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Apple and Palm Computing: Take 2?
ChronosX writes "A news.com article provides a hint that Apple is thinking about relaunching a branded handheld product, but isn't interested in developing their own. Who's the only company making an all around solid handheld that fits Apple's easy to use computing philosophy? Why that would be the Pilot, of course. " At the shareholders meeting, Jobs has left open the possibilty of Apple relaunching a handhold, and confirmed that they have talked to 3Com about the Palm division. ApplePilot anyone?
Mitch Manditch? Mitch, M and Itch = Mitch? I'm really sorry for this OT, but it was just too weird.
Hahaha.
You will be demoted.
"So the Pilot has always had a Mac-like feel to me, so the suggestion that Apple might put their logo on it just seems to "fit"
:)
Strange, it was the Pilot that made me get a Newton in the first place.
I borrowed a friends (who wouldn't use it himself) for the weekend, and I couldn't get it back to him soon enough. I just couldn't stand it.
In all fairness, he got the upgrade, and is much happier with it now.
But after buying a Newt myself (after Apple announced that it was going to discontinue the Newt, so I knew what I was getting into), all I can say to 3Com is:
RUN! Hide! Don't let Jobs get you
It'll be a cold day in a hot spot before I buy another Apple product.
John Waalkes
jwaalkes@edge.net
She mentioned to me that apple was planning a "imac-type" handheld device for a 3d Quarter release ... Any other rumors on this one ??
Of course, this is the fabled "P1" consumer portable that all the mac rumors sites have been drooling over (as well as I have). Supposedly will run a 100% compatible, but limited extras, MacOS. Probably meaning it's MacOSX compatible and probably Linux-able. Rumors about it using the core technology of Newton's handwriting recognition are out there, but not huge.
Apple really needs to get this out of the door in time for schools to buy it. So, listen for real mentions from Apple before the fall so schools can budget for it. If it's good and priced under $1000 and plays games pretty well, I anticipate it will be my next computer.
You say you *knew* Apple was discontinuing the Newton when you bought it. And now you're bitching and refusing to buy another Apple product just because they actually did?????
Its posts like that that are really hurting slashdot.
I sure hope so, though in fairness I have to point out the better technology they did invent often fared no better with Upper Manglement.
Only recently has their flagging market share forced them to offer competitive price/performance, and the larger market is so dependent on binary compatability it might be too late.
Wasn't the reason Apple pulled the plug on the Newton somewhat to do with Intel acquiring the StrongARM manufacturing plant ? ....
Could you imagine Apple buying processors from Intel !!!?
I Don't Think So
It needs to be noted that whenever Apple produces something stellar, it also comes with stellar price. (Lisa, MachintoshI, Newton)
since they are in the business of consumer product, that is a glarring mistake of market research.
In Europe, Windows CE has less than a third of the market. That's for *all* CE devices. The top three, which account for over 60% are Palm, Psion and IBM's Palm OEM.
The current (ie non-MacOS X) MacOS does suck, very much. But check your facts, pal.
>Because Mac OS X Server isn't Mac OS, it's Unix, it can't run any of your current MacOS programs natively.
That's where you're wrong, buddy. It *IS* MacOS. It has got Unix in it. And the crap about not running your current MacOS programs natively...gimee a break. I used to have a great deal of respect for the folks who post on Slashdot. More and more, I find myself amazed at the stupidity...
Give me a break, people. Everyone keeps saying, "That's dumb. They axed the Newton, so they'll ax this." Now come on. How stupid are you people? They axed Newton, for whatever reason. Maybe it was because they didn't think it would go anywhere, or something. Maybe it was Steve's infamous ego (that Slashdotters tend to blame anything on). Anyway, there was a reason. But why in the hell would Jobs start a project and ax it? Or get it screwed over somehow? So far everything he has touched (with his finger, as opposed to his ax) has turned to gold. Now the Newton is out of the way. Apple has NEW PLANS. Every single thing you guys are pissed at Apple about was stuff that was around before Jobs that he's just clearing away so he can start fresh.
I can easily see Windows CE succeed against the Palm the way Windows did against the Mac if 3COM doesn't get its act together; CE and the Palm-Sized PCs will get a little better, a little better.. until people start using them, and then they'll eventually get the usability up to a decent level and it will be over for 3COM.
Seriously, I think Apple might be able to do a better job with the Palm than 3COM; at least they have some experience in the field. Sometimes I don't think that 3COM really groks the technology or what to do with it.
I've always felt that the Pilot succeeded and the Newton failed mostly because the Newton was too big and too expensive, while the Pilot was just right both ways (OK, maybe still a little pricey). There was nothing too technically wrong with the Newton. As others have said maybe it was a bit too ambitious.
Idiot. Put OS X Server in Blue Box mode, full screen, and that's MacOS for you right there. You won't even know the difference unless you're running an old app that does something freaky directly to the hardware rather than going through the MacOS APIs. Of course, without the Carbon that's coming in MacOS X, MacOS apps will still suffer from the same memory protection and PMT problems that MacOS does.
