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Remembering the Apple Newton's Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact

Image may contain Cell Phone Electronics Mobile Phone Phone Computer HandHeld Computer Screen Monitor and Display

In product lore, high profile gadgets that get killed are often more interesting than the ones that succeed. The Kin, the HP TouchPad, and the Edsel are all case studies in failure–albeit for different reasons. Yet in the history of those killings, nothing compared to the Apple Newton MessagePad. The Newton wasn’t just killed, it was violently murdered, dragged into a closet by its hair and kicked to death in its youth by one of technology’s great men. And yet it was a remarkable device, one whose influence is still with us today. The Ur tablet. The first computer designed to free us utterly from the desktop.

Birth of an Idea

Newton was conceived on an airplane. That’s where Michael Tchao pitched the idea to Apple’s CEO, John Sculley, in early 1991. The company would announce it the following year, and the first product in the Newton Line, the MessagePad 100 1 went on sale twenty years ago this week in August of 1993. It was Apple’s handheld PDA–a term Apple coined to describe it. By modern standards, it was pretty basic. It could take notes, store contacts, and manage calendars. You could use it to send a fax. It had a stylus, and could even translate handwriting into text. Well, sort of. At the time, this was highly ambitious. Handheld computers were still largely the stuff of science fiction.

Handheld computers were still largely the stuff of science fiction.

“The goals were to design a new category of handheld device and to build a platform to support it,” explains Steve Capps, the Newton’s head of user interface and software development who both helped dream it up and make it real. “The restrictions imposed by battery life necessitated a new architecture.” That is, with Newton, Apple didn’t just set out to create a new device. It wanted to invent an entirely new class of computing. Computers that could slip into pockets and go out into the world. In fact, the pocket was a core design requirement.

When Michael Tchao first pitched the Newton to Sculley, there were a few requirements. It would have a pen, a radio that worked on a pager frequency, forms and templates built in but that could be designed on a Mac or PC, and it would have to act as a “seamless” input device for a PC. But Sculley quickly added one more core feature: size. “The number one requirement was that it had to fit in John Sculley’s pocket,” explains Gavin Ivester, who ran the Newton’s industrial design. “We focused on width because that affects how you hold it. You need to be able to reach around with your fingertips on one side and the fleshy part of your thumb on the other to feel like you’re not going to drop it. You really only feel secure if you can turn it over in your hand and still hold it.”

At the time, it was extremely difficult to get component manufacturers to build any sort of custom parts. That meant everything on the PC board had to be at right angles–which made fit a challenge. The team was trying to pull off a design referred to as “the Batman concept” a dark, sleek and sculpted aesthetic. It was also Apple’s first real departure from the Snow White design language, created by Frog Design, which had defined the company’s products in the 1980s. Apple, after firing Frog Design for working with NeXT, was redefining what their products could look like. But fitting all the parts into a sleek black pocketable wrapper proved difficult.

“We joked about sneaking into Sculley’s house and sewing bigger pockets into everything,” recalls Ivester. But they made it work. They crammed together a palmable, portable computer. And in 1992, they unveiled to the world in front of a packed house at CES.

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apple newton failure case study

A Sudden Death

The result of all that work was a completely new category of device running an entirely new architecture housed in a form factor that represented a completely new and bold design language. There was just one problem: handwriting. “We were just way ahead of the technology,” laments Capps. “We barely got it functioning by ’93 when we started shipping it.” Handwriting recognition was supposed to be Newton’s killer feature, and yet it was the feature that probably ultimately killed the product. Newton’s character recognition problems became the butt of jokes, most famously in Doonesbury.

Garry Trudeau devoted an entire week of the strip to making fun the handwriting recognition in Apple’s new device. As it turned out, the Newton was a tangental target. Trudeau would later tell the Apple team that he had not even tried it when he wrote the series. But he wanted to lampoon boys with their toys, and the Newton’s handwriting recognition–which was already receiving bad press–seemed an easy target, as did the idea of replacing a perfectly good $5 notebook with a $700 computer.

Nonetheless, it was devastating. A panel in which Michael Doonesbury writes “Catching on?” that the Newton translated as “egg freckles” became the shorthand joke for the device. (Steve Capps would later license a new Doonesbury cartoon and build “egg freckles” into the MessagePad 200 Newton software 2.0 as an Easter Egg. 2) It was a blow to the team, who had put their lives into the Newton. They went back to work, and eventually got it right. But it was too late. “Character recognition got revisited and was just flawless and phenomenal,” laments Ivester. “The one stumbling block had become a joy to use, but it really never got a second look.”

But as bad as Doonesbury was for its image, Newton had an enemy much bigger than Garry Trudeau. Steve Jobs hated it. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, he raged against the device for its poor performance (and because it was Sculley’s innovation) and mocked its novel input mechanism.

“God gave us ten styluses,” he would say, waving his fingers. “Let’s not invent another.”

And so when Jobs’ at last wrested back control of his company, he scuttled it. As he explained to Isaacson:

If Apple had been in a less precarious situation, I would have drilled down myself to figure out how to make it work. I didn’t trust the people running it. My gut was that there was some really good technology, but it was fucked up by mismanagement. By shutting it down, I freed up some good engineers who could work on new mobile devices. And eventually we got it right when we moved on to iPhones and the iPad.

“Apple at that point had way too many projects,” says Capps. “I think he looked at Newton and said, ‘I couldn’t do anything with it.'”

The Lasting Legacy

Despite its relatively short life, the Newton and the thinking that went into it still resonates today. Hobbyists still use them. There’s a museum dedicated to it. And more to the point, it still exists in the devices you use today.

Handwriting recognition was supposed to be Newton’s killer feature.

There’s also at least one tangible thread that connects the Newton to something you likely use every day (and that indeed drives the entire mobile industry): the ARM processor. Looking to maximize battery life, the Newton team went gunning for something that could generate lots of bits MIPS per watt of power. 3 The best bet for that looked to be an ARM chip. Apple owned a third of the company at the time and directed development of the ARM6 processor that went into the Newton. Without the Newton, that technology could have died on the vine.

But the real impact of the Newton was the thinking that took the computer out of the office. Today, the PDA is with us all the time. We don’t use a stylus, though, we use a keyboard (which, for most of us, is likely a much faster and more efficient way to input text.) It’s our smartphone, and the whole concept of the smartphone was that it would bundle the PDA, the camera, the MP3 player, and the cell phone. And then there’s Siri and Google Voice search. The idea of an intelligent assistant that can recognize natural language and act on its intent is powerful once again, but this was something Newton pioneered–one of its great strengths was its ability to take a sentence like “I have a lunch meeting with John tomorrow at noon” and translate that into an actual calendar item. The Newton project was a failure, sure. But its impact lives on, in our day-to-day lives.

  • Correction 10:40 EST 08/05/2013 The first Newton model was the MessagePad 2. Correction 14:45 EST 08/06/2013 The Easter egg features a new Doonesbury cartoon concealed in the Newton’s second operating system. 3. Correction 14:45 EST 08/06/2013 The proper measurement is millions of instructions per second.

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Mistakes Were Made

The Apple Newton, the failure that led to the iPhone

apple newton failure case study

When one thinks of Apple and their products, you think of revolutionary products like the iPod, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, Macs and airpods. You probably don’t think about the Homepod, but hey everyone can’t bat 1000 right? Given Apple’s record of successful products, we can forgive them for the occasional flub. Before this record streak of successful products, Apple put out a revolutionary product, that didn’t do well in the marketplace. This product was called the Newton. We will look at the reasons the Newton didn’t take off.

In 1992, Apple announced the Newton. The Newton was coined a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) by then Apple CEO John Scully. The device could take notes, store contacts, and manage calendars. It could send a fax and even translate hand-writing into text. Now these are features that a basic Android phone can do today, but these were revolutionary features for 1993.

With the Newton, Apple’s intent was to create an entirely new class of computers. The goal was a computer that you could slip into your pocket and take on the go, theoretically. Users of the Newton could load additional programs on the Newton by linking it up to a Mac, though this feature was limited at launch. User space was limited on the Newton with users only getting around 140 kb in user storage, This amount is even more laughable than the 8 GB iPhone Apple used to sell. To offset this issue, Apple sold 1mb, 2mb and 4mb flashcards you can plug into the Newton for additional storage space, ironically a feature it does not offer on its iPhone or iPad today.

Once Apple announced plans for the Newton PDA, several competitors came up with competing devices. This turn of events sped up the timeline for the Newton’s debut in 1993. The result of this rushed timeline was an incomplete product that stumbled out of the gate. Apple barely got the Newton to function properly before it started shipping them to stores, and that is always a recipe for disaster.

1. Handwriting fiasco

The hand-writing recognition was supposed to be the Newton’s killer feature, except for it worked poorly. The software attempted to recognize whole words written by the user, but it often failed and translated into random and weird sayings. Critics derided the hand-writing feature. The device was mocked for a whole week on the comic strip Doonesbury and in an episode of the Simpsons. The hand writing recognition got better over the next 5 years of the Newton, unfortunately, the Newton could never shake the perception of its performance from its debut.

The Newton had three models all priced differently. None of the models were what anybody would consider “affordable.” The Senior was 9 x12 inches and cost $ 5,000. A midsize model was 6 x9 and cost less than $ 2,000. The smallest model was called Junior; it was 4.5 x7 inches and cost $500. Yes, Apple was price gouging people back in the 90s too. It’s important to keep in mind the problems with the hand-writing recognition,  and the limited memory space. You were paying well above market price for a slightly more useful notepad. The Next computer that Steve Jobs was working on at the time stated at $ 10,000 starting and people considered that absurd. Can you imagine paying $ 5,000 for an iPhone plus that didn’t work that great and had a lot of bugs? Well, that was equivalent to buying the Senior Newton back in 1993. Only people like MC Hammer or early tech adopters had money to blow on such devices.

Apple sold a measly 50,000 Newtons in the products first four months on the market. The Newton was supposed to be a major new force of revenue for Apple that would rival the Apple II and the Macintosh. The Newton instead became a 90s meme. Steve Jobs hated the Newton because of its poor performance and because it was Scully’s innovation (the Apple board sided with Scully over Jobs in 1985, which led to Jobs departure) and baby. Jobs also hated the stylus input on the Newton. Jobs stated “God gave us ten styluses,” talking about our fingers, “lets not invent another one.” When Jobs wrestled back control over Apple, he killed off the Newton line, his reasoning was that Apple had too many projects going on.

The Newton was groundbreaking and innovative, unfortunately, the technology just wasn’t there at the time to make it practical and reliable. Though the Newton could never fulfill the promise everyone saw in it when it was first announced, the thinking behind the project is still with us today. The main logic behind the Newton was to take the computer out of the office or home and have it carried around with you in your purse, briefcase, or pocket. The newton led to the Palm Pilot, which led to the Windows tablet, which led to early smart phones like the Blackberry, which led to the iPhone and other modern day smart phones. Though the Newton failed, most of us still use its successors today.

8 Replies to “The Apple Newton, the failure that led to the iPhone”

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I’m extremely pleased to discover this website. I wanted to thank you for ones time just for this fantastic read!! I absolutely enjoyed every part of it and i also have you bookmarked to see new stuff in your site.

