoyance of this.

How do I block this from coming up in my RSS feed. Because I seriously consider to stop reading Slashdot at all it that is not possible.

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[dbcad7]

Hey, constant reinforcement is needed so that people know that the money spent and being spent on a phone and plan is justified. I like my phone too (It's an Android), but I don't need to be constantly told how smart or cool I am, based upon my purchase.. dumbasses and jerks can spend money on these things too.. and probably think it changes them somehow.. how sad.

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[ColdWetDog]

You insensitive clods!

Us fanboys need those articles. Otherwise we get shaky and irritable. And sad.

Right now is an especially bad time what with the holidays, the recession, the War in Afghanistan and the vague status of the iTablet (not necessarily in that order).

Have some mercy.

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[icebraining]

I don't block this, but you can use Yahoo Pipes to setup a filter, it's nice. You just have to drag a "fetch" module and fill the source feed URL, then connect it to a "filter" modules and choose the keyword(s), and finally connect it to "Pipe Output" and save, afterwords it'll provide you an URL you can use on your reader. I use it for embedding cartoons in feeds which only provide a link to the cartoon, like Explosm.

I think Google as something similar, but I've never used it.

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[thestudio_bob]

You know, I've been seeing this exact same comment on a lot of tech sites lately. Heck, there's quite a few of them on this article alone. At first, I was like "Welcome to what it was like for us Apple guys 5-10 years ago", (not that I ever posted that, I just thought it). But the more I think about it, I think it just means that the iPhone, iPod, Apple, etc., is going more mainstream. I don't think its a purposeful marketing strategy on anyones part (maybe it is and I'm too blinded to see), but more or less just a natural affect of its growing user market.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was something coming out of MS, Verizon, Dell, or the likes that was interesting, I'm sure we would be flooded with the same kind of daily stories about it. But that's just not happening. Is it because they are not producing anything that people feel compelled to write about or is it because they know that if they write something that has an "i" in the headline, then they will generate hits. Not sure, but it's kind of interesting either way.

And on a side note, your "viral" theory can be applied to your comment as well. How do I know that all the "I'm getting sick of all the Apple" comments aren't made by paid shills or some viral marketing company trying to make Apple look un-cool or whatever. Sure it's a conspiracy theory, but it's no less of one than yours.

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[mdwh2]

Hear hear. (And actually, I'm surprised that there's only one today, for once.)

It's particularly odd, given the small market share of the Iphone. If it was the Ipod, sure, I could understand - the largest in that market. Hell, even Macs have a larger market share, yet there are only occasional stories about them. But for the Iphone, there are quite literally daily stories - with virtually zero coverage of any of the other mobile phone companies (e.g., Nokia, who have about 40% of the market).

And the viral marketing works. I thought this was a place for people to be knowledgable about technology, but there are people who seriously believe that Apple sell more phones than anyone else (or even that they are in the majority - more than everyone else put together). They actually believe that the Iphone is the only phone, or the first phone, that can do things such as accessing the Internet. They still think that most phones in the market are still using WAP - something that was around 10 years ago.

Oh but occasionally we get stories about Blackberry and Android - also minor players - so I don't know what the logic is. Although coverage of Blackberry and Android seems mainly so they can be presented as token competition ("Look, the Iphone is better than them, or was before them", whilst pretending that that's all the market consists of.)

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[mdwh2]

And sure enough, just after I post about how people here seem to have no idea of the phone market, one comes along:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was something coming out of MS, Verizon, Dell, or the likes that was interesting

Well, what about all of the interesting phones that are coming from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola etc? Virtually zero coverage, it's been that way for years - so yes, I'm correcting you that you are wrong :)

Unless for some reason, there's something special about MS, Verizon, Dell and Apple that they deserve coverage, but not the existing phone companies?

As for viral, I don't think he's suggesting that it's planted by Apple shills - personally I don't, but the point is that Apple are very good at getting other companies and individuals to give them free advertising and hype. No shills needed.

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than the daily MSFT bashing article or the Linux On the Desktop Apologist commentary.

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[Jesus_666]

Pshh. You just need to be the right kind of fanboy.