What would I care even if MacOS X Server had no MacOS-isms at all? That doesn't keep it from being sweet for developers. I can tell you from experience that the Yellow Box / OpenStep APIs are virtually unparalleled from a development standpoint, and there'll be a fast and robust BSD 4.4 Unix underneath.
That being said, I think it would be awesome if they could resurrect NewtonOS and its development environment. That was the best part about the Newton.
Anyway, what makes you think that developing for an Apple Palm would be different than developing for a 3COM Palm? Apple can't change that too much or they'll break their whole existing user base. It's possible that they might not even have the ability to change that, they'll just license the OS and sell Apple-branded Palms like IBM does.
Naive. Yes, costs do matter. It costs much more to successfully market a product than the initial R&D! Especially one that had bad PR flack and public perception already.
It's been more than a few months since he canned the Newton, you know.
If you need good sync/bckup sw, go get a copy of EBB's Mobile backup sw (new version just released). http://www.ebb-ubb.com/ebb
It works on all 2.0 OS machines and later.
The Newt 2100 is *still* the best handheld on the marke - a year after being steved.
Expensive? Maybe, but most comp users (including /.s) put too much emphasis on naked cost, and not enough on value. The Newts cost as little 2 years ago as many other devices with less functionality. Cheaper and simpler devices using Newt tech could have been mkt'ed (and were proto'ed). Even today, if you want a fast handheld with a 1/2 VGA screen, full-screen hand writing rec, 2 PC slots and built in sound/vid/serial/fax/print/modem capabilites, you're going to pay about $1K - which is what the Newts were selling for 2 years ago.
Btw, Newton was *not* killed due to poor sales - quite the opposite. Newts were the *most* successful US vertical mkt handheld from 95-98, in terms of units sold. In 97, Newton had been spun off as it's own company, Newton Inc. with Sandy Benett of the NSG as it's acting COO. Sandy gave a presentation to the Apple board showing how much *profit* Newt Inc expected to make in the remaining fiscal year and then in it's first two years as an independent platform, $100M+ (note that at the time, Palm had made less than $0 in 2 years of selling Palms - to be expected from a ramping-up tech, but still illustrative of how mature the Newt mkt was compared to other handhelds.)
Sandy also made it clear that the Newt team was looking to open up the Newton platform - had already started in fact (giving us Newt developers more info about the platform in two weeks of existence as Newton Inc then we ever got from Apple).
Steve decided that he really needed the 60-100M that Newt was going to bring in during the next 12 months, and didn't want a potentially competing hw platform on the mkt stealing mindshare from his upcoming G3/iMac lines. So he fired Sandy, and promptly rolled Newton Inc back into Apple. Then he lied to the dev crowd while gutted the line.
Rhapsody on a dragonball? Yes, the mind reels - and then pukes over the side. Please please please - don't succumb to the same fallacy that it seems comp designers always do, which is to believe that the current architecture/UI is going to work for the next place we bring computers. Mainframe UIs and tech don't work for desktop workstations, by and large; and desktop paradigms don't work in your hand. You don't put bucket seats and a big padded steering wheel on a ten-speed racing bike, even if they do make sense in the family van. Newton (and Palm) OSes do things fairly differently than their desktop cousins, and succeed because, not in spite, of that. WinCE, even with the huge mkting might of MS behind it, has failed in the mkt for the most part (even PSION sold more units in the US last year than the WinCE mftrs). A lot of the reason is that WinCE devices try to be little desktops, and people on the go have no time for such BS - they want an electronic notepad and organizer, not a little version of their cubicle chained to their leg. There are other reasons WinCE is doing so poorly (excessive licensing costs from MS is a big one - suprise suprise!), but blind adaptation of inappropriate UI/data models is a big part of their lackluster adoption.
They've licensed the PalmOS and are focusing on "the consumer end of the handheld computing market." See URL http://www.handspring.com/pressrelease.htm
I believe they plan to release their first product at the end of 1999.
"Exciting", perhaps. But I'm not convinced it's better.
I think some of Apple's best products came out of Sculley's time (I assume you mean John Sculley as PepsiMan). Under Sculley, we finally got Macintoshes with slots, color, and multiple monitor support. We got the simplest hardware to work with (Macintosh IIcx & IIci). On the software side, we got System 7 (and with that, AppleEvents & AppleScript), Speech Recognition, & OCE (Hey, I liked it!). Finally, we got the Newton.
Under Jobs, we've gotten...colored iMacs. I chuckle about it because, reportedly, Jobs big question to Sculley when he was hired at Apple was "Do you want to spend the rest of your making colored water or do you want to change the world?" Sculley takes over and--excuse the hyperbole--changes the world. Jobs comes back and makes colored computers.
(No, this is not sarcasm)
I'd never noticed that! Way cool!
You're comparing the *FUTURE* of WinCE with the *PRESENT* of PalmOS. Not to mention the fact that you offhandedly discard Apple as a non-entity, despite the fact that they now have essentially a UNIX OS that offers a lot of things NT doesn't have. Palm is keeping the OS slim. The battery life on CE machines sux so much because a) they can't get the hardware together and b) the software is yet another bloatware hog from Microsoft. You're living in the past.
It's not practical for a tiny device to accomodate the user because that would require more computational overhead than is practical for a Palm Pilot.
