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

Re:ok

[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.

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.

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.