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Some really great info, Gladiola I detected this. I’m not spaming. I’m just saying your website is AWSOME! Thank you so much! Please vist also my website.

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I still have a Newton II. I used to use it a lot when it was new, but you’re right that it was buggy and had too little software available.

Your last sentence is a doozy. I’m pretty sure you meant “successors” rather than “predecessors.”

[…] salvage something out of the mistake that was the Fire phone. Every corporation and human makes mistakes. The smart move is to gleam what lessons you can learn from the mistake so that it is not repeated. […]

[…] Apple had its moments. The chunky, black-framed Newton Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) completely flopped upon its release. It was 8 inches tall and 4.5 inches wide with a far from […]

[…] products flop for various reasons, it happens to everyone even Apple and Amazon. One of the key mistakes not to make with a flop is to fall into the Sunk Cost Fallacy. […]

[…] was a common tool for many existing touchscreen devices at the time including Apple’s own Newton, launched in […]

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Remembering apple’s newton, 30 years on, on its 30th anniversary, we look at the groundbreaking product's enduring legacy..

Jeremy Reimer - Jun 1, 2022 10:45 am UTC

Remembering Apple’s Newton, 30 years on

Thirty years ago, on May 29, 1992, Apple announced its most groundbreaking and revolutionary product yet, the Newton MessagePad. It was released to great fanfare a year later, but as a product, it could only be described as a flop. Widely mocked in popular culture at the time, the Newton became a poster child for expensive but useless high-tech gadgets. Even though the device improved dramatically over time, it failed to gain market share, and it was discontinued in 1997. Yet while the Newton was a failure, it galvanized Apple engineers to create something better—and in some ways led to the creation of the iPad and the iPhone.

The vision thing

Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976, had wooed marketing guru John Sculley away from PepsiCo to become the new Apple CEO in 1983. However, their relationship broke down, and Jobs resigned from Apple two years later after a bitter power struggle. Although Sculley made Apple profitable by cutting costs and introducing new Macintosh models, he felt lost without Apple’s visionary founder. So when Apple Fellow Alan Kay burst into Sculley’s office and warned him that “ next time, we won’t have Xerox ” (to borrow ideas from), he took it seriously.

Apple Knowledge Navigator <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJsITGzXd0">concept video</a>.

In 1986, Sculley commissioned a team to create two “high concept” videos for a new type of computing device that Apple could conceivably build in the future. These “Knowledge Navigator” promos showed a foldable, tablet-like device with a humanoid “virtual assistant” that interacted via spoken instructions. While some derided the impracticality of these sci-fi vignettes, they fired up Apple employees and got them thinking about the future of computing.

The dream starts to slip away

The technology to create such a device didn’t exist when the Newton project began in 1987, so Sakoman contacted AT&T and hired the company to design a low-power version of its CRISP CPU, which became known as the AT&T Hobbit.

Unfortunately, the Hobbit wasn’t nearly as nimble and clever as its namesake. The CPU was “rife with bugs, ill-suited for our purposes, and overpriced,” according to Apple Chief Scientist Larry Tesler . The original Newton design required three Hobbit CPUs to operate, the end-user cost was nearing $6,000, and the device wouldn’t even be ready for at least five years. The handwriting-recognition software, a key selling point for the device, was also progressing slowly.

Development of the Newton had bogged down, and Sakoman started to lose hope that it would ever be finished. In 1990, he left Apple along with Gassee to found Be, Inc., which made its own desktop computers and the BeOS operating system .

The AT&amp;T Hobbit CPU, making its final appearance in a prototype BeBox.

At the same time, another “top secret” Apple division was also working on unique portable devices and software under the code name “Pocket Crystal." Larry Tesler was asked to evaluate this team to see if it might be able to replace the Newton. Instead, he suggested spinning out Pocket Crystal into a separate company (which became General Magic ) and refocusing the Newton project with new hardware and new leadership.

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apple newton failure case study

Curious Vanar 🚀

apple newton failure case study

The Apple Newton : The Story of a Failed Revolutionary Device

apple newton failure case study

Apple Newton, a personal digital assistant (PDA) launched by Apple in 1993, was a device unlike any other at the time. It had a 6-inch grayscale touchscreen display and a stylus for input. It was designed to be a portable, all-in-one device that could be used for note-taking, organization, and communication.

apple newton failure case study

It featured a suite of built-in applications, including a calendar, address book, to-do list, and notes app, which allowed users to keep track of their schedules, contacts, and important information. One of the most innovative features of Newton was its handwriting recognition technology. With the ability to convert handwritten text into digital text, Newton was a game-changer in the world of PDAs. However, the technology was not always reliable, and the device earned a reputation for being finicky and unpredictable.

Design Flaws and Challenges

Newton's battery life was not very long, and users had to charge it frequently. Its limited memory made it difficult for users to store large amounts of data or install additional software. Its poor connectivity options made it challenging for users to sync with other devices or connect to the internet. The Newton's screen was also a weak point, made of plastic and prone to scratches and cracks. Finally, Newton's operating system, Newton OS, had limited software support and was not compatible with popular software applications at the time.

Innovations That Paved the Way

Despite all the challenges Newton faced, its innovative features paved the way for modern mobile devices, and its impact on the world of technology is still felt today. The design flaws of the Apple Newton highlight several important product design psychology insights. The device was designed with features that Apple thought users would find useful, rather than focusing on what users actually needed. This highlights the importance of conducting user research and testing to ensure that a product meets the needs and preferences of its target audience. A product must be easy to use and functional in order to be successful. This highlights the importance of conducting usability testing and designing with the user experience in mind. A product must be both innovative and practical in order to be successful. This highlights the importance of considering the trade-offs between new and innovative features and practicality and usability when designing a product. The PDA market was still in its infancy when the Newton was released, and other companies were quickly developing more practical and user-friendly devices. This highlights the importance of keeping up with the competition and designing a product that can compete in the marketplace.

Legacy and Impact

While the Newton ultimately failed commercially, its influence is still felt today. From the intuitive user interface to the all-in-one functionality, Newton paved the way for the future of mobile devices. It's a reminder that even short-lived innovations can have a lasting impact.

Here are 5 key learnings from the failure of the Apple Newton:

Conduct user research and testing to ensure that a product meets the needs and preferences of its target audience.

Design a product that is easy to use and functional in order to be successful.

Consider the trade-offs between new and innovative features and practicality and usability when designing a product.

Keep up with the competition and design a product that can compete in the marketplace.

A product must be both innovative and practical in order to be successful.

Other must reads! Check them here

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Newton's August 1993 launch set the stage for what would become the iPad and iPhone

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Back in 1993, Apple's press officers did the rounds of every technology magazine there was. When they reached one in London, they had the speech down pat. In particular, they knew how to fend off criticisms by asking questions first.

"What do you think it should have next?" they asked, subtly telling us more versions were coming and buttering up our egos. "Backlighting or color?" Without exception, the ten or so journalists in that office all said "backlighting" in unison.

It wasn't a bad choice. Newton never would get color but it did get backlighting with the MessagePad 130 in 1996.

On reflection, though, the answer to "what does it need next" was a lot more complicated than a simple choice between two features. By the time we were being asked that, the device was already heading to failure because it was competing against everyone's inflated expectations for it. Newton was announced so far ahead of being shipped and it was hyped so much that by the time it came, it was inevitably a disappointment.

That long delay also meant that competitors could at least start making rivals. Yet really the biggest rival to Newton had begun before the announcement. It's just that it had been begun by Apple. At exactly the same time Apple was making Newton, its spin-off company General Magic was attempting to make a similar device.

It's rare for a company to foresee where the future is going but Apple did it in the 1990s — and unfortunately did it twice at the same time. These were two separate Apple-backed devices that eerily predicted the world we live in today. And they both failed.

To understand where Newton went wrong, you need to see what it was trying to achieve before all of the hype and you need to go back further to the mid-1980s.

Who thought of Newton?

In 1985, Jean-Louis Gasse wrote that "in five years or less, computers will probably be capable of recognizing handwriting."

Today, Gassee is a businessman turned writer with an insightful and witty technology blog but in 1985 he was Apple's senior vice president of research and development.

In his 2023 biography, " Grateful Geek ," Gassee says it was when disaffected Apple engineer Steve Sakoman wanted to quit in 1987, that Newton began. Sakoman wanted to escape Apple's politics, return to product creation, and work on his idea for a device with handwriting recognition.

"I should have given him a pep talk and pointed out that Apple was in great shape with many interesting projects ahead," wrote Gassee. "Without thinking, I asked if he needed a CEO."

They compromised. Sakoman agreed to stay with Apple and make this device only if his work would be kept free of interference.

Gassee set him up in a building on Bubb Road, about ten minutes away from 1 Infinite Loop, and did not report to the Board what they were doing.

Apple's relevant buildings in Cupertino, California. Via Apple Maps. In red left to right: Bubb Road, 1 Infinite Loop and today's Apple Park.

Sakoman wasn't working alone, though. By this point he'd persuaded Steve Capps, co-writer of the Mac's Finder, to return to Apple specifically for this project. What they and their team were doing was specifically to look at making a pen-based mobile computing device. By late 1987 Sakoman had named it Newton, after the original complex pen-and-ink Apple logo.

apple newton failure case study

Also by this point, their plans or at least hopes were well developed. Newton was to be a handheld computer and communicator that sold for $2,495. That's what the original Mac cost so it didn't seem unreasonable. In today's money, though, it's $5,534 which does.

That's $2,000 more than the Apple Vision Pro. Or it was. The planned Newton didn't stay that price for very long.

It didn't stay handheld, either: by 1989 Newton was instead on its way to being a tablet measuring 8.5 by 11 inches, codenamed Figaro, and probably due to cost between $6,000 and $8,000. Today that's $12,193 to $16,257.

It's not clear how long Gassee really did keep this project secret from the rest of Apple, but by 1990, the company's Board definitely knew about it. By then, though, there didn't seem such a need to keep it secret in order to prevent any interference.

That's because Newton's big supporter Gassee had first taken over worldwide product marketing and shortly after was also named President of Apple Products.

However, early in that same year, Gassee disagreed with John Sculley who wanted to licence the Mac operating system to other computer manufacturers.

Their difference of opinion and Sculley's position meant that Gassee had a powerful title, but he was sidelined. It was a clear and significant enough change in Gassee's position that he announced he would resign.

It was more internal Apple politics and this time, specifically because of how Gassee was being treated, Sakoman finally did quit Apple on on March 2, 1990.

That could've been the end of Newton except for Bill Atkinson. This is the man who was principally responsible for the Apple Lisa's graphical interface which then became the Mac's.

Atkinson invited Steve Capps plus Apple legends Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare, and Marc Porat to his home for a meeting on March 11, 1990. It was to discuss a way of keeping Newton going and, significantly, he also invited John Sculley.

Three years before in his now out of print book "Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple," Scullley enthused about what he called the Knowledge Navigator. "Individuals could use it drive through libraries, museums, databases or institutional archives through various windows and menus opening galleries, stacks and more," he wrote.

Sculley went a bit crazy for this idea, having Apple produce promotional videos for it.