Graffiti's not so bad when you consider it's running on a pokey old 16Mhz processor and can usually keep up with your writing speed. I learned it in about a day and it helps if you put the hint stickers on the inside of your flip up lid. If you don't like Graffiti then why did you buy a Palm? I believe there is a jot program available for the Palm if you need an alternative.
Some of your arguments have merit (the screen does suck) but it is also very frugal when it comes to power usage (very important). Your memory argument is weak. My Palm IIIX has 4 megs and I have yet to use more than 60% of its capacity. That's after loading 3 quicktime movies, 20 applications, 3 novels of about 300 pages each, several databases, graphics files, and a graphical web browser. If you need more get the 8 Meg upgrade board for $150 or utilize the 800 Kb of flash space not used by the O.S. Your pricing issue is very weak. Sure the most expensive Palm is $450, but you don't need to spend that to have a machine which will run all of the apps and be usefull. You can get a Professional model for $150, a Palm III for $199, or even a IIIX for $299 if you shop from a discount web store. The new Palms have a new Dragonball EZ processor which is capable of displaying 16 shades of gray on the screen which will improve the palm's graphic capabilities, and the new cpu is smaller and even more frugal with power requirements. To me 3COM doesn't appear to be targetting any markets. The apps that ship with the palm aren't very useful and don't cover the full spectrum of what this machine is capable of. This is a big area of weakness but I guess it's up to us to find the apps we need to personalize the machine. WINCE palm sized devices don't give very usefull apps either. WINCE is too much like its desktop brethren WIN 95/98. When you turn on your machine you don't want to boot up or scroll through countless pop up menus, you want to start up where you last left off. After all is said and done bells and whistles, color screens, cute chimes, fancier handwriting recognition are meant for larger devices that are plugged into the wall. These features just take up more space and cut your battery life down to laptop times. 2 hours of use is pathetic. When all is said and done if you don't like your Palm sell it or don't use it and quit bitchin' that it's not a desktop.
Is this a sale of the division or a licensing deal? If it's a sale I think we can look forward to palmPilot technology becoming irrelevant in the marketplace the same way Apple has. As a palmPilot owner for over a year I have continually scratched my head why 3com hasn't gone out and agressively licensed the OS to hardware manufacturers that want to get into the handheld game.
Look at all the handhelds on the market. How many run palmOS? I know of one, 3com's palmPilot. How many run CE? Everyone else. In the long run, CE will cream palmOS simply because consumers will have a choice of hardware.
The only problem I've ever had with the Newton was that it didn't have the best synchronization software. That was the only reason I switched to a PalmIII when Newton was killed. I still have my MP2K and I really really would love to use it instead of my PalmIII, but oh well...
Palm Computing was founded by folks who were VERY familiar with the Macintosh; if you look at the PalmOS APIs, you'll see that they are modeled on the MacOS API. I've always thought of my PPPro as a mini Mac Plus that happen to run on 2 AAA cells...
:)
It'd be nice to see Apple doing a translucent green iPilot
As a Newton owner, I'm more than a bit suspicious of Apple getting back into the handheld business. Nor is Steve Jobs the "Apple of my eye" so to speak.
Wasn't this the same company who pulled the rug out from under the insanely great Newton? And why? You can't tell me it cost too much to keep around, hell, the development was done. The developers were in place, all they really needed was to come up with a reasonably priced unit for the average Joe.
And that problem had been solved.
Yea, it would be great to see a dent put into CE market share. And Apple could license technology to 3Com and give them quite a boost. I dunno.
But if I were 3Com, I would be very cautious about getting into bed with Apple. Don't forget, the road to Cuppertino is littered with bodies too.
John Waalkes
jwaalkes@edge.net
When Cartoon Maker Steve Jobs took over at Apple, and canceled the Newton Inc Spinoff, within 2 weeks 32 members of the Newton development group up an left Apple for Palm computing.
So Palm has almost all of the Newton Engineers. So expect to see Newton features make it into the Palm...as soon as 3com can work out the licencing/clean room code as needed.
What could really come of this? I mean, let's say that the Newton UI gets pasted on the Pilot (obviously, with a few changes to fit the PalmOS). It's still a Pilot, right? There's no real difference...
- Shaheen
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I'm sorry; I don't believe that Apple is a capable company after some of the losses they've incurred and the glaring mistakes they've made.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Posted by DonR:
"But the big question was the "consumer" portable"
Look for an announcment about the middle of this year regarding Apple's consumer laptop, currently codenamed "P1". It reportedly has a passive matrix screen, and rumors of a "crank" to augment the battery life. We'll see what apple brings us, but I doubt very much that'll be a handheld unit.
---
Donald Roeber
Posted by F.A.N.G.:
The newton was a much better device than the Pilot. It(like all Apple products-since day one) was just too fscking expensive. It was abandoned due to poor sales, not any technological reason. Apple never said the weren't going to re-enter the PDA market, they were just going to wait until it was possible to run the same OS as thier desktops. Rhapsody on a dragonball? The mind reels.
Posted by F.A.N.G.:
A friend has a newton, but cannot use a pcmcia modem without using the external power supply.
