Apple Newton

Years before the iPhone put a computer into hundreds of millions of pockets, Apple tried to imagine what personal computing would look like when the computer left the desk. The result was Newton. Developed during the leadership of Apple CEO John Sculley, Newton was intended to create a new category of intelligent handheld computers. Sculley helped popularize a term for that category: Personal digital assistant. PDA. The first Newton MessagePad reached consumers in 1993. It did not resemble the smartphones that would eventually fulfill many of its ambitions. The device was considerably larger. Users interacted with it primarily through a stylus rather than a keyboard. But the underlying idea was remarkably familiar. A Newton could store contacts. It could maintain calendars and appointments. It could take notes. It could run applications. It could exchange information with other computers and devices. Most famously, users could write directly onto its screen. Newton would then attempt to recognize that handwriting and convert it into digital text. That feature was supposed to make the computer feel natural. Instead of forcing people to adapt themselves to a tiny keyboard, the machine would adapt itself to the way people already wrote. It was an extraordinarily ambitious idea for consumer technology in 1993. Unfortunately for Apple, the technology was not ready to fulfill the promise. The handwriting recognition in early Newton devices became notorious for mistakes. The feature was mocked in reviews, popular culture, and famously in the Doonesbury comic strip. Those jokes did enormous damage. Newton became associated with handwriting-recognition failure even as Apple substantially improved the technology in later versions. And Apple did improve it. Successive MessagePads became faster and more capable. Newton OS matured. The MessagePad 2000 and 2100 represented enormous technical advances over the original device. Apple also created the eMate 300, an unusual translucent green Newton-based portable computer designed primarily for education. By the late 1990s, Newton was considerably better than the product that had generated all the jokes. The market, however, had moved. Palm introduced the PalmPilot. Compared with Apple's MessagePad, Palm's devices were smaller, cheaper, simpler, and focused tightly on the functions consumers actually wanted from a PDA. Microsoft's Windows CE also created another major handheld platform. Newton suddenly found itself competing in a category it had helped define. And it was losing.

Newton's demise resulted from a combination of commercial weakness, fierce competition, and a dramatically changing Apple. The original MessagePad had suffered a disastrous reputational problem. Its handwriting recognition was one of the product's most heavily promoted technologies, yet the earliest version frequently produced incorrect results. The jokes stuck. Later Newton devices dramatically improved handwriting recognition and overall performance, but Apple could never completely separate the platform from the reputation created by its launch. Newton hardware was also relatively large and expensive compared with increasingly popular alternatives. Palm took a different approach. Instead of trying to create an extraordinarily sophisticated handheld computer, the PalmPilot focused on being small, relatively inexpensive, fast, and easy to use. Consumers responded. By the first half of 1997, Newton reportedly controlled only about 6 percent of the handheld operating-system market, compared with 66 percent for PalmPilot. At the same time, Apple itself was in serious trouble. The company had suffered enormous financial losses, its Macintosh market share had declined, and its product lineup had become notoriously complicated. Steve Jobs returned to Apple following the company's acquisition of NeXT and became interim CEO in 1997. Jobs began aggressively simplifying the company. Products and projects that did not fit Apple's new strategy were eliminated. Newton became one of them. Apple had already explored separating or selling the Newton business. Instead, on February 27, 1998, Apple announced that development of Newton OS and Newton-based products would end. Jobs explained that Apple needed to concentrate its software-development resources on advancing the Macintosh operating system. The MessagePad 2100 and eMate 300 became the final Apple Newton devices. After roughly five years, Apple's first major attempt at handheld computing was over.

Few failed products have experienced as dramatic a historical reassessment as the Newton. During the 1990s, Newton was frequently treated as evidence of Apple's ability to produce expensive technology that consumers did not want. Its handwriting-recognition mistakes became legendary. Its name became synonymous with a product arriving before the technology was ready. But viewed decades later, Newton looks considerably more important. The device anticipated a future in which people carried personal computers everywhere. It treated contacts, calendars, notes, applications, communications, and personal information as parts of a single portable digital environment. It relied on direct interaction with a screen. It attempted to interpret natural human input. It even contained software concepts that resemble technologies Apple would revisit much later. Newton also helped establish the PDA as a recognizable product category. Palm would execute the idea more successfully. Smartphones would eventually absorb the PDA completely. And Apple itself would return to handheld computing in spectacular fashion with the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010. Those products were not simply new Newtons. The technologies, interfaces, and markets were fundamentally different. But the underlying dream was strikingly similar: Take computing away from the desk. Make it personal. Make it portable. Make the machine fit into everyday life. Newton failed to achieve that dream commercially. The rest of the technology industry eventually proved that the dream itself was right.