Yet at that first meeting in Atkinson's home, reportedly he just didn't get it.

He did, though, ask for something that he could show the Board at their next meeting. If only by that request, Sculley got Newton going again.

With the exception of Steve Sakoman's departure, the Newton team then began to return to normal. The Board approved the idea, Sculley gave Newton his official and full backing, and then he appointed Larry Tesler to run it in May 1990. There were just two things he mandated: Newton must go on sale on April 2, 1992 and it must cost $1,500 ($3,048 today).

This is where it gets odd

Marc Porat, who was at Atkinson's March meeting, had been involved since a year before with a separate project to do with making partnerships with Apple and companies i the communications and consumer industries.

In May 1990, he and others persuaded John Sculley to spin off that project into the separate General Magic. Working for General Magic from the start were Porat, Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfield. At some point shortly after they were joined by Susan Kare.

So with the exception of John Sculley and Steve Capps, every person who'd been at Atkinson's March 1990 meeting about the Newton was now with General Magic.

It's a matter of record that General Magic had the kind of tight security and secrecy that we now associate with Apple. This year's documentary about the company even shows some of the ways it implemented as total a blackout of news as it could.

apple newton failure case study

Yet even if Apple did the same thing with Newton, so many of the General Magic people were ex-Newton that it is not physically possible that they didn't know about their rival. These two companies aimed for the same goal of a handheld communicator that would revolutionize the world in pretty much the same ways and Newton announced first.

"John Sculley gave a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show where he announced what we were doing," Andy Hertzfield says in the General Magic documentary. "Except he announced it as something Apple was doing. We thought Apple wasn't doing it and we heard about it from that speech. We felt completely betrayed."

"I thought they would co-exist. So I wasn't really concerned that Newton would hurt General Magic. I was getting intense pressure from the Apple board and the Apple management team as to why I was spending so much time on General Magic [when] Apple was developing in parallel a business that it owned 100 percent of called Newton," said Sculley. "And that looked like they could ship a product."

It may have looked like it, but it wasn't true.

When Sculley launched the Newton on May 29, 1993, it didn't work. Literally. The first prototype demonstrated on stage wouldn't switch on. Fortunately the second did. Even so, Sculley should not have caved in to pressure to announce it yet.

Ultimately, the Newton wouldn't actually ship for another 14 months. It came out on August 2, 1993.

Its initial sales were good, for the time, with a reported 50,000 Newton MessagePads sold by the end of November 1993. However, whether through promotions or discounts, those were sold at $900 or $1,569 in today's money, far below Sculley's mandated figure.

The model shown to us in London was nowhere near as fast as using an iPhone today to make notes. However, it was faster than getting out your PowerBook was and the idea of having your calendar and emails with you all the time was compelling.

It just wasn't the magical device we'd all been led to expect. When the handwriting recognition wasn't perfect — and it often wasn't — it got mocked.

That recognition did improve and the machine did get faster and it did ultimately get a backlight.

The end of the show

Newton subsequently went through eight versions of the hardware, and many revisions of its software mostly distributed on 3.5-inch floppy disk before Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and killed the project.

It didn't actually get discontinued until 1998 and there were attempts by other companies to buy the technology but none worked out. To this day there are people using Newton MessagePads and a documentary was released about them and it this year.

John Sculley was ultimately the reason Newton came to market, and perhaps it's because of acrimonious disagreements that Jobs killed it off. Yet it was also Sculley who created Newton's most serious rival and it was he who announced it all more than a year before it could be made ready to ship.

"The Newton in 1998 looks remarkably unchanged from the Newton in 1993," wrote Sculley. "With the exception that the handwriting now works and the screen is readable."

If he'd let the designers get that right before announcing it, Newton might well have revolutionized the world. In an alternative reality, Newton could have been such a hit.

Which is what the writers of Apple TV+ hit "For All Mankind" think, too. That drama, which posits an alternative reality to our own, has characters using what's actually a Newton MessagePad 120 with an iPhone 12 hidden inside it.

Even in our own reality, even just looking back at the history of the Newton, still we can see much of what made the iPhone popular so many years later.

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Apple Discontinued the Newton 25 Years Ago: Here's What Happened to It Since

The Apple Newton might be a failure, but it helped shape the smartphones and tablets we use today.

The Apple Newton was officially discontinued on February 27, 1998. If you know about the device, you're probably aware it had a rocky existence in its relatively brief time on Earth.

So why bother commemorating the Newton, and particularly its end? If the Newton hadn't ended, we might not have gotten the iPhone or smartphones in general. So, read on to see how the Apple Newton started us on the path to the world of computers in our pockets.

What Was the Apple Newton and Why Did It Fail?

Apple Newton on a desk

The Newton was the world's first "personal digital assistant," or PDA. Then Apple CEO John Sculley actually coined the term PDA in his announcement of the product in 1992.

As a PDA, the Apple Newton could take notes, act as a digital calendar, store contact information, be a calculator, and send faxes. It could also send messages to pagers if you got an optional accessory card for it.

It did all that while fulfilling Sculley's major requirement for the device—that it fits in his pocket. The Newton was really the first highly mobile computer, though being released in August 1993 meant it didn't have many wireless features.

To operate the Newton, you would use its stylus to tap icons and different parts of the screen. To write on it, you could use the stylus to tap individual keys on the screen's collapsible keyboard or use the Newton's handwriting recognition feature, which was a major selling point.

Users could turn the recognition feature on and write out words on the Newton's screen with the stylus. The Newton would then interpret these scribblings and type the words out on its screen. It could also interpret drawn shapes and would refine them with straighter lines or more exact curves once they were drawn.

Apple Newton with its stylus

Unfortunately, the handwriting recognition feature of the Newton was a big contributor to its downfall, as it did not work well in the early units. Words would get odd spacing between letters or would be misinterpreted entirely. The results were very mockable—The Simpsons made fun of the Newton's interpretation difficulties—but they were also very frustrating for early users.

So, despite being an intense innovation in size and portability for computers, the Newton was a device with some very public failures. As a result, it only got five years on the market before Apple ceased production on it entirely.

Why Apple Discontinued the Newton

The ultimate discontinuation of the Newton PDA was the result of a lot of factors. But the final call was made by one person: Steve Jobs.

Jobs founded Apple in 1976 but resigned as CEO in 1985 after a power struggle with John Sculley. After Sculley was ousted by Apple's board in 1993, Jobs was brought back to Apple in 1997, where he remained CEO until his death in 2011.

All versions of the Apple Newton together on a table

Steve Jobs returned to Apple with many different projects being worked on, and the company was in $200 million of debt. He discontinued several projects to turn Apple back towards profitability; in February 1998, the Newton was one of them.

Why end the Newton, though? Despite fixing a lot of its handwriting recognition issues with Newton OS 2.0 and offering external keyboards for the device, sales weren't improving. The high price of the Newton ($800 back then, which is equivalent to $1470 in 2023) also contributed to low sales overall.

The Newton was also doing quite poorly compared to the emerging Palm Pilot PDA. And Jobs wasn't enamored with the management of the Newton team, nor with the Newton's stylus. As a result, Apple stopped producing the Newton and redistributed the Newton team elsewhere.

The Legacy of Apple's Newton

Though the Newton is no longer produced by Apple, it has lived on in various ways at the company—namely, in what it inspired after its demise.

Many people who had worked on the Newton at Apple ended up on the team that made the first iPhone. The launch of the original iPhone is an important moment in the history of cell phones , but it being a portable computer is very traceable to the Apple Newton.

Several iPhones facedown beside an Apple Newton on a glass shelf

The iPad can also thank the Newton for its eventual existence for similar reasons. And though Steve Jobs got his wish for human fingers to be the styluses of Apple's touchscreen devices, we eventually saw the stylus idea return via the Apple Pencil.

But all smartphones and tablets can be traced back to the Apple Newton via the ARM (formerly Advanced RISC Machines) processors that power each of them.

Apple invested in ARM specifically to get chips that were small enough and low-power enough to work in the dimensions of the Newton. Without that investment, ARM processors might look very different, as would smartphones, tablets, and laptops!

There were also functions within the Newton that carried over to future Apple products. A user could search their entire Newton for something with its search feature, which exists today as Spotlight on the Mac .

iPhones and iPads carry on the handwriting recognition function that started with the Newton. Thankfully, it has improved significantly since then and is now pretty fun to use.

The Apple Newton: A Failure That Led to Many Successes

Apple's Newton is not a device to remember as a great PDA. Its handwriting recognition issues were numerous, and it barely made a dent in its own market despite creating it in the first place.

But it's a device that got many people working on pocket-sized computers, and for that, we have to thank it for the existence of smartphones, tablets, and even many laptops.

So, on the 25th anniversary of its demise, we'd like to thank the Newton and everyone at Apple who worked on it. Without its failure, we might not have so many modern successes!

How The Apple Newton's Failure Led To The iPhone

Apple Newton MessagePad 100

Apple's approach to smartphone innovation in the past decade has focused more on refinement, instead of racing ahead of rivals. High refresh rate screens? Apple only warmed up to the idea last year. Crazy-fast charging? iPhones still have a long, long way to go. Megapixel-heavy cameras? 2022 iPhones peak at 12-megapixel, while Android phones are readying for the 200-megapixel race. But that was not always the case. 

The oft-maligned Apple Newton MessagePad was an innovation ahead of its time when it first arrived in 1993. It was deemed a colossal failure, but part of it lives on in the iPhone. And to some extent, in the world's favorite tablet — the iPad. The Newton MessagePad catalyzed a new category of computers called PDAs, short for Personal Digital Assistants. What it promised was revolutionary, but what it delivered was a potpourri of half-baked features and misfiring tech. And yet, its influence on the iPhone is undeniable.

It's worth starting with the form factor. When Apple chief John Sculley was first pitched the idea of a handheld computing device, he wanted it to be small enough for the pocket and could be held comfortably in one hand, per a WIRED report. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone over a decade later, it was seen as more than just a phone with cool tricks up its sleeve. It was a pocketable computer, in all essence. Walt Mossberg wrote for The Wall Street Journal that the iPhone was "a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer."

Dawn of pocket computing with touchscreens at helm

But raving about the form factor similarities is tantamount to merely scratching the evolutionary surface here. One feature, in particular, that received the most attention — both, good and bad kind — was the handwriting recognition for text-based user input. Touch-based input for computers was somewhat of an alien concept back then. And yet, Apple embraced it fully for the Newton over the bread-and-butter keyboard input. For some, it was ahead of its time and a peek into the future of pocket computers. For others, it was a gimmick, especially when Newton's recognition system erred. It was mocked viciously, both in print and media . 

But unlike the Touch Bar on MacBook Pro , Apple didn't shelve the idea. In the years leading up to the Newton line's discontinuation in 1998, Apple actually improved on it with each iteration. But the problem was two-fold here. The first Newton MessagePad shipped with 10,000 words pre-installed for recognizing whatever users scribbled on its monochrome screen. For folks imagining a notepad jotting session in any script other than English, the Apple device was a $699 piece of disappointment. Another aspect that was out of Apple's grasp was the lack of connected software infrastructure, one that could help upgrade the recognition system, and more importantly, take full advantage of its capabilities.