Kinda defeats the whole purpose, unless you know there is going to be an outlet near every phone you will ever use the newton from. It's a great concept though.
JOT is a good concept, but I don't think it is going to be nearly as good as the newton's. JOT will only do individual characters, and is only an incremental improvement over graffiti.
Has anyone looked at TealScript?
Okay, how about USB?
Okay, palmOS is great, and I wouldn't trade in my PalmIII (or my PalmPro before that which my g/f now has) for anything. However, PalmOS could be better or be extended.
I'd love to see a PalmOS device the size of a newton with real handwriting recognition. I like the PalmOS application launcher and feel better than newton's. There are times I'd really like to have a fuller sized screen, though, not all the time, however.
Okay, how about a Palm docking station, which adds a bigger screen and maybe a PC Card slot? That would be *COOL*.
\end{braindump}
When Apple introduced the powerbook line, all but the 100 were done by Apple. To build the low-end 100, they handed Sony a Mac Portable and told them to shrink it and build it for them.
OTOH, the portables will probably still be running long after the last 100 and 1xx bit it. My portable has outlasted my 180 by a couple of years now. But it's so heavy, I actually hurt my shoulder (not badly) lugging it through an airport.
Even worse, Apple had something at least as good as the Pilot, and managed to destroy it, and then managed to refuse to let anyone else develop the technology.
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
(currently testing something about signatures here)
The article states that Jobs confirmed "discussions" with 3com about buying the Palm division. It also said that there was no comment about licensing the palm technology and issuing an apple-branded Palm, like the IBM Workpad.
These rumors are a little too sparse for me, and the two different possibilies outlined would have very different implications.
A sale would be a little unlike Apple-- they've historicly had an acute case of the old NIH syndrome, though this is changing.
A straight licensing deal would be neat, though-- the masses would really dig an iPalm in 5 fruity flavours.
Do I want to buy a portable from these folks? I don't think so. The Palm OS being closed- source is bad enough. Letting the control freaks at Apple rule my Palm would suck rotten monkey feces.
Cheers,
*Call it the Clone Wars. ;)
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Repeat after me, folks: Proprietary systems are bad. This is a perfect example of proprietary software's abuses. Apple is the premier proprietary computer company of the world. At least Microsoft tries to dictate only the software you use. Apple wants to tell you what software and what hardware to use, and if you don't like it, be damned.
The only difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is that Gates succeeded.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
If Apple's write anywhere in normal handwriting HWR makes it in, and some of the Newton UI breakthroughs make it in, I would buy for sure. I've looked at the recent pilots, and I think they're getting close. I'll still use my MP2k for now, but someday it'll need replacing. The best situation would be if 3Com licensed some of the core Apple technologies that made the Newton as good as it was - remember, there was something like $1B invested in that platform.
--
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
I agree. The one problem I have though is that a "Palm Computer" just does not fit with the way I like to work. I'm much more fond of the handhelds the size of a Newton, Panasonic CF-01, or Vadem Clio. When 3Com comes out with something that can replace my trusty spiral notebook (9.5x6 college ruled) I'm in.
I was just thinking the same today, here's an url that takes U to a h/w recog app, called by a mob called http://www.shopcic.com called jot!
I tried the demo for about half a day. I could draw the entire alphabet onscreen (yes on screen) and it had no trouble converting a->z (lowercase, who wants caps) with the exception of the letter, "t" which used some weird t, certainly not the plain cursive script I tried.
the demo sucked (nagware that timed out after 15 minutes use...required U to restart the app). The demo application itself worked fine (noticed a few gui bugs) but when I uninstalled it I got a fatal and my P3 had to be rebooted.
I'd buy it if I could get myself to fork over the US$40
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
- biomass - more sales
- funky pilot colors - who wants a green one?
- more apps & s/w dev - conduits and apps to iMac?
- marketing muscle - create demand for biomass
- r&d - faster ways get data from iMac palm to iMac and vicky versa
apples good a grabbing an idea and running with it and marketing it, to 'hell'. If this rumour is true, lets see if they can hook the palm into more yummy consumer products they keep saying they are concentrating onpeterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Sure, sell the most successful mobil computing maker to the same folks that managed to burn any advantage the Mac might have had over Gates
Excuse me, but where in the article did it say that Apple was going to buy Palm? It made reference to the fact that Apple considered it in the past, but I didn't see anything in that article that stated they still plan on buying Palm Computing.
In fact, the article cited doesn't even say that Apple is thinking about doing a Palm OS based device. That is just rumor and speculation.
all they really needed was to come up with a reasonably priced unit for the average Joe.
And that problem had been solved.
Really, how, exactly? I'm hoping you are not referring to the eMate.
The reason why the Newton failed was exactly because of price. Everybody wanted one, nobody could afford one.
Just as a note, Libretto's run FreeBSD with the PAO modifications as well.
Yeah, and with them holding a gun to your head, you have no choice but to use their hardware and software? *eye roll*
we have known about this for a while... supposedly in the rainbow of iMac colors... and based on the Palm Pilot... hence the reason apple pushed so har for the recent MacPak 2 and helped serve it off their FTP servers!