With the first Pandoras likely getting shipped in early December, this is clearly going to be the best Christmas ever. I mean, screw recession, wars and the Apple rumor treadmill. Pandora fanboyism is like crack cocaine on more crack cocaine these days.

Re:Daily Apple Slashvertisement again.

[m.ducharme]

I wonder if the daily Apple story isn't as much about the Haterz as about the fanbois? Slashdot posts an Apple story and the first thing that happens is that the Haters all pile into the thread and spew vitriol all over the place. Then the fanbois wade in and start bashing around with bats and mod points, and then before you know it: voila, 300 posts!

They don't post these stories just to soothe the fanbois, they post them because people, love it or hate it, are passionate about Apple. The haters need their Two Minute's Hate as much as the fanboys need their time of worship. As for myself, I'm getting pretty sick of it all. But hey, I guess I just can't help being drawn to the trainwreck.

eat up marton

[Anonymous Coward]

eat up matron the ihpone has the same stuff with that small key board.

Biased?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article disturbs me somewhat because it appears as though they are suggesting the Apple iPhone is the best phone out there. I would LOVE to see a pole questioning the intelligent public (meaning those who actually looked around with unbiased interest) what the best phone is. Compare to the G1 (a.k.a. Dream) and the G1 wins in almost every category.

Re:Biased?

[mattsqz]

seriously, people. lern 2 spele. its a 'poll' not a 'pole' - i guess this is what we get out of 'no child left behind' :(

what's new? It's Apple!! *squirt*

[Anonymous Coward]

And what's new in that? Almost all the iphone slashvertisements have been of similar quality. Even NYT/Pogue have been doing it for years.

When it comes to anything Apple, as long as there are several references of "OOK! SHINY!!!", it's a good apple article.

Now excuse me while I go and puke myself to death.

Ten years ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Despite the Newton being released some 10 years ago..."

Huh? I remember these things hitting in the early 90's. Closer to 20 years ago.

iPhone do two things "uniquely"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not because of any special engineering ability, but because they've simply made it an important design must for the iPhone.

They have a BIG ASS SCREEN in a slim package. Yes there are other phones with BIG ASS SCREENS, but they have these slide out keyboards that make the case thicker than J.Lo's booty. And the one HTC phone that has a BIG ASS SCREEN in a slender case, it's super EXPENSIVE AS SHIT.

The key to a beating the iPhone will be a BIG ASS SCREEN in a SLIM CASE, at a lower cost. Then will the tyranny of Steve Jobs end.

Re:iPhone do two things "uniquely"

[mdwh2]

When was the last time you checked out the mobile market? Pretty much every phone has large screens, and slim cases, even the dirt cheap ones, without keyboards (and as someone who would prefer an actual keyboard, I find it annoying).

(And before anyone says it was the Iphone that caused this - screens have continually being getting larger since before the Iphone, and it was an obvious progression to what we have now; the Iphone wasn't first with touchscreen AFAIK; and slim cases were around before - e.g., Motorola's RAZR.)

The key to a beating the iPhone

Check out the market share - most companies, such as Nokia and Samsung, are already beating it. Of course I'll probably be modded down for saying so, because debates on Apple stories are won by whoever has mod points (which is never me, incidentally), and not who speaks the facts.

Re:iPhone do two things "uniquely"

[tsm_sf]

Of course I'll probably be modded down for saying so, because debates on Apple stories are won by whoever has mod points (which is never me, incidentally), and not who speaks the facts.

Actually you'll probably be modded down for continually posting whiney little rants.

Innovation is not necessarily invention

[StreetStealth]

See, that's the thing that Apple does so well. They don't invent things. They make other inventions actually work.

Through exhaustive design iteration and engineering, they develop ideas that are "nice on paper but useless in practice" into things that actually deliver on the invention's promise. From desktop UNIX to high-capacity music players to the mobile web browser, Apple invented none of these, yet they all sucked until Apple treated each one not as a feature problem but as a design and usability problem.

That's not invention. But if it isn't innovation, I don't know what is.

Re:Innovation is not necessarily invention

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to agree but your right.

The newton was ground breaking

[nurb432]

The iphone, well, its a phone...