Newton was the progenitor of smart assistants

When the iPhone arrived, there was a whole ecosystem of websites and apps ready for touch and tap-based interactions on a fully touchscreen device. Steve Jobs reportedly loathed the first Newton, but the idea of a keyboard-less pocket computer that it pioneered was on display in full-force on the iPhone. Of course, the iPhone came in the days when the button-loving phones and communicators were all the rage, and an all-glass touchscreen slab was met with skepticism. And yet, the iPhone changed the world's smartphone game on its head in a shorter window than the Newton's entire lifespan.

Another pioneering aspect of the Newton software was what Apple called "intelligence assistance." It essentially tried to understand what users wrote on the screen and turned said writings into actionable commands. Writing a statement such as "Fax to Allen" at the end of a note would evoke a prompt for sending it to a person named Allen in the contacts directory. Scribbling "Lunch with Sophia on Sunday" pulled up the calendar and made an automatic entry after the user's consent. It was a smart assistant by definition, something that is now synonymous with Siri on the iPhone .

Where Newton relied on text-based input, Siri made the leap to voice recognition. Siri arrived as a standalone app in 2010, and was acquired by Apple that same year.  And just like the Newton MessagePad, it divided opinions. Some saw it as a gamechanger, others dismissed it as just another attempt to cash in on the voice recognition trend. WIRED wrote in its iPhone 4S review that "Siri is the reason people should buy this phone." Siri improved by leaps and bounds over the years. But more than being just another virtual assistant, it is a bittersweet homage to Newton's "smart intelligence" system whose true potential was only realized over a decade later.

A failure that evolved into a landmark

Newton's primitive (by today's standards) software was bogged down by the lack of an ecosystem around it, and yet, it followed user interface principles that can still be felt in iOS design DNA today. Jesse Freeman, a senior marketing executive at Akamai, breaks it down beautifully in a UXDesign article. When the iPhone arrived, it was driven by apps and a internet-connected software that was ready to take advantage of all the smarts and processing power it had to offer.

The Newton, in all its iterations, was a business and PR failure for Apple, much like the original Apple video game console Pippin . Such was the sting that one of Steve Jobs' first acts after returning to Apple's helms was killing the product. But as Mashable puts it, the Newton MessagePad was a beautiful failure. The Apple PDA was dragged down by a weak processor, bad display, and sub-par software experiences. But the lessons lived on. When the iPhone arrived, the software stage was set. The technology was ready. And all of Newton's unfulfilled promises were realized to a raucous success that helped Apple become the trillion-dollar behemoth it is today.

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  • Mar 19, 2023

The Rise and Fall of the Apple Newton: Lessons in Innovation and Market Strategy

Updated: Mar 24, 2023

The Apple Newton, the first Personal Digital Assistant, was a revolutionary device introduced by Apple in 1993. The device promised to revolutionize the way people managed their lives, but it was plagued with several issues like inaccurate handwriting recognition software, a high price point, and a lack of customer feedback. Apple continued to invest in the Newton, but sales remained disappointing, and it was eventually discontinued in 1998. The failure of the Newton teaches several important lessons, such as not rushing to market, listening to customer feedback, and being willing to cut losses. Apple's decision to discontinue the Newton was wise, and it focused its efforts on other products, leading to its resurgence in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Newton was ahead of its time and paved the way for the development of the iPhone and iPad.

apple newton failure case study

"The Newton was a revolutionary device, but it was also ahead of its time. We learned a lot from the Newton project, and we took those lessons and applied them to the development of the iPhone and iPad." - Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder and former CEO, in a 2003 interview with The New York Times.

The Rise of the Apple Newton:

In the early 1990s, Apple was riding high on the success of its Macintosh line of computers. However, the company was looking for new avenues of growth and saw the emerging market for handheld computing devices as a potential goldmine. In 1993, Apple introduced the Newton, a handheld device that promised to change the way people worked and communicated.

The Newton was a marvel of engineering, with a large touchscreen display, handwriting recognition software, and a built-in stylus for input. It could store thousands of notes, contacts, and calendar entries, and could even send and receive faxes. The Newton was a truly revolutionary device, and many industry analysts predicted that it would be a runaway success.

The Fall of the Apple Newton:

Unfortunately, Newton was plagued by a number of problems from the outset. One of the biggest issues was the device's handwriting recognition software, which was notoriously inaccurate. Users often had to spend considerable time correcting errors, which made the device frustrating to use. Additionally, the Newton was expensive, with a starting price of $700, which put it out of reach for many consumers.

Despite these problems, Apple continued to invest in the Newton, releasing new models with improved features and software. However, sales continued to be disappointing, and in 1998, Apple announced that it was discontinuing the Newton line of products.

"The Newton was a great idea, but it was a little bit ahead of its time. We were trying to do something that the technology of the time couldn't quite support." - Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive who worked on the Newton project, in a 2014 interview with The Guardian.

Lessons Learned from the Apple Newton Failure

So what can we learn from the failure of the Apple Newton? There are several important lessons that can be drawn from this cautionary tale.

Lesson #1: Don't Rush to Market

One of the biggest mistakes that Apple made with the Newton was rushing it to market before it was ready. The handwriting recognition software was not accurate enough, and the device was too expensive for most consumers. If Apple had spent more time refining the product and lowering the price, it might have had more success.

Lesson #2: Listen to Your Customers

Another mistake that Apple made was not listening to its customers. The company was so enamored with its own vision of the Newton that it failed to take into account the needs and preferences of its users. If Apple had paid closer attention to customer feedback and made changes accordingly, it might have been able to salvage the Newton.

Lesson #3: Don't Be Afraid to Cut Your Losses

Finally, Apple's decision to discontinue the Newton was a wise one. The company recognized that the device was not going to be a success, and instead focused its efforts on other products. This willingness to cut its losses and move on was a key factor in Apple's eventual resurgence in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

"The Newton wasn't a failure, it was just a little too early. It was the seed that grew into the iPhone and iPad." - Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in a 2015 interview with Fast Company.

The Apple Newton was a groundbreaking device that promised to change the way people managed their lives. However, due to a number of factors, including inaccurate handwriting recognition software and a high price point, the Newton was a commercial failure. Nevertheless, there are valuable lessons that can be learned from the Newton's demise. By taking the time to refine products, listening to customers, and being willing to cut losses when necessary, companies can avoid the mistakes that led to the Newton's failure, and create products that truly

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Remembering the Newton MessagePad, 20 years later

Twenty years ago, Apple released its first experiment in tablet computing, the Apple Newton MessagePad . While it proved to be a financial disappointment for the company, Apple’s first touchscreen device paved the way for future innovations in mobile technology, including the wildly successful iPhone and iPad.

The tablet also served as the cornerstone of a new market of personal digital assistants (PDAs), a term Apple coined to describe a handheld computer that functioned as a mobile complement to, rather than a replacement of, the desktop PC. Apple envisioned PDAs as pocket secretaries and communicators , incorporating a notepad, an address book, and organizer software, and emphasizing networking through modem accessories and short-range IR ports .

At a base price of $699 (about $1129 when adjusted for inflation), the MessagePad was a pricey gadget at launch, but one that pushed the technological boundaries of the day. Packed inside the 1-pound, 7.25-by-4.50-by-0.75-inch device were a 32-bit ARM 610 CPU running at 20MHz, with 640KB of RAM, and a 1-bit, 336-by-240-pixel LCD. Apple’s choice of a battery-sipping ARM CPU was novel at the time, as the architecture had not yet become the mobile stalwart it is today.

apple newton failure case study

But as with most Apple products, raw technical specs weren’t what drew users to the Newton platform. Instead, it was the pen-based touchscreen interface that made the MessagePad distinctive. Lacking a keyboard, the MessagePad depended on handwriting recognition for text-based user input—a futuristic feature that captivated the public’s imagination when trumpeted by Apple marketing, but one that fell far short of expectations when the product actually shipped.

It’s worth taking a moment to explain the difference in terminology between Newton , which was the broad name for touchscreen mobile technology (and the associated operating system), and the MessagePad , which was Apple’s hardware implementation of the Newton technology. This distinction makes sense when you consider that Apple licensed the Newton OS to other companies that produced their own hardware.

In hindsight, one of the most prescient features of that OS was the  Newton Assistant , which served as a text-based precursor to the iPhone’s Siri. By writing on the screen, users could ask the Assistant to perform many systemwide functions with natural-language commands, including printing documents, sending faxes, and making appointments.

apple newton failure case study

For application software, the MessagePad shipped with several basic organizer and productivity applications built into ROM. Users could also load up additional programs by linking the MessagePad to a Mac, although that functionality was limited at launch. User space was limited too: The MessagePad provided only about 140KB of user storage in battery-backed RAM. Apple sold 1MB, 2MB, or 4MB PCMCIA flash cards (which plugged into the MessagePad’s single PCMCIA slot) for a more robust solution.

Failure to launch

Over a year prior to the MessagePad’s August 1993 launch date, Apple CEO John Sculley gushed over Apple’s vision of PDA technology in several public appearances and in the press . Chief among these capabilities was handwriting recognition, touted as almost flawless by Apple PR. This almost magical feature captivated the media, which had no problem touting it as the future of computing.

That would have been fine if Apple delivered on its promises. But after Apple announced its plans for PDAs, several competitors developed similar products, scaring Apple into setting a too-short deadline for completing the MessagePad. The result was an incomplete product that stumbled out of the starting gate.

apple newton failure case study

At launch, Newton’s much-hyped handwriting recognition performed poorly . The software attempted to recognize whole words written by the user, but it usually failed, producing frustrating and bizarre nonsequiturs. Critics derided the feature, and soon Apple’s new technology was being lampooned in the media (most famously in a weeklong Doonesbury comic strip and on The Simpsons ), severely damaging the Newton brand.

Not surprisingly, sales of the original MessagePad were poor, with Apple moving a mere 50,000 units in the product’s first four months on the market. Sculley had previously promised that the Newton platform would emerge as a major new source of revenue on a par with the Apple II and the Macintosh, but that never materialized. Depending on whom you ask, the Newton’s tepid launch contributed strongly to Sculley’s departure from Apple in late 1993.

apple newton failure case study

Newton’s legacy

While much is made of the Doonesbury strip in Newton lore, the early stumbles with faulty handwriting recognition merely hampered early adoption of the platform; they did not sink it entirely. Over the next five years, handwriting recognition (among other features) improved dramatically in successive iterations of the MessagePad, and yet Newton never crystallized into something truly essential for the broad consumer or business market.

With the success of the iPad, we can now see that the key to Newton’s lackluster performance lay in its disconnectedness. Today’s touchscreen mobile devices have an almost endless supply ready-made software and content primed for consumption and delivered through ubiquitous wireless networking (both Wi-Fi and cellular) over a global computer network. User input methods, whether via a stylus or a finger, have turned out to be largely irrelevant as long as there’s plentiful content and the transfering of information—both user-generated and otherwise—is fluid.

Interestingly, Apple engineers and executives alike foresaw the need for strong networking during the development of the Newton, but the infrastructure and technology simply weren’t there yet. The MessagePad, in a sense, arrived too early to its own party.