-- Steal Me --
If Jobs does that, only months after cancelling the Newton, I shall beat him to death will my MP2000.
Why? Because they haven't lept at every whiz-bang gizmo that comes down the pike?
Look at a Palm V sometime. It's solved almost all of the Pilot's original flaws: better screen, better durability, more memory, backlighting, rechargeable batteries. It looks sharp, too.
Yes, there is no cellphone, voice recording, pcmcia card support, or color screen built in, but those things all either increase the size of the unit outside of the pack-of-cigarettes form factor that's been proven to work, or decrease battery life to unacceptable levels.
Also, simplicity is what sells a Pilot. The last CE POS I looked at had buttons all over it, and I couldn't even figure out how to turn it on. Bleah.
What the Palm people should do (and are now poised to do) is go for the low end of the market with a sub-$100 pilot. The basic Pilot card has GOT to be cheaper than dirt after being mass-manufactured for years. And, it has all that it needs. Just put a graphing calculator on it as standard equipment (and Tetris), and watch the high school kids line up.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I'm not going to get into that kind of flamefest with you. MacOS has its advantages and disadvantages just like any OS.
Besides, I wasn't talking about the developer's standpoint. MacOS was and still is a great way to use a computer. Linux is the most stable way to use a computer. MacOS and linux could learn a lot from each other.
--JT
...from this point of view: I've always felt that my PalmPilot bears a kind of spiritual kinship to the old Macs. To start with both are Insanely Great. Then there's the Motorola CPU, the small monochrome display, the cool GUI with its menus and oval buttons. When I dug into the database that the PalmOS uses to store information, it felt a lot like the resource database stored in the System and resource forks of files in MacOS.
So the Pilot has always had a Mac-like feel to me, so the suggestion that Apple might put their logo on it just seems to "fit".
A friend of mine, a fellow who loves the Pilot but hates Macintosh with a passion, was extremely distressed when I pointed out the similarities. I thought the poor fellow was going to be ill.
--JT
I'll be damned if I spend another minute learning the intricacies of developing for an Apple handheld. I've already been down that route before. When Apple changes CEO's again, or when that Jackass Jobs realizes that he isn't the one steering palm development, or whatever defvice they settle on, Developers will have a closet full of tools for a non-existent product line.
Don't believe the hype. Remember what happened last time and with what callous disregard Apple discontinued their last handheld line (just as it was starting to really kick ass, I might add).
Apple: Think Twice.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The Newton has an excellent object oriented OS, and the hardware was just beginning to rock, but Apple killed without much ado because of Steve Jobs ego.
MacOS is a piece of shit. How about memory protection? Pre-emptive multitasking? This being 1999, shouldn't there be a symmetric multi-processing option? Don't even get me started on the MacOS licensing issue.
And don't throw out any "MacOS X Server does all that in spades" Because Mac OS X Server isn't Mac OS, it's Unix, it can't run any of your current MacOS programs natively.
Apple: Think Twice.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
You couldn't do it easily. Newton OS is wonderful, I have many expensive books explaining the inner beauty of that platform. In comparison Palm Pilots are severely underpowered.
As for the look, the palm looks very similar already. Making those adjustments would be minor. To do the Newton on the Palm, you'd need a higher res screen to handle scalable fonts and Unicode. The Newton has a lot of on screen widgets and a silk screened area (in the 130). There's no way you could fit all the good stuff in a 160x160 screen without changing it significantly.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
You think that Apple licencsing it's technology to Palm would give Palm a boost? I just don't understand how having access to the losing technology would give the fastest selling consumer electronics device in history any sort of advantage.
I love the Newton. I have a 130 and used it quite faithfully until I bought my first Palm. I love the OS, and NewtonScript.
The Newton is a pig. It eats batteries like pork rinds. It does a thousand things that I'll never need it to. It runs dog slow with a processor that ought to be able to haul ass. The Palm is a svelt competitor.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Nope. Apple refused to sell the Newton technology when they killed it. They spun the division off into it's own company, and then after about 2 months, re-integrated it to kill it off.
I think the powers at Apple are intelligent enough to realize that they ought to do what's best for their product line, even if it means buying processors from Intel (or taking money from Microsoft, oh yeah).
The so-called pissing match between Apple and the Wintel world probably goes over well on the Mac Advocate mailing lists, but the company seems a bit more canny than that, fortunately.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I agree with your assesment of the Hardware. Hardware-wise, Newton was a pig.
Previous posts suggested a Newton-like OS on Palm hardware. That's what I was commenting about.
All I'm saying is that I've wasted much time and money developing for a viable product line that was unceremoniously dropped, even though it had a healthy developer and user base. It didn't have the numbers of the PalmPilot, but then again nothing else does. I'm not going to lift a finger, or drop a dime, to purchase any more development software for an Apple re-marketed Palm.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I agree with your assesment of Palm's recent additions to their lines.
I don't agree with your statments about Windows CE. Every quarter, they crash in new and even more unusual ways. Now, you can see what it looks l;ike to crash in color!
