Think Positive: Newton Reborn

My first article published, over a decade ago, was on the death of the Newton, and the idiotic idea of separating Apple into a hardware company, and a software company.  I can say idiotic because the folks who thought that was a brilliant idea went off to Palm and convinced them to do the same.  Guess what happened; Palm IS back but only by noting that idea was dumb and creating a very rich new operating system very much tied to the hardware.  It’s a fact even from a basic business perceptive; great hardware can sell okay software and great software can sell so so hardware.  All that aside the product that I lamented so many years ago has come again.  Does it have Newton OS? No.  A Stylus? Nope.  Handwriting recognition? Not so much.  Yet the iPad is certainly the spiritual successor to the Newton, and no less revolutionary.

This being after all Think Positive, lets get the the negative BS out the way sooner than latter.  Yes it’s an evolution of the iPhone OS.  Yes it’s a gigantic iPhone without a phone.  Ostensibly it’s a tablet (more on that latter).  Where’s the big news?  This an evolutionary product not a revolutionary one right?  Not really.

The PDA seemed like a dorky idea at the time.  In fact I recall many trying desperately how to figure out how to make the darn things useful.  It offered a combination of a date book, address book, assignment pad, along side some very limited applications.  It reminds me of the NeXT computers which had a lot of great ideas but were very much held back by underpowered hardware, high prices, and very few applications.  The fact that the Newton itself was about a quarter the size of a 15 inch Macbook today, and almost 4 times the size of an iPhone didn’t really make sense for a devise which on the verge of the internet age couldn’t browse it well at all, and had just discovered color.

Certainly the death of the Newton was sad; the device packed way more potential then the then proliferating Palm, and BlackBerry.  Palm is only alive because it abandoned Palm OS which (without Apple actually updating Newton) failed to innovate even after a massive influx of former Apple employees.  BlackBerry has capitalized on the idea of mobile email but in a post iPhone world that will not keep the company alive.  Why then if the iPhone has managed to evolve on the Newton concept (without even needing handwriting recognition, and providing a frankly unprecedented internet experience on a mobile devise) do we need something about 6 times bigger than an iPhone?  This seems to be why all these ‘technologists’ are poo pooing the iPad.  My answer: the iPhone was never meant as a phone, it was meant as a backdoor to something better.

Firstly, and note I go through withdrawal symptoms if i forget my iPhone at home, there’s a lot it does awesome; for a phone.  Methinks Apple wasn’t interested in that last bit when it developed the technology behind the iPhone.  It wasn’t looking to make something AMAZING (for a phone) it was looking to make something “AMAZING.”  The iPhone is hands down the mobile phone for people with a freaking clue.  If you don’t have a clue than some 1990s dinosaur, or worse those little free phones you can barely text on, is fine.  Why?  Because the folks that need that kind of phone just wanna call folks once in a while.  They don’t need to stay in touch, they don’t need to communicate more than verbally, and they don’t need to share ideas.  All 4 of these folks are the same ones that buy a print newspaper.  (If you find this offensive; you don’t have a clue and frankly you’re no less a dinosaur than the little 40 dollar samsung flip phone in your pocket and I don’t care what your age is.)

So then what does the iPad do that the iPhone doesn’t?  Okay (and this is just brainstorming a bit).  Have you surfed the internet on an iPhone?  Great isn’t it?  Have you had to try to make the screen bigger and tap like 10 times to click a button?  Have you tried to read a PDF or word DOC on an iPhone?  Have you had to flip the darn thing 15 different ways to get it into landscape view so you can actually read the text?  Sure you have.  Is this a problem?  No; it’s a freaking phone it’s terrific to be able to do any of this stuff at all!  That is the problem the iPad fixes, and that is what is holding the iPhone back from what PDAs managed to actually do well.

If you’re lying in critical care and the doctor is checking your vitals from the last 2 days, you don’t want him to have to flip the darn thing around to make sure he’s sure what he’s seeing.  If you’re in a business meeting you don’t want to have to zoom to see then zoom out to navigate; that will certainly steal the thunder of your presentation.  If you’re reading a book (say 100 tech devices fated to die before their time had come due to bad software and inadequate hardware for instance) you don’t want to have to constantly scrolls about to read a single paragraph.  But there’s another thing you don’t want to do; you don’t wanna slap down a 15 inch laptop, fuss about looking for an adapter to plug it into the projector make sure it’s plugged in (or worse forget it isn’t), and then try to find a way to control it with the lid closed.

I am not convinced the iPad is a great content creation device, but it darn well is a great communication device.  It’s the iPhone for the rest of us; and by rest of us I mean the ones sick and tired of fussing about with an iPhone for 20 minutes before we haul out the laptop.  It’s real movies on an airplane (without worrying whether the TV nearest you is broke or worse that it works fine but the fidgeting fatty in front of you makes it impossible to view.)  It’s your vitals, prognosis, and a running tally of alternative conditions even Dr. House couldn’t come up with in the ICU.  It’s a far better alternative to the Overhead projector in a business meeting, or college lesson.  And it’s the alternative to sitting in a dark room talking on a headset to a television screen full of Halo enemies, and a couple offscreen pals. (Who the heck would do that when you can do it in public!  During THE DAY on a subway or something!)  It’s the NeXT big thing, and frankly if you’re sitting about saying “hm I don’t really know what I’d do with this” you won’t know what to do without one in the next 18 months.