The MessagePad may have not have been a commercial boon to Apple, but as one of the very first stylus-based pocket computers, it stirred the imagination of future mobile device developers, including those of the PalmPilot, Windows tablets, early smartphones, the iPhone, and beyond.

Photo credit: Newton MessagePad 2100 picture at the top of the article by Moparx .

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Make the most of your apple gear, apple history, the story behind apple’s newton.

Tom Hormby - 2013.08.06

In the late 1980s, Apple appeared to be in the middle of a resurgence. John Sculley had forced out the volatile Steve Jobs in 1985, and a cadre of older, more experienced executives focused on building the Apple and Macintosh brands. The company was beginning to grow complacent, working to protect Macintosh revenues at the cost of interoperability and new technology.

John Sculley

One video showed a college professor working with the device to effortlessly prepare a lecture while the computer created the graphics and simulated different models. Sculley believed that such a device would be the next big thing in the computer industry, and he desperately wanted Apple to be the company to develop it.

Handwriting Recognition

Steve Sakoman was especially cognizant of Apple’s dependence on the Macintosh. While Sakoman was at HP, he worked with alternative input devices centered around different configurations of keypads. He hoped that eventually keyboards would be rendered obsolete and people would use touchscreens to interact with computers equipped with handwriting recognition software.

Steve Jobs hired Sakoman in 1984 to help work on a laptop version of the Macintosh after the successful release of the HP Portable. When Jobs left Apple, these laptop plans were scrapped, and Sakoman helped lead the teams creating the Mac Plus , Mac SE , and Mac II .

He found the work uninteresting, however. He wanted to leave Apple to work on handheld computers, and he recruited Jean Louis Gassée to lead a brand new company that would be bankrolled by Lotus founder, Mitch Kapor . The plan fell through, since it appeared that Apple would probably sue the nascent company.

The Newton Project

To keep the talented Sakoman from defecting, Gassée proposed creating a skunk works project to create an Apple handheld computer. Gassée got permission to start the project from Sculley (without telling him what was being researched), and Sakoman set to work.

Sakoman gathered a team of engineers (including Finder coauthor Steve Capps ) and moved into an abandoned warehouse on Bubb Road in Cupertino, in the same vein of the Macintosh team almost a decade before.

The Newton researchers started work on a specification for a tablet computer.

Sakoman’s end goal for Newton was to create a tablet computer priced about the same as a desktop computer. It would be the size of a folded A4 sheet of paper (8.27″ x 11.7″) and would have cursive handwriting recognition and a special user interface.

To run the enormously demanding handwriting recognition software, the tablet would have three AT&T Hobbit processors. Sakoman and Capps feared that the project would balloon in scope and ultimately create something so expensive that it would flop.

The worst of Sakoman’s fears came true. The engineers had no restrictions on size or cost, so they started piling features onto the product. The first Newton would be an A4 sized slate with a hard drive, an active matrix LCD, and infrared for high speed, long distance networking. Named Figaro, the product would cost well over $6,000 and wouldn’t be released until 1992.

Debugging Software

For two years, the Newton researchers had toiled away, creating mockups and sample software. Several prototype tablets had been assembled and were running very buggy software.

The major hanging point was handwriting recognition. It was incredibly difficult to create handwriting recognition software that was able to adapt to different writing styles. Fate intervened in a bizarre way: One night while Apple VP of board relations, Al Eisenstat, was in Moscow, he heard frantic knocking on his door. When he answered, he saw a nervous programmer scanning the hallway to see if he was being followed. The programmer handed Eisenstat a floppy disk containing handwriting recognition software, then quickly left.

When Eisenstat returned to the States, he gave the code to Gassée, who in turn gave the code to the Newton team. The recognition was remarkably accurate, and it actually adapted to learn different letter shapes, so it learned how to read each user’s handwriting.

Financial Problems

By the end of 1989, there was a sense of foreboding around Apple as growth slowed markedly. Between 1987 and 1989, Apple’s sales had grown by over $2 billion, but in 1990, sales barely grew (by just $10 million). Apple’s strategy of releasing high-end products with incredibly profit margins (30% higher than most other PC manufacturers) was beginning to fail, and Sculley knew it.

Gassée had long defended the practice, as most of the profits were pushed into his division. He actually took steps to prevent Apple from losing the high profit margins by entering the low end. Claris had started a project, called Drama, to create another brand to sell low-end Macs. Drama got as far as contracting with Nissan Design to create the enclosures before Gassée killed the project. He reasoned that consumers would be willing to pay much more for the Macintosh experience.

After the release of the enormously successful Macintosh Classic (Apple’s cheapest Mac until the iMac hit US$999 in 2000) and the meteoric growth of Compaq, Gateway, and Dell, Gassée’s strategy started developing cracks. It was long assumed that Gassée would succeed Sculley as CEO; instead he became the scapegoat for Apple’s stunted growth.

When Michael Spindler was named COO (years after the enormously popular Del Yocam was forced out by Gassée), Gassée felt snubbed, and on March 2, 1990, he resigned. Gassée took Sakoman with him to found Be Inc., where he would help design the BeBox.

More Trouble for Newton

After Sakoman left, Newton was in trouble. In the Advanced Technologies Group (a think tank inside Apple), a former Gassée fief, a product similar to Figaro was being developed. Marc Porat had created a number of documents describing a concept called “agents”, small programs that would travel around a network gathering information, then present it to the user or even act on it without intervention. Apple would provide the software (called Paradigm, for the paradigm shift it would predicate) and hardware (Pocket Crystal), while outside companies would provide the wireless networks and content.

Pocket Crystal appeared to pose a significant threat to the Newton project. Two Mac heavyweights were working on the project, Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson . Sculley sent Larry Tesler to assess the Newton project and see if there was anything that could be used in Pocket Crystal. Tesler had been a researcher at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), but he left shortly after Jobs toured the labs. At Apple, he helped design the Lisa interface and was named an Apple Fellow.

Tesler was impressed with the Newton project. By that time, Figaro had three processors, a battery that ran nonstop for weeks at a time, and it weighed eight pounds. He was a little uneasy with the $8,000 price – as much as a Unix workstation. The Newton engineers responded to his incredulity by making the case that there could be no compromises if Figaro was to succeed.

Capps had created a mock up of the Newton software using HyperCard and showed it to Tesler, who was immediately impressed. He threw his support behind the Newton and quickly took control of the group. To insure Newton’s continued survival, Sakoman had the team create a more detailed demonstration to show Sculley and the rest of the board, along with a marketing plan from Michael Tchao, the marketing manager who had joined the Newton project weeks before Sakoman left, containing specifications and prices of possible Newton products.

Sculley was enamored with Newton, especially Newton Intelligence, which allowed the software to anticipate the behavior of the user and act on those assumptions. For example, Newton would filter an AppleLink email, hyperlink all of the names to the address book, search the email for dates and times, and ask the user if it should schedule an event.

Pocket Crystal fell out of favor with Sculley and was quickly spun out as General Magic . The company enjoyed some early success, until it languished and eventually sold most of its intellectual property to Microsoft in 1998.

From Research Project to Marketable Product

Sculley set a ship date for Newton, ending its status as a research project. A Newton handheld that cost less than $1,500 would have to be ready by April 2, 1992.

Tchao came up with three Newton models. The first one to be released was a larger version of the Figaro tablet, renamed Senior. Senior would by 9″ x 12″ and cost around $5,000. A year after the Senior debuted, two smaller Newtons would be released. A midsize model, which was quickly killed, would measure 6″ x 9″ and cost less than $2,000. The smallest model was Junior, which would be 4.5″ x 7″ and cost around $500.

Newton prototype out of the lab.

Most of the engineering and marketing staff favored Junior, but Tesler pushed Senior. He believed that an underpowered device would set a negative precedent for future Newton products. But Tchao believed that the expensive Senior would relegate Newton to early adopters and vertical markets, not the consumers that Apple had the most sway over.

The two factions were at each other’s throats. Tesler favored Senior, since it included a lot more advanced features. His favorite was Senior’s ability to connect to five other units simultaneously via infrared.

To the Junior engineer’s great amusement (and derision), the feature would not work in a room with fluorescent lighting. Most offices would have to turn off their overhead lights to network their Newtons!

Tchao believed that the infrared was a prime example of how Senior was wrong for Newton. It was focused on bringing new technologies to consumers, not creating a viable product.

The conflict simmered for months until Tchao found an ally in Sculley. The two were sharing a ride on Mike Markkula ‘s private jet. Tchao launched into an impassioned speech making the case for Junior and how Senior would actually harm Newton. Sculley concurred and instructed Tesler to shelve Senior and work to release Junior.

Focus on Junior

Engineers pushed ahead with the software. They worked with the same fervor the Mac team had under Steve Jobs. Not only would Junior change Apple, it would change the world. Beyond that, Apple engineers were often the recipients of huge bonuses if they stayed ahead of schedule (the engineers working on Star Trek , Apple’s first Mac OS-on-Intel project, were given a free vacation to a resort in Mexico for successfully demonstrating their project). It was not unusual for the engineers to be working between 15 and 20 hours every day.

Operating system and language development was farmed out to another group in ATG. Based out of Cambridge and led by Ike Nassi, the team worked on a language inspired by the ease of use of the Smalltalk language and the power of C++. Named Ralph, for author Ralph Ellison, the language would be licensed to other software developers and would be used as the primary language for Pink , Apple’s planned operating system.

Good-bye, Hobbit. Hello, ARM.

Development began to bog down as it became clear that the language would not run efficiently on the Hobbit processor that Sakoman had selected three years before.

The Hobbit was being developed by AT&T as a low power RISC processor meant to be used in switching relays and embedded applications. The early specifications that Sakoman had created used three Hobbit processors. To cut costs and improve battery life, that had been reduced to one, but the processor was not powerful enough to run the demanding software.

Besides that, AT&T asked that Apple invest $1 million in the completion of the product. Tesler backed out of the deal and went to a small British company named ARM along with Ford, Hobbit’s other major customer.

ARM had been started by Acorn, the computer manufacturer. Acorn had made a number of phenomenally popular personal computers in Britain during the early 80s. It reached the apex of its success when it released the BBC Microcomputer  in 1981, the official computer for the popular program, The Computer Programme. The machine was based on the 6502 processor, which was fine for home applications, but it was reaching its limits with the advent of computer graphics.

Acorn had hoped to move to the new Intel 80286 , but Intel refused to give Acorn the samples necessary to design a new computer. Outraged, Acorn started a project led by Roger Wilson to create a RISC processor to power its new line of Archimedes computers running RISC OS.

In 1985, the team had completed its first machine. The ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) CPU had performance comparable to the Motorola 68000 used in early Macs, but with half as many transistors, which meant it consumed less power and generated less heat.

Apple “discovered” ARM, and on September 8, 1990, the company bought a 43% stake in ARM, which was split off from Acorn and subsequently renamed Advanced RISC Machines. Apple would use the ARM6 chip in the Newton. Tesler was named to ARM’s board of directors as Apple’s representative. (ARM is now the most popular processor in the world, powering most smartphones and tablets.)