The things that matter to me, and I think a lot of people who use handhelds, aren't getting any better on the wince machines i.e. battery life, stability, utility. Color is nice, but it conflicts directly with the battery life thing.
When wince devices meet all my personal criteria for a PDA, I'll buy one. It doesn't look like that's going to happen in any of this years iterations though.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Check your shit at the door, imbecile. MacOS X CAN NOT run MacOS programs in native mode.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
What did I say, AC? I said that Mac OS X can't run Mac OS apps natively. The impression that I'm getting is that either Mac adovocates can't read, OR they don't know what it means to run a program without some form of f-izz-ucked emulation.
READ, Please.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I concur. Apple OS X (it's not Mac, so why call it that) is Unix and thusly rocks. But it ain't Mac OS, that's for damn sure.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
If I'm wrong, rebuff me. Last I checked my facts were straight with reality. My opinions are ALWAYS right ^_^
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Apple's main problem has always been in the marketing department. They've always has a great GUI that any moron could use and until recently, it was far more stable than anything Gates could produce. Before anyone flames (or moderates) me, realize Linux is not a user platform right now...if my mom can't use it, it ain't the platform.
I've had a Newt MP, 100, 120 and a 130. These all worked like a charm (though the 120 I gave a coworked finally died the other week...though I wouldn't be supprised if she just has a dead battery). The handwritting is still better than anything else I've found and I really wish I could switch away from a dead product, but it's still head and shoulders above the competition. The only thing consumer oriented that I've found that I'd even consider would be the Libretto. I've borrowed my bosses when my PB G3's been too much to cary for presentation and the only problem with it is that it only runs Windows (I couldn't even get NT to install on it...grrr).
If Steveybaby had gotten over his hatred of the newton, it would still be a viable technology today. I'd still pick another up today for my "museum of computer stuff that I stuck on my wall" if I had the cash. It'd go between my little HP calc (114??? I can't remember) and my parted out 1541.
nuff said for this post...
clifyt
I've always felt the PalmPilot succeeded and the Newton failed because the Pilot was originally very focused on just doing what was really needed and not too much else. Not that Newton was a mess or anything, but I thought it was a bit too ambitious and consequently, too expensive.
With all the changes and the growth of the Palm platform lately, I hope Palm and Apple remember that the Pilot was great because it was primarily focused on needs instead of technology.
-- John Truong
Seriously...this looks like it could be a very interesting development. For a long time, the Newton was a very popular item, but its time had not yet come. The Palm Pilot later showed what a handheld could be. Put them together, and we might just have something interesting.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Because of past mistakes, Jobs had no choice but to axe it inorder to get profitable again. Besides, as good as the Newton was, it represented a whole other code base to deal with.
As for not letting anyone else develop the technology, has it occured to anyone that Apple has some good code and is going to euse it in future products?
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Everything that PepsiMan stood for is dead at Apple. No Games; No consumer products; rise in prices; The Board, Copeland, the Newton, all things that Steve had to kill and excise from Apple so as to improve the Corporate Fen Shui and assert his revenge on those who stole his company and dumped him like a jilted lover.
Apple today is so much more exciting than PepsiMan's off-white computing, even if Jobs did throw the baby out with the bath water.
Thought for the day, don't you really dislike the space and bandwidth wasted by most signatures?
Just brain storming here, but how about: Add QuickTime Media Layer and color for a killer video sketchbook. I love HexPaint and NewtPaint on my N2K, I want color and animation authoring too.
Additionally attaching a DV camera via FireWire and/or USB, coupled with cellular modem tech would make a great micro remote TV unit. Special effects, titling, Vector Tracks and Interactivity are all built in to QT, among many other things, making for a very slick presentation. Thousands of real time, portable Web based streaming TV stations, broadcasting live from LinuxWorld, Yugoslavia, your vacation. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, multimedia-wise.
The technology for all this live stuff already exists, I realize, but not as an out-of-the-box 15 minute setup kind of deal. It will happen, sooner rather than later, and Apple will be most likely be leading the charge towards this new killer "Golden Convergence"
The music is not in the piano -Clement Mok
I think this is extremely cool news. The newton was a great device then, and now. I have a PalmIII and i totally love it, and I saw the newton many times, great functionallity...plus, there was a Web Server written for the Newton. Wireless modem connection, and the webserver on a newton...host some pages in a subway
I went to the iMac preview deal that Apple had down in Dallas last summer at the Infomart, and at a discussion out Apple's future, there were a few things hinted at... many of which are now a reality:
1. A merge of the then-current Rhapsody project with the new OS to make OS X.
2. The "professional" G3 portable. Those are those badass laptops that they have out now.
3. The "professional" G3 desktop machine. Not the iMac, but those new servers that still have the nifty bondai blue scheme.
4. The "consumer" desktop. AKA iMac.
But the big question was the "consumer" portable. Maybe this is Apple's push back into that field. Hell, I still have one of the original Newtons! Granted, it's a momento that I whip out for laughs when people come by, but still...
Well, Cross's Crosspad meets you halfway there. It's a digital tablet; insert a pad of paper, start writing, and 50+ pages of notes are digitized. Unfortunately it requires a PC to hook up to in order to play with or manage the data.
