Comments on: PC vs Mac: The Newton

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:12:01 +0000

Brian: What’s wrong with the MacBook Air? (I have no clue, just asking).Didn’t the Newton also cost a lot more than the Palm Pilot (again, I could have that wrong). It does seem to me that Mac’s innovation is paid for by the customers more up front, perhaps, than for other new technologies. This could lead to dissatisfaction happening more quickly or having longer lasting effects.

By: Brian X

Brian X — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:01:02 +0000

The Newton made two big mistakes. The first was that it was bottlenecked on input — the handwriting recognition was the best in the business but it still wasn’t terribly good, and there were no buttons, barely a hint of a d-pad, and everything was stylus-driven. The second was that the entire design — a roll of paper metaphor? — was a bit weird and over-elegant.The PalmPilot came around a few years later and got it decidedly right, but not after spending several years proving that Apple had lost its ability to learn from its mistakes. Steve fixed that in a hurry, but still repeats the odd stupid move (MacBook Air… not happy.).

By: Darren Stevens

Darren Stevens — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:51:23 +0000

“…integrates seamlessly with any PC running Windows…”LOL… as if anything integrates “seamlessly” with Windows…