The new processor was not only faster than Hobbit, it was also more efficient. An ARM-equipped Junior could be much smaller, since it required less cooling space.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t fast enough to run the taxing Ralph language. The language was stripped down to run on the ARM and renamed Dylan. Apple quickly ran into trademark trouble because of the new name, which officially stood for Dy namic Lan guage. ( Bob Dylan , who named himself after Dylan Thomas , threatened to sue Apple for using his name without permission. Apple and Dylan eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.)

A Broad Base

Apple didn’t want to take the Newton plunge alone and started looking for a partner. Ideally there would be several different Newton devices available at launch from different manufacturers. Beyond that, Apple had little experience building consumer devices, so it would be much less expensive to contract manufacturing to an outside company.

After contacting Matsushita and Sony, Apple settled on Sharp. Sharp already had a presence in the organizer market with its Wizard , so the company knew how to sell such devices. Besides that, Sharp was the largest LCD manufacturer in the world. Sharp would build Apple’s Junior (which was named MessagePad for release) and its own version, called ExpertPad.

Apple also reached agreements with Motorola and Siemens to produce their own versions. (shortly after Motorola released the Newton-powered Marco, the company would jump ship to General Magic and its Magic Cap operating system.)

John Sculley, Evangelist

Sculley was losing interest in day-to-day operations at Apple. By 1991, he was only actively involved in Newton and Pink. That year Sculley campaigned hard for Bill Clinton (Sculley had been a lifelong Republican until then) and sat next to Hillary Clinton during his first State of the Union speech.

Because of his campaigning, Sculley became the de facto spokesman for the computer industry (like Steve Jobs in 1981), and he granted frequent interviews.

Sculley decided to espouse the value of the Newton during his keynote speech at the CES in Las Vegas on 1992.01.07. Sculley never mentioned the Newton by name, but he made the case that “personal digital assistants” (PDAs) would one day become commonplace.

The larger theme of the speech was digital convergence, and he predicted that the market for devices and content would reach $3 trillion by the end of the decade.

Sculley was painfully shy (he often ate lunch alone because he disliked making small talk), but he was an excellent public speaker. The press ate up his words, and he planned to announce the Newton during CES Chicago that summer along with a demonstration of early versions of the MessagePad, which was not even close to being ready for the April 2 deadline Sculley had set.

This was the first of several ship date changes for MessagePad.

Steve Capps began a massive campaign to identify and squash bugs so the MessagePad could be demonstrated at CES Chicago. The engineers put in longer days and worked on fixing thousands of bugs. The software was quickly declared to be in alpha status, which meant that no new features could be added to the software; it would only be fixed and optimized.

Despite their efforts, MessagePad was still very unreliable. The team was forced to drop Ralph altogether because of the slow progress being made on the language. Lots of the software had to be totally rewritten. Tesler practically lived in the office, spending 18 hour days planted in front of his computer hacking away on code.

Preparations for the CES demonstration in Chicago were underway, and the engineers dove even deeper into their work. Capps, who owned a large home outside Cupertino, had a high speed ISDN connection installed at his home so he could work remotely. He was so productive that two other Newton engineers joined him there.

There were an incredible number of bugs to fix. Oftentimes units became too hot to handle because of faulty power managers. The software was not very reliable either. As the team practiced demonstrations of key features like faxing and beaming information via infrared, the MessagePad failed more often than it succeeded.

Luckily, the demonstration went well.

Apple rented space to show off the MessagePad in Chicago. All of the MessagePads were tethered to Macs – they were too unreliable to run independently. The engineers demonstrated some shape recognition and showed off the user interface, which was based on a notebook paradigm, not the desktop of the Mac’s Finder.

All of the demonstrations went very well with no hitches – but Newton was still not in the clear.

The result was a flood of positive press for the MessagePad. The entire computer industry was rushing to bring similar products to the market. General Magic gave its first public demonstrations of Magic Cap weeks after the Newton introduction, and companies such as Microsoft and Amstrad announced that they would release similar products.

Apple’s Consumer Electronics Division

Sculley had expected to stay at Apple for only five years, but Apple was growing so rapidly during 1989 that Sculley stayed on, though his wife soon returned to Connecticut.

Michael Spindler had become President and COO and called most of the shots. He engineered a major reorganization shortly after he was promoted. Sculley had created two major divisions when he wrested control from Jobs in 1985, research & development and marketing. Spindler broke Apple into more than half a dozen smaller pieces that focused on specific markets. Newton was rolled into the Personal Interactive Electronics (PIE) division that contained all of Apple’s consumer electronics.

The division was headed by former Phillips executive Gaston Bastiaens. His crowning achievement at Phillips was to release the CD Interactive (CD-I) console. CD-I was essentially a video game console that used CD-ROMs. The package cost well over $1,000 and never became popular. Eventually, the standard was relegated to interactive kiosks in European department stores.

CD-I demonstrated Bastiaens’ major flaw: He was willing to release pricey products with poorly defined markets. PIE would soon release a line of digital cameras, scanners, speakers, and even a portable CD player. Most of the products were priced well above the competition, and they all failed to gain a foothold.

Bastiaens was enthusiastic about Newton. He gave the team a new deadline to finish the MessagePad, 1993.07.29. Bastiaens made the decision not to release the date to the press, which was quickly labeling the MessagePad as vaporware.

Newton Untethered

Another CES was coming up in Las Vegas on 1993.01.08, and the team was working as hard as ever to get ready. This time the MessagePads would not be tethered to Macs; they would have to work on their own. The stress was getting to some of the engineers. Relationships strained as people spent over 16 hours every day at work. It was too much for one software engineer, Ko Isono, who took his life on 1992.12.12, three weeks before the scheduled CES demonstration.

Apple poured resources into Newton. The company hired psychologists to make sure that everybody on the team was mentally healthy and even started a “buddy program” for engineers who were on the verge of burning out.

New employees were being hired all the time. Tchao now had a staff of almost a dozen people preparing press packets stuffed with news releases, photographs, and a cardboard mock up of a MessagePad.

The engineering staff had doubled several times over. All of the engineers who were working on the Senior tablet moved to MessagePad, and Apple was constantly adding people to the team.

In some ways, this actually made the engineers less productive, since they had to explain the inner workings of the enormously complex MessagePad to every new person on the team. Still, with an estimated 750,000 lines of code, the team needed as much help as it could get.

The CES show went well. Apple had reserved a Las Vegas ballroom for the demonstration, which was to include handwriting recognition, faxing, shape recognition, and infrared beaming (something totally unprecedented in the computer world).

Most of the team arrived a day before the demonstration, and the prospects looked bleak. The MessagePads failed sporadically and without warning during their practices. The power manager was still not totally functional, so the MessagePads would eat batteries constantly. Michael Tchao was dejected by the chances of a successful show.

The demonstration went flawlessly until the very end. The climax of the demonstration was supposed to be two Newtons beaming notes between each other, but they failed. Tchao panicked and rushed into the crowd with Capps to show the gathered reporters the beam function immediately after the engineers left the stage.

It worked this time.

Some reporters grumbled about the changing ship date, but most were impressed, and the coverage was resoundingly positive. Nonetheless, the morale of the Newton team was terrible. Tesler, who had championed the project since 1987, left Newton to become Chief Scientist at ATG.

Spring 1993 was a time of transition for the Newton. It had outgrown its beloved offices at Bubb Road (especially since the Pink project occupied half of it), so Newton moved to the brand new research and development headquarters on 1 Infinite Loop. Not only did they have to contend with a move to new offices, but the team had to give a demonstration at the largest technology expo in the world, CeBit, which is held annually in Hanover.

Over 500,000 people flood into the mid-sized city, forcing event organizers to turn the autobahn leading to the convention center into a one way road to get people to and from the show.

Amstrad Pen-Pad

This event was important not only to show the press that progress was being made, but to prove to Sharp that Apple was serious about finishing Newton. As Tchao and his assistant walked past a beer garden in Hanover, they spied a flyer with the heading “First to Market?” Inside they found a description of a product physically very similar to the MessagePad. It was called the Amstrad Pen-Pad 600 , and it cost £299 (about US$450) – $350 less than the MessagePad (although the price was not yet public knowledge).

Amstrad was started in Essex, England. The company had released a number of very popular home computers during the early 80s. As IBM PCs (and even Macs) became more and more popular in Britain, Amstrad lost market share. By the early 90s, Amstrad was making the bulk of its money off consumer electronics like satellite receivers and stereo systems.

The Pen-Pad project was started as a way for Amstrad to break into a promising new market, but the product was so flawed that it was discontinued months later. Still, nobody knew that at CeBit, and the Newton team was dejected.

Tchao was somewhat heartened by the news, though. The birth of PDAs meant that other companies felt the market had potential, too. Sculley had tipped his hand almost two years before the MessagePad would be ready, so Tchao wasn’t terribly surprised that other companies had been able to catch up – especially when their products were not nearly as good as the MessagePad was going to be.

The biggest announcement from Apple at CeBit was the addition of the enormous Siemens as a Newton licensee. Siemens was going to produce a desktop phone based on the Newton. Apple also announced that Motorola would release a wireless-enabled MessagePad called the Marco, and that Random House would be developing custom content for the MessagePad.

The demonstration of the MessagePad fell apart. The handwriting recognition refused to recognize the phrase “Ring Dietrich”. But when the presenter pulled another MessagePad from the dais, the problems were solved. Moments later, the MessagePad sent a fax to the German celebrity, Dietrich, who was about to perform after the Apple show.

Michael Tchao opened up for questions and was immediately hit with questions about the Pen-Pad. An audience member asked how much the MessagePad would cost, and when Tchao responded “under $1,000”, another asked, “Will it below £299” in reference to the Pen-Pad.

The questioner kept hassling Tchao, and Bastiaens challenged the man to a bet. If the MessagePad did not ship before the end of summer, he would give up his entire wine cellar, which was worth many thousands of dollars.

Then Michael Spindler took the floor and handled questions about Apple’s fluxing management.

Alpha to Beta

When the Newton team returned to California, they were shocked to hear that Newton’s software was now in beta, which meant that it should no longer crash. That was far from the case, and it pushed the Newton team even harder. Few engineers respected the change, especially Steve Capps. Everybody was adding bug fixes to the still unstable code.

One of the software managers was flummoxed to find that Capps kept adding features, even after alpha and now during beta. Capps eventually relented and set to work. The real deadline for the software was May 26, which was when Sharp needed the software to burn in the MessagePads on the assembly line.

On the first day of May, there were of 3,700 bugs in the Newton software. As each day went by, more and more of them were squashed until May 26, when it was clear the software was still too buggy to ship. There were over a thousand documented bugs that had yet to be squashed.

Apple implemented creative incentives to get people to fix as many bugs as they could (like gift certificates to Tower Records), but it was no use. Apple had changed the deadline three times now, and Bastiaens knew that the straight laced Japanese would be furious if Apple caused the manufacturing schedule to fall apart.

Bastiaens decided to make the gamble of producing 4,000 MessagePads with beta quality software, not the Gold Master, which was the stage ready for consumers. Those MessagePads that had beta software would not go to consumers; instead they would be used in point of purchase displays at retailers.