Then all phone companies innovate

[mdwh2]

Yes, obviously the computers, mp3 players and phones simply didn't work at all before Apple came along.

And mobile web browsing was doing fine, years before. Yes, perhaps Apple was better than what came previous when it was first released, but that's true of all high end products! It's a natural consequence of any market where things get continually better. You can't point at Apple alone, and say "Look, they were (slightly) better than what was there before, therefore Apple are the greatest!", whilst conveniently ignoring every other high end phone in existance, before and after then, that made things better too!

Yes, Apple innovate. Just like every other technology company out there.

Re:Then all phone companies innovate

[JesseL]

Good band recognition and marketing qualify as technical innovation now?

Re:Then all phone companies innovate

[gobbo]

Yes, obviously the computers, mp3 players and phones simply didn't work at all before Apple came along.

Respectfully (because maybe you weren't there to see it), desktop computing before the Woz really sucked.

Re:Then all phone companies innovate

[drerwk]

My fingers pine for the front panel of an IMSAI! I miss having to load a tape reader by hand.

Re:Then all phone companies innovate

[kamochan]

Ooh! That's Aerosmith! Do I qualify - or did I flunk the marketing bit..?

Re:Then all phone companies innovate

[gobbo]

whippersnapper! When I was a kid all our computing was done with yarrow sticks.

Tips to post a story

[mdwh2]

1. Mention how you can access the Apple Store website On Your Iphone. That's a guaranteed way to get a story.

2. Include a token reference to Android, portraying them as the sole competition in the mobile market, so you can make Apple look better.

3. Not include the link to Apple. If you want to make wild claims about Apple and the Iphone, remember these are best done without a single citation.

Personally I'd say that this story is vaguely notable for once, due to it covering the Newton. But sadly I suspect it only made the front page because of the magic "Iphone" reference.

Re:Tips to post a story

[Guy Harris]

1. Mention how you can access the Apple Store website On Your Iphone. That's a guaranteed way to get a story.

So where's the place on the Apple Store where you can buy your way out of a parking ticket?

Jeopardy!

[lucm]

I am a big company with a monopolistic agenda and a marketing-driven corporate culture.

(Actually it's a trick question. You cannot possibly know if this is Microsoft or Apple, unless you know in which category you are playing: "Evil" or "Cool").

Above post was f-ing unreadable

[Anonymous Coward]

Pot, meet kettle; remove the beam from thine own eye, etc. Next time try to write a more comprehensible post, when you're critiquing the readability of an article.

And yet, I love my iPhone

[reidconti]

For all of the politics around it, I love my iPhone. I have jailbroken previous iPhones and enjoyed the benefits, but my current one is operating as Apple designed it because I didn't gain enough from jailbreaking to make it worth the effort.

I'm happy with the apps I have, I'm happy with the 3G and regular phone service, I'm happy with the UI, Google Maps integration, iPod, call history and phonebook, don't need multitasking.. I just use it, and it just works, better than any phone I've had before-- including an unholy Motorola/Microsoft abomination. Out of so many millions sold, funny to think that I'm the only one.

Sure, I guess I wish it could multitask or do those other things I don't really need. I wish it was more open. But I'm happy with it. Maybe my next phone will be something else.. or maybe the competition will make Apple improve too.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

Why did it fail?

[Kiyooka]

Nice article that made me very curious about one thing: why did the Newton fail? It seems like an amazingly useful and cutting-edge device that should have been snatched up by everybody.

Maybe it was just a little bit TOO new, so didn't fit well enough into people's existing workflows?

Re:Why did it fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Psions were better and PalmPilots were cheaper. (Although Windows CE devices were just as laughably clumsy as they are today.)

Re:Why did it fail?

[R3d M3rcury]

Well there were a few reasons:

• Price. The original Newton was priced at $700. They never really came down that much, making them fairly expensive. You got the general argument, "Why should I spend $700 for a Newton when I can spend $5 for a datebook?"
• Size. The MessagePad was a fairly large device. It was a little too big to fit in your pocket.
• Handwriting Recognition. The impressive part of the Newton was that you would write and it would "read" your handwriting. One problem was that the Newton had to be "trained" to learn your handwriting, which Apple didn't really emphasize. So people ended up with the expectation that they would pull it out of the box and start writing and be off and running. When it didn't work well, people returned it. Doonesbury's famous cartoon let the world know that the product didn't work and it carried the stigma for years--even after the handwriting recognition improved.

iamwhtiam

[iamwhtiam]

CNET has officially lost it!

