From what I remember the Newton was John Sculley's big project, when he was in charge of Apple. He had a great vision of a Newton future, and like a lot of technoutopian thinking it was basically correct but years too soon. The report skims over the fact that the Newton's demise coincided with that of Sculley; I imagine Steve Jobs, who replaced Sculley, wasn't too keen on keeping the Newton around. There is room for only one creative visionary at Apple.
The Newton was also packaged in a clamshell case as the Emate, which was sold to schools so that disadvantaged pupils could have a play laptop. I'm in two minds as to whether a professional-looking Emate, with a more sober design and a keyboard, might have been a better idea than the Newton. It would still have been much cheaper than the cheapest Powerbook. On the other hand it would have been harder to learn to use it than a Powerbook, and non-standard. Perhaps Apple could have sold the Newton off to someone else.
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Sweet sweet sweet catatonia
From what I remember the Newton was John Sculley's big project, when he was in charge of Apple. He had a great vision of a Newton future, and like a lot of technoutopian thinking it was basically correct but years too soon. The report skims over the fact that the Newton's demise coincided with that of Sculley; I imagine Steve Jobs, who replaced Sculley, wasn't too keen on keeping the Newton around. There is room for only one creative visionary at Apple.
The Newton was also packaged in a clamshell case as the Emate, which was sold to schools so that disadvantaged pupils could have a play laptop. I'm in two minds as to whether a professional-looking Emate, with a more sober design and a keyboard, might have been a better idea than the Newton. It would still have been much cheaper than the cheapest Powerbook. On the other hand it would have been harder to learn to use it than a Powerbook, and non-standard. Perhaps Apple could have sold the Newton off to someone else.