Sculley Out, Spindler at the Top

Just as the Newton team was getting ready to release their first product, their greatest champion was forced out. On 1993.06.07, Sculley resigned at the urging of the board after Apple lost $183.5 million during the third quarter. Sculley was immediately replaced by Michael Spindler. Like Jobs before him, Sculley retained the title of chairman, but he had little to do. A few weeks later he moved to Connecticut to join his wife.

Despite setbacks, the Newton team continued to prepare for its final demonstration before the launch at CES Chicago. Apple rented a nightclub to show off the device, which would be vying for attention from consumer electronics giants Casio and Tandy, which released the Palm Computing-developed Zoomer PDA during the show.

The presenters were going through the same demonstrations they had given at CeBit. As reporters crowded into the club, Apple reps spotted several people holding PenPoint tablets, which had been developed by AT&T and released earlier in the year.

The incredulous crowd watched as the Newton team went through the motions and clapped politely. It was clear, however, that Newton’s thunder had been stolen, and no amount of money could buy it back.

“You want to know something really depressing?” Capps asked another engineer, “Joey [a young software engineer] was still in high school when we started this project.”

After nonstop programming through the rest of June, Gold Master was reached and manufacturing began.

Newton in Production

The Newton team was not home free yet. Several problems cropped up. The first (and most disheartening) was a flaw with the Getting Started card bundled with every MessagePad. One of the games included on the card to help train the handwriting recognition software failed to work. A patch was quickly put together, but it had to be applied by hand. Over two thousand MessagePads had to have their PCMCIA cards replaced (they shipped inside the MessagePad) before they could be shipped to the States.

Sculley and Tchao were getting ready for a battery of demonstrations just prior to launch, culminating in a demonstration for Good Morning America on July 30. Tchao was terrified, since he would have to demonstrate the fax feature by sending a fax to Des Moines, Iowa, a part of the country prone to phone line failures. To top that, the area was experiencing serious flooding. All attempts to connect to the area before the show were unsuccessful, so it was up in the air whether Tchao would be able to connect period, much less send the fax.

When the show began, Tchao gave the standard demo of the MessagePad’s features, and then he started the fax. Spencer Christian was on assignment in Des Moines reporting on the flooding. Christian’s fax machine whirred up and then printed out the fax from Tchao. In front of 16 million viewers, the MessagePad had performed perfectly.

Three days later, on 1993.08.02, Macworld Boston began. Thousands of show goers streamed out of Logan International Airport and got into cabs with Apple ads on the top featuring a photograph of the MessagePad and the text “NOW TAKING ORDERS”.

The debut had a campy feel, based on Paul Revere’s ride. A brief promotional video was put together (one of the last ever produced by the AppleTV division in Cupertino) that featured the line “Newton is coming! Newton is coming!”

A line of dignitaries gave brief speeches – even Tom Selleck and Tom Clancy appeared to talk about how the MessagePad would affect their Kyle Foundation, a charity for ill children.

As showgoers left the auditorium, they walked past the point of purchase displays that were by now in stores across America, each one with a real Newton inside (running beta software) with demo software finalized by Capps the night before.

Newton’s launch was successful, and it was up to the rest of the world to decide whether it was a technological breakthrough or dud.

Further Reading

  • Apple’s Knowledge Navigator video , Google Video
  • Apple’s Knowledge Navigator Revisited , Jon Udell, Infoworld, 2003.10.23

Bibliography

Some of the sources used in writing this article:

  • Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders , Jim Carlton
  • Infinite Loop , Michael Malone
  • The Second Coming of Steve Jobs , Alan Deutschman
  • Apple Confidential 2.0 , Owen Linzmayer
  • Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple . . . a Journey of Adventure, Ideas & the Future , John Sculley

Keywords: #applenewton #newtonmessagepad #newtonorigin #newtonhistory #newtonpda

Short link: http://goo.gl/YKSx9L

searchwords: newtonhistory, newtonorigin

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  • Jul 25, 2023

Apple’s biggest product failure and what you can learn from it

apple newton failure case study

In the annals of tech history, Apple's Newton Message Pad stands out as a glaring example of innovation gone awry. Launched in 1993, during a tumultuous time when Steve Jobs had been ousted from his own company, Newton was hailed as the new "Personal Digital Assistant" (PDA) by then CEO John Sculley. This device is often referred to as Apple's worst failure.

The device promised to revolutionize personal computing with features like contact management, calendar organization, note-taking, and, most notably, handwriting recognition. However, Apple Newton was an epic failure, nearly tanking Apple in the process, and becoming a significant Apple product failure.

What Went Wrong?

Faulty Technology: Apple Newton's handwriting recognition feature was its unique selling proposition (USP) but it was riddled with errors. Users found it unreliable and often inaccurate, turning what was supposed to be its standout feature into a laughingstock.

High Cost: Priced at $699 at launch, Apple's Newton was prohibitively expensive for most consumers. Considering the economic context of the early '90s, the price tag was a significant barrier to entry.

Slow Data Transfer: The device suffered from slow data transfer rates, making it cumbersome to use. This technological limitation further alienated potential users.

Ahead of Its Time: Perhaps the most poignant reason for Apple Newton's failure was that it was simply ahead of its time. The technology required to fulfill its promises did not yet exist, and the market was not ready for such a device.

Learnings from the failure of Apple Newton Pad

Ensure Product-Market Fit: Understanding the needs and expectations of the market is crucial. Newton's high cost and technological limitations made it unsuitable for its target market.

Deliver on Promises: If a product's USP fails to deliver, it can lead to a loss of trust and credibility. Ensuring that key features work as advertised is essential for success.

Timing Matters: Launching a product too early can be as detrimental as launching it too late. Understanding the technological landscape and consumer readiness is vital for a product's success.

The failure of the Apple Newton Message Pad is a stark reminder that even the most innovative ideas can falter if not executed properly. It's a lesson in humility for tech giants and a case study of the importance of understanding market dynamics, delivering on promises, and aligning internal stakeholders.

Apple's Newton may have failed, but it paved the way for future successes like the iPhone and iPad. The lessons from its downfall continue to resonate, offering valuable insights for entrepreneurs, product managers, and tech enthusiasts alike.

To read more about Apple Newton and their epic failure:

https://mwmblog.com/2020/01/28/the-apple-newton-the-failure-that-led-to-the-iphone/-History of the Newton.

https://medium.com/@ZumaLovesYou/one-of-apples-finest-failures-the-newton-fd71029fc7 -Reasons why it failed.

https://mashable.com/2017/05/29/apple-newton-25-years/ -More information about Apple Newton and where you can buy it.

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Remember these failed Apple products? They were some of the tech giant's biggest flops 

It's been 15 years since Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's iPhone. Since then, the smartphone has become the tech giant's best-selling product ever, with Apple selling roughly two billion iPhones on its way to becoming a $3 trillion company .

But Apple's 46-year track record hasn't been all sunshine and iPhones.

In fact, even the company that revolutionized the personal computer industry with the Macintosh has had its share of failures over the years, from an overheating computer to a handheld device that co-founder Steve Jobs hated and comedy writers mocked.

And as Steve Jobs himself once said : "You've got to be willing to crash and burn.... If you're afraid of failing, you won't get very far."

In light of the 15th anniversary of the massively successful iPhone, here are some of the Apple products from the past four decades that totally flopped.

The Apple II was the product that first catapulted Apple to success in 1977, when it became the first commercially successful personal computer and went on to sell between five and six million units by the time it was discontinued in 1993.

The Apple III? Not so much.

Released in 1980, the Apple III was intended for use by businesses, featuring expanded keyboard functions and a larger display. Steve Jobs reportedly wanted the machine to run quietly, so he insisted that the Apple III would have no cooling fan or vents. Engineers built the computer with an aluminum case to help it remain cool, but the Apple III overheated anyway, sometimes even causing computer chips and floppy disks (remember those? ) to melt inside. Co-founder Steve Wozniak lamented that the Apple III "had 100 percent hardware failures," forcing Apple to recall and replace every single one of the first 14,000 Apple III's produced.

A revised version of the Apple III fixed the earlier issues, but the damage to the product's reputation sunk any chances of it catching on. Apple discontinued the Apple III in 1984, with Jobs claiming the company lost "infinite, incalculable amounts" of money on the product line.

Released in 1983, the Apple Lisa was notable for being one of the first commercial computers to be sold with a mouse and to feature a graphical user interface (or GUI, which means the screen has icons and images rather than just lines of text). The Lisa ( which may or may not have been named after founder Steve Jobs' daughter) also featured an incredibly steep price-tag of $9,995 that proved prohibitive for too many customers.

The high price hurt sales of the Lisa, with Apple only selling about 100,000 units before the model was eventually discontinued after a few years. It also didn't help the Lisa that, in 1984, Apple released what would become one of its most iconic products, its first Macintosh computer, which was significantly cheaper than the Lisa and proved much more popular .

"First of all, it was too expensive—about ten grand," Jobs said about the Lisa in an interview with Playboy in 1985. We had gotten Fortune 500-itis, trying to sell to those huge corporations, when our roots were selling to people."

Unfortunately, the product's failure meant that Apple had roughly 2,700 unsold units leftover, which the tech company actually ended up dumping in a Utah landfill .

The Apple Newton

When Apple first released its Newton personal digital assistant (PDA) in 1993, the product was meant to kick off a revolution in handheld tech devices. The Newton featured an innovative handwriting feature where users wrote on the device's screen with a stylus pen and the Newton would translate the handwriting into digital text. Apple's marketing boasted that the Newton could take notes as easily as " a piece of paper ."

The only problem was that the handwriting recognition feature did not work as well as Apple had hoped, too often resulting in an indecipherable jumble of words. The Newton became the subject of widespread pop culture mockery, including in the "Doonesbury" comic strip and a reference on Fox's "The Simpsons."

Apple's then CEO, John Sculley (Jobs had been pushed out of the company in 1985), reportedly expected to sell 1 million Newtons in the first year, but instead the company sold only 50,000 in the first three months and then stopped touting the product's sales figures. Jobs officially killed the Newton shortly after he returned to Apple in 1997. Jobs later dissed the Newton to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, mocking the idea that the device used a stylus when people should be able to just use their fingers.

"By shutting it down, I freed up some good engineers who could work on new mobile devices," Jobs told Isaacson for his 2011 biography. "And eventually we got it right when we moved on to iPhones and the iPad."

Macintosh TV

The Macintosh TV was another failed product attempt that appeared during Jobs' exile from the company he co-founded. Also launched in 1993, the product was an early attempt at combining a computer with the experience of watching television — something that's done today on everything from laptops to tablets and smartphones, but it was not as commonplace in the early '90s.

The Macintosh TV essentially resembled a Macintosh LC 500 series computer, but it was outfitted with a TV tuner card that allowed users to hook it up to a TV antenna or cable line. But you couldn't watch TV while using the computer, as the product only allowed you to switch back and forth from a computer function to watching TV on its 14-inch screen. Maybe if the Macintosh TV had offered a picture-in-picture feature it would have caught on more with consumers, but the lack of innovation, along with the fact that the product cost a whopping $2,099, made it a flop.

Apple sold only 10,000 Macintosh TVs and the company discontinued the product after a little more than three months.