If there were a complementary Palm+ type thing to go with it...
That would rock.
Click here for more info!
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
There are at least two others;
IBM WorkPad branded PalmPilot, and Qualcom's PDQ email/pda/cell phone thingy.
When has Apple ever been irrelevant? They innovated high color displays, 16 bit sound, SCSI sub-systems, GUIs(Yeah yeah, XeroxPark came first.. but they didn't do anything with that!), mice(Similar story as previous), and now with FireWire, consumer PCs, and hopefully soon handhelds.
Just becuase they always shot themselves in the foot after starting the race doesn't make them irrelevant, just stupid. Its only recently that Windows has out-innovated Apple, but if OS X is any good, then Apple will be head of the pack again. Barring Linux, since Linux isn't quite ready for the desktop, though soon.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I think the only thing I could fault Apple for was poor marketing and command choices. Their hardware and OS were always exemplary at their target and market level, pushing state of the art, convenience, and usability. Only recently have they dropped the ball at all in not releasing a Mac OSX type OS sooner. With M$ release of Win95, all advantages that MacOS had were pretty much nullified, though the tables may turn once again if Mac OSX turns out to be any good, compared to WinNT and Win9x. No Linux comparisons, please...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I can easily appreciate the trepidation; with Apple's track record, either the new handheld will crush the market with its innovation, later to be dropped in a series of bad moves and ultimately dominated by WinCE, or it will release a stellar product that no one cares about because everyone is satisfied with good enough and the status quo.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
*Sigh*
Specializing in taking a good product and ruining it. Maybe they could sign a deal with Commadore?
---
The statement below is true.
there are 2 palm oem's.
IBM
Symbol Technologies (I'm holding their palm III+scanner and laser pointer right now)
and
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
uhm, what are you talking about? what have they done that too? i'm sure its something, its just not the majority of their business...
....................
I think it makes a lot of sense for Apple to license the Palm and issue an 'enhanced' Pilot.
The problem that Palm has is that it is squarely in the sights of MS, who is working hard to squeeze it out of the market much like the have done with every other competitor. I don't like the signs already - look at the Magazine rack, and what you seen in the way of marketting in the Palm computing arena.
// On a clear disk you can seek forever
I do not think much will come out of this. The histories of Apple and Palm are very similar. Both came out with a great product, miles ahead of anything else available at that time. Both then sat on their laurels twiddling their thumbs (and probably other body parts as well), while the competition led by Microsoft huffed, puffed, and pulled up. Compare DOS and Mac OS -- no comparison. Now compare Windows 95/98 and Mac OS -- very similar and unless you are a Mac fanatic you have to agree that Mac is not significantly better. It's now a matter of personal preference, not overwhelming superiority. Apple lost.
Now consider Palm. Palm technology is *old* now and all 3COM does is make cosmetic changes and raise the price. Palm users have been screaming for more memory and larger screen for ages and what does Palm announce this winter as its future product line (besides saying that Palm OS kill Windows -- that's true, they did say that!)? One Palm with a designer case and another one with a sucky wireless link (and again, notice the prices). While Palm tries to extract as much money out of the users as it can, other machines start to catch up. Compaq Aero, Nino, Cassiopeia, etc. are better machines, hardware-wise, than the Palm. As soon as the battery life improves (it will) and as soon as Microsoft slowly works through Windows CE (it also will -- Windows 95/98 sucks so much less than Windows 1.0/2.0/3.0) -- then Palm is dead. All because it didn't move, but sat on a successful product hoping that it will stay successful forever. And did I mention that the original designers of Palm left 3COM long time ago?
To summarise: Apple and Palm both suffer from inability to maintain/develop/evolve a highly successful product. Apple buying Palm is not likely to improve things (unless you you consider a Palm in fruity colors a major technical advance).
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
"Platform" usually means the hardware end. These two are definitely not working on the basis of current Palm hardware. They are developing PDAs, maybe even with Palm OS, but they ain't PalmPilots.
Again, I have nothing against Palm OS. My point is that current Palm hardware sucks and unless 3COM does something about it pronto (and it shows absolutely no signs of having its head above the sand) the PalmPilot will go the way of the Mac -- nice niche product, say 5% of the market. Multiple vendors with nice, cheap machines (color! oodles of memory! compatible-with-everything! etc, etc.) will eat Palm's lunch.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Keep in mind two things. First, we're talking about what's possible/expected in 1999. Second, as usual, everything is IMHO and YMMV.
Gripe 1: screen. Screen real estate is precious. The bigger the better, no questions here. Why can't Palm move the writing area onto the screen and use this space for other stuff when necessary? All other PDAs which do handwriting do this. I definitely feel that the screen is too small. And while I am at it, I also would like much better resolution, as in pixels per inch. Not all that hard to do. And more, I personally like grayscale screens, but the world out there likes color. See Palm kicked repeatedly because of this.
Gripe 2: memory. Sure, if you use it as a phonebook / appointment book, what's available is enough. But there ain't no such thing as too much memory. Why there are no Palms with 16Mb of memory? Why do I have to go through ridiculous contortions (expensive 3d party boards, etc.) to get a decent amount of memory? I know that Palm OS doesn't need as much memory as CE, but I want memory for data!