Nope

[CritterNYC]

According to Apple: "The Standard and Enterprise Programs allow you to share your application with up to 100 other iPhone or iPod touch users with Ad Hoc distribution. Share your application through email or by posting it to a web site or server."

So your app can only go to 100 people. If you attempt to use the program to sell or give away apps in an adhoc manner, Apple disables your developer key and then it can't install on more phones.

On Palm, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android, S60... basically every single mobile OS... you can develop and distribute applications as you see fit. With the iPhone, you're locked into only what Apple approves through the AppStore.

Incorrect

[CritterNYC]

Palm had tens of thousands of apps available for it long before the iPhone was even designed. Many of those apps are still more powerful and useful than most iPhone apps because iPhone apps don't have access to the whole operating system and Apple won't let folks create apps that don't sit well with their business plan (which is why there's no real Google Voice on iPhone).

Re:Incorrect

[JasonAsbahr]

Which apps are more powerful and useful on Palm? I was a Palm users for many years pre-iPhone, and I'm curious which you think fit that category.

Interesting point

[jonaskoelker]

Or that's my $0.02

(Pardon the pun) you are right on the money! ;-)

linux (and other unices) behaves differently

[Chirs]

Most unices will allow you to allocate memory until you exhaust the virtual address space because they don't actually map the virtual address to a physical page until you try to access it. If every app all of the sudden tries to access all their memory, the system will run out and the oom killer will kill apps until there is enough memory.

You can turn on strict memory accounting in linux, but there are definite caveats...if you have an app using a bit over half the memory in the system, technically you can't fork() it because that would require more memory than is available--even if the child is going to simply call exec() right away.

Multitasking sucks.

[MikeFM]

What the heck do you need to multitask for on a phone anyway? Apps are supposed to save what they are doing and quit quickly and reload just as quickly (not that they always do.. the price of 3rd party apps.). If I were Apple I'd start rejecting apps that couldn't reload in 5 seconds. These apps annoy me anyway because they take forever just to load and most of them are from PC game companies that seemingly don't know the meaning of a mobile app. (Why the fsck does Scrabble take so long to load?)

There is usually no reason to have that app running when you aren't using it. The only real exceptions I can think of is live-event notifications for alarms, im, phone calls, etc which they've gotten closer to, network connections, and maybe background media playing which is built-in anyway.

I'd like to see them offer real multitasking but make it so users can disable apps from doing it if wanted because I don't want 10 badly written apps running in the background when they should just be able to reload quickly when I want them. The hard part is offering a good UI for open app management. Compare WinCE or Android to the iPhone for ease of use and they are lacking (more flexible means harder to use most of the time). I'd suggest making double-clicking the home button bring up an open apps manager along w/ the music controls - sweep left/right to find the desired app and click to resume.

It seems you're saying smart phones have to be difficult to use with poor battery-life. In that case you can keep it.

OCR

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they overdid the dissing of handwritten character recognition. The iphone would be great if they ported calligrapher to it. (From the same guys who did the OCR for the Newton, and they were still in business several years ago when I last checked and had released OCR software for wince(...and I do), and a couple other devices.

Re:OCR

[bhtooefr]

It actually has been (partially) ported. Unfortunately, because of how Apple locks down the OS, it can only work inside of the applications it comes bundled with.

http://www.phatware.com/index.php?q=product/details/writepad/writepad%22

Meta: Anonymous?

[Anonymous Coward]

If CNET Nate forgets to sign in, does that make him anonymous?

Or does this just mean Slashdot got tired of someone gaming article submissions for pageviews on low quality articles?

Chatter

[CritterNYC]

Well, ChatterEmail would be on that list. It's the only fully-featured mail client I've ever used on a phone. iPhone's mail client doesn't match it. Nor does Android's (even the K-9 Mail branch that I use). ChatterEmail had better IMAP and IMAP IDLE support *years* before anyone else.