When Newton was released, I was in business school and all my budding entrepreneurial colleagues had an HP financial calculator. Engineers? Business users? Consumers? Based on the ads at the time, it seemed like Apple was most serious about targeting business users:īut the Newton’s product features certainly weren’t aligned on a single type of user. One example: the on-board calculator. I don’t believe the company itself knew what to make of the market nor who it should target. ![]() The wide feature set created a marketing challenge for Apple. But the unpredictable software became arguably its greatest failure - it even became the subject of the satirical Doonesbury comic strip:Īnd, of course, the Simpsons had their fun as well: The Newton’s handwriting recognition was its most highly anticipated feature because it was the first device to have this capability. It also included a memory card slot so that the device could run additional software. The Newton promised to be a note taker, a fax machine, an email platform, a personal address book, a calculator, a task manager, a sales tool, and more. Second, what made the Newton the first of its kind was that it could do so many things. First, the Newton represented a new product category - the personal digital assistant (PDA) - and no one really had a reference point for what to expect from it. I think those failures could be distilled to two facts. The failures of Newton are well documented. A first of its kind product that did (too) many things And perhaps more importantly, it taught me something that became a foundation for how we create mobile and connected experiences here at ArcTouch. It wound up helping me get a job at Apple. As it turns out, the Newton did a lot more for me than I expected. Why not just let me buy it?”Ī few minutes later, I walked out the door with a smile, knowing that perhaps I was the first person in the world who had purchased a Newton. And I’m ready to pay you right now for one. “But,” I argued, “if the Newton is going on sale tomorrow, you must already have stacks of them in the back room. The salesman at the time reminded me the Newton wasn’t going to be available until the next day. So, I walked into a nearby electronics store and threw down my credit card to make the purchase. I’ve always been kind of a nerd when it came to being among the first to acquire new gadgets, but the fact that this new gizmo was so utterly portable somehow made my yearning stronger. Perhaps it was because I’ve always had mobile in my blood - even before “mobile” was really a thing. It’s hard to explain my desire to be among the first to own it. The Newton was scheduled to go on sale the following day, which was the opening day of MacWorld, held in Boston. I had to - just had to - get my hands on the Apple Newton MessagePad. In my mind, failing in this mission was not an option. In some parts of the computing landscape, processors are being split into tightly connected "chiplets" that are less susceptible to manufacturing glitches.įor more from today's Apple iPhone 15 event, check out everything Apple announced.Twenty-three years ago, on a Sunday night in August 1993, I was on a mission. As chips get larger, though, they get more difficult to build. The trend reflects how chipmakers are building more and more abilities directly into silicon, an approach that offers better features, performance and battery life if done well. And for the first time, the A17 Pro has hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which helps give light and reflections greater realism in games for a more immersive experience. The new GPU is another highlight, benefiting from what Apple called its "biggest redesign in the history of Apple GPUs." It has a six-core design that's up to 20% faster while also being more energy efficient for sustained performance while gaming. ![]() That's a big deal for making the port useful, for example, for transferring video to a laptop or shooting 4K 60fps ProRes video that's stored on an attached external storage device. One region of the A17 Pro is devoted to USB, letting the iPhone transfer data at up to 10Gbps over its new USB-C port.
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