Gripe 3: pricing. I look at current Palm prices and feel that the company is trying to rip me off using its (rapidly fading) unique position in the market. Sure, it's all subjective perceptions, but I just feel corporate greed emanations...
Gripe 4: innovations. The world changes. Come on, guys, you've basically invented the pack-of-cigarettes PDA, now do something with it! I am bored with Palm already. What is there I haven't seen two years ago? More durable? Yawn...
Gripe 5: target market. Palm is more and more oriented towards the perpetually-travelling corporate suits. I am not it. I would like very much to see different (significantly different) version oriented toward different markets. Where are they?
I can continue about Palm's CPU, etc. etc. but I probably bored everybody already. I persist in my belief that Aeros, Ninos and Cassiopeias of the world will eat Palm for "normal" people market, and Symbian, as soon as it produces and debugs its PDA/cell phone combo, will eat Palm for "executive traveller" market.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Heh. You start by saying I live in the future (CE future, at least) and end by saying I live in the past. Oh well.
First, Compaq Aero, etc. are the present. The new generation of WinCE PDAs has arrived and the direction of their evolution is pretty clear. Palm, OTOH, made a lot of sounds at their winter conference, but all it came down to was Palm V and Palm VII, both of which, IMHO are too little too late.
Second, Apple IS dead. Maybe it doesn't know it yet, although the signs were there for a long time. Apple probably will end up being bought by AOL or somebody like that. And Apple having a UNIX OS??? (a) I don't think so; (b) who cares?
Third, WinCE machines do lose on battery life, but the gap with Palm will close quite fast. This is not a sustainable advantage. WinCE software sucks, true, but with every next release it sucks less. Besides, with StrongARM processors and loads of memory being bloatware becomes tolerable...
Again, the problem with Palm is lack of movement. WinCE machines are developing, evolving. They change and every quarter they suck less. Palm stands in place. Unless it starts moving, it's going the way of the Mac: a niche player.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
It would seem that Apple (which in spite of some good recent years is still none too rich) woud be more likely to liscence than buy, especially since I don't think 3com would want to part with a very sucessful division.
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btw, the librettos run linux.. we have 4-5 of them :-)
here at the CS dept at USC, and all run 2.2.2. NOt
a breeze though.. and it's suspect you'll be able
to get your boss to switch anyways...
and yes, good for presentations!!
amit
...and run java stuff on it ;-)
--
--
My sometimes helpful blog
"pushed so hard"?
The new MacPac is *a joke*.
Yeah, it's got a nice Mac interface. But it isn't
a Palm Desktop. It's Claris Organizer with the Palm Desktop name. The data model doesn't match the Palm handheld. It's about as seamlessly matched to the handheld as Microsoft Outlook.
The Palm developers were too busy adding gee whiz features like different colored window backgrounds to concentrate on making the data match up. Look at the newsgroups. You see two kinds of posts: 1. "I love the new interface!", 2. "WHY DOESN'T MY DATA SYNC!?"
Idiotic.
-faisal
-the only reason it gets good reviews is that the Mac reviewers look at it, go "ooh, pretty, feel like a Mac", and don't use it long enough to realize that half the features don't transfer
-THE SECURITY DOESN'T EVEN WORK
As long as it comes with:
;)
* AppleScript
* HyperCard
* Newton HW recon.
* The Palm "remote control" "feature"
and someone writes a sync applet for Linux
... I'll buy it ASAP
look, i think that unless palm os is lisenced to multiple hw vendors (apple included) QUICKLY, ce will kill palm...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
I concur. I just bought a palm IIIx. Grafitti stinks. I have to learn a new form of writing just to suit the PDA??!! Why can't the PDA learn to suit me? That's basically the difference between a Mac and a PC. If only Palm would incorporate the handwriting recognition. Never mind the new design of the V. Work on your internals before going for the externals.
two weeks a go I bumped into a woman engrossed in her newton at a starbucks in Singapore. She claimed that she worked for a apple distributor in town. She mentioned to me that apple was planning a "imac-type" handheld device for a 3d Quarter release ... Any other rumors on this one ??
don't forget the Newton's handwriting recog., which (if i have my facts straight) they've apparently liscenced to Palm recently.
I agree somewhat with Mike Buddha.
."
There just seems to be a lot of statements that can be rebuffed with:
"yes, but . .
Stop trying to prove points with half facts.
My Newton MessagePad 2100 is one of the greatest purchases in my life.
It's my laptop for when I'm really on the go.
The problem is that it didn't fit the niche that people had carved out for it.
People wanted something to carry around in their pocket.
It is excellent for college students though. You can keep notes, plug in to the campus LAN and download your email to read during downtime, and even browse the web. You can even record a lecture or two and listen to it again later.
With so many things to remember, I'd be lost with out my Newton.
I also recently purchased a PalmIII. It's okay, but it doesn't touch my newton in what it can do. I only use it when taking my Newton along would be inconvenient.
I would love a Palm Pilot with the Newton OS though. That's one of the few things I don't like about the Pilot, the OS sucks. It's so clunky compared to NewtonOS.