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  • History of the development of the Apple Newton

History of the development of the Apple Newton - Case Study Example

History of the development of the Apple Newton

  • Subject: Information Technology
  • Type: Case Study
  • Level: Masters
  • Pages: 2 (500 words)
  • Downloads: 7
  • Author: bsteuber

Extract of sample "History of the development of the Apple Newton"

Lecturer History, Development and Death of Apple’s Newton This paper gives a brief history of the development and collapse of Apple’s Newton. Newton is Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) device which was a brain child of the Apple Inc. it was launched in 1987 after inspiration by John Sculley who was then Apple Inc Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The name Newton was chosen because of its close resemblance to the company’s trademark. As an innovative company, Apple Inc was interested in producing a gadget that would revolutionalize the telecommunication sector.

For a long time, people had been using desktop computers which had been linked to lots of inefficiencies by the users.It was believed that the invention of Newton would be of great significance to the users. Unlike the traditional desktop, it would be much portable and easier to carry wherever one goes. This would be possible due to the fact that it was to be smaller with a size 8.27” X 11.7”. In other words, it would be the size of a folded A4 sheet which is fairly efficient and can be handled by an individual much easily.

Besides, it would be more preferable as it was to be equipped with a special user interface along side a cursive handwriting. These are features that were believed to make Newton be the only gadget of choice for everyone who would be interested in having a taste of personal computer.With enough resources, the management of Apple Inc would support its engineers and programmers to conduct an extensive research as they developed this product. Because of such a support, the development of the product began in a high speed.

At first, they introduced a brand called Figaro which was having the size of A4. After its launching, it was valued to be worth $6,000. It was a very admirable product with a large format screen, object-oriented graphics and a well-developed internal memory. Because of such developments, the company managed to realize large volumes of sales and increased profit gins up to the later years.However, as fate would have it, the development of Newton would be discontinued in 1987 when the company realized that it would not be viable at all.

Despite realizing a profit of $2 billion between 1987 and 1989, the company did not realize any success thereafter up to 1990. The other reason for the death of this product was the rise of Sakoman and Macintosh Classic, rival commodities which posed a very great challenge to its progress. Moreover, the company faced a stiff competition from other established firms such as Dell, Compaq and Gateway which introduced complementary products in the market. Lastly, Newton succumbed because it of project slippage to which it had fallen a victim.

In conclusion, the development of Newton was a brilliant idea. Even if it was to greatly impact in the society, it never did so. Its death came at a time when it was to be introduced to the market. Indeed, its fall should be used as a lesson by Apple and any other organization that needs to benefit from its innovations. Management is corner stone for the success of any organization. Had people like Scully and Sakoman become serious, Newton would be a force to reckon with in the technological sphere today.

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Apple's greatest failures: from airpower to the pippin, these are apple's unloved devices.

Tim Cook once said during a talk at Oxford that he believes the success of Apple is its ability to change and know when the company got it wrong.

If you see success in terms of making huge amounts of money, creating a brand that's recognised across the globe, and creating a millions-strong fan base, then few can argue that Apple is indeed successful.

However, with any successful company there are times in its history where failure has been the unwelcome order of the day. So, as it's always nice to celebrate the triumphs, it's also equally important to take look at the failures. Good to know we're not the only ones who make errors.

Tim Cook once said during a talk at Oxford university that he believes the success of Apple is its ability to change and know when the company has got it wrong. After all, every failure teaches us something and without those we might never have had the iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.

"You’ve got to be willing to look yourself in the mirror and say I was wrong, it's not right," says Cook, who also suggested Jobs taught him the value of intellectual honesty - that, no matter how much you care about something, you have to be willing to take new data and apply it to the situation. Cook said he actually struggled with Jobs' propensity for changing his tune.

"Steve, of everyone I've known in life, could be the most avid proponent of some position and within minutes or days if new information came up you would think he'd never, ever thought that before [...] He was a pro at this," says Cook. "And at first I thought, oh, he really flip flops! And then all of a sudden I saw the beauty in it. Because he wasn't getting stuck, like so many other people do when they just say I've got to keep going on, my pride, you know. So be intellectually honest - and have the courage to change."

So, in no particular order, here are our favourite Apple gadget flops of all time.

Apple AirPower

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  • Released: Never released
  • Discontinued: March 2019
  • Sold: Never sold

This one didn't get the chance to flop, as it never even got off the ground.

The company first announced the device alongside the iPhone X in 2017. Customers then waited more than 550 days for their chance to buy the pad, but it was never to happen. Apple quietly confirmed in March 2019 that AirPower was dead because it didn't meet its " high standards ".

When Apple debuted wireless charging as one of the new features for the iPhone X, it said AirPower would ship in 2018. We were supposed to charge up to three devices at once - the Apple Watch, AirPod headphones, and an iPhone - with it. We'd even seen marketing materials on Apple's website that showed the device charging all these devices. And yet, it never launched.

We kept hearing numerous reports about engineering difficulties, overheating issues, and other product development headaches. We're still not sure what happened, but now the company has halted all efforts on AirPower and given up.

Apple Pippin

apples greatest failures photo 12

  • Released: 1995
  • Discontinued: 1997
  • Sold: 42,000

If timing is everything then on this occasion Apple should have bought itself a huge atomic clock to fix to its office wall. The mistimed release of the Apple Pippin was a major hiccup in Apple's attempt to enter the gaming market.

Designed by Apple, the production was left to Bandai with the specs of the device consisting of a 66 MHz PowerPC 603 processor, a 14.4 kbitps modem and running a simple version of Mac OS. Marketed as a computer, the entry price was around $599 which, for what was essentially a console, was way overpriced.

Released in 1995 in Japan and 1996 in the US, the console had to do battle with the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64, which already dominated the market. This, along with its overpriced and underpowered specs helped push the Pippin into room 101 with a paltry 42,000 units sold.

Apple TAM (Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh)

apples greatest failures photo 13

  • Released: March 1997
  • Discontinued: March 1998
  • Sold: 11,600

Most of us celebrate an anniversary with a loved one by buying a bunch of flowers/chocolates and a bit of sweet talk (all three if you're really looking to spoil them).

Apple, however, celebrated its twentieth year by creating the Apple TAM (Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh) and if you were a member of the team responsible for it, you'd have been hoping for massive sales and a big fat bonus.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. The TAM turned out not only to be a tad overpriced, but a failure in its functionality despite looking the part. With a $7500 price tag on launch in 1997, it was discontinued by 1998 at a price of $1995. To put that into perspective, today you can get a 21.5-inch iMac with Retina 4K display for $1299

Apple USB (hockey puck) mouse

apples greatest failures photo 14

  • Released: 1998
  • Discontinued: 2000

These days Apple prides itself on its devices being able to marry both form and function, but this was clearly not always the case as is shown by the horror that was the hockey puck mouse that came with the iMac G3 in 1998.

Function had clearly been left at the altar while form ran off with the best man. The mouse's round shape made it difficult to handle and, more importantly, orientate and its one-button design left users frustrated. So many of these were thrown away, it has been claimed that the Apple USB mouse makes up for 0.5 per cent of the world's landfill*.

*This claim has no substance whatsoever.

MAC portable

apples greatest failures photo 15

  • Released: 1989
  • Discontinued: 1990

What's in a name? Well not much at all if the Mac portable is anything to go by - as one thing it wasn't, was portable.

Costing a hefty $6500 and weighing in at 15.8 pounds (7.2 kilograms) the Portable also suffered from poor power design; as it was wired in series, if the device was run down completely the batteries wouldn't recharge - resulting in its failure to turn on and creating the ultimate "bricked" device. As such the device didn't last long in its original form, lasting just over a year, being replaced by a backlit version which was discontinued in 1991. Apple still makes a portable computer of course, but the MacBook isn't a failure.

Apple Mac G4 Cube

apples greatest failures photo 16

  • Released: 2000
  • Discontinued: 2001

There were many reasons why the Apple Cube failed, including a high price, unusual design, and inability to upgrade the components inside. Released in 2000, it was a flop pretty much from the first day. In an interview at Oxford university Tim Cook, now CEO, but then Senior VP of Worldwide Operations said of the launch: "It was a very important product for us, we put a lot of love into it, we put enormous engineering into it." It might be, as Cook calls it an "engineering marvel." But the Cube never found its audience and a year later was shelved. Today it's all about the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini, a device that is rumoured to be upgraded very soon .

apples greatest failures photo 17

  • Released: Feb 2006
  • Discontinued: Sept 2007

With decidedly average sound quality, given the price, this was not the worst aspect of this Apple device as there were plenty of other shortcomings.

The design itself left a lot to be desired, as the iPod protruded in a rather ungainly fashion from the top the unit, with only the 30-pin dock connector to hold it in place. This also meant that first second-gen iPod owners were excluded from ownership - not such a bad thing as it turned out.

The remote had limited functionality and it also lacked any kind of radio. And the price of owning this little beauty at its 2006 launch? A whopping £350!. Still, it was discontinued just over a year later in September 2007, never to darken our doors again, although some say it was the precursor to the Apple HomePod .

Apple QuickTake 200 camera

apples greatest failures image 8

  • Released: 1994

The QuickTake 200 camera didn't feature a zoom, had no way to focus, but it was pretty innovative, being one of the first consumer digital cameras that plugged into your Apple computer. Along with the Newton, it was part of many products axed by Steve Jobs in a bid to streamline Apple's product line. Today, Apple's camera is the iPhone X .

Apple Newton

apples greatest failures image 9

  • Released: 1993
  • Discontinued: 1998

The Newton, seen now as a pre-cursor to the Apple iPad and Apple iPhone never really amounted to much at the time. Okay so it helped Steven Segal battle some terrorists on a train in Under Siege 2, but the handwriting recognition software wasn't as good as it was meant to be and competitors beat the company to the punch after Apple bragged about the device too much before it was launched. When it eventually did go on sale the shining shimmer of hope disappointed and after just five short years it was discontinued. It would be another 9 years before Apple released a personal digital assistant; the iPhone.

IMAGES

  1. How The Apple Newton's Failure Led To The iPhone

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  2. Remembering the Apple Newton’s Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact

    apple newton failure case study

  3. Apple's original tablet, Newton, was a major failure

    apple newton failure case study

  4. Fixing a Common (and Inevitable) Apple Newton Problem

    apple newton failure case study

  5. Remembering the Apple Newton’s Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact

    apple newton failure case study

  6. Remembering the Apple Newton’s Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact

    apple newton failure case study

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COMMENTS

  1. Remembering the Apple Newton's Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact

    Aug 5, 2013 6:30 AM Remembering the Apple Newton's Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact In product lore, high profile gadgets that get killed are often more interesting than the ones that...

  2. Assumptions and Failures: Why did the Apple Newton Fail?

    John Musgrove · Follow 3 min read · Jan 14, 2021 The newton is an interesting product in Apple's history. A look at the features shows that it was clearly ahead of its time: touch screen,...

  3. The Apple Newton, the failure that led to the iPhone

    1. Handwriting fiasco The hand-writing recognition was supposed to be the Newton's killer feature, except for it worked poorly. The software attempted to recognize whole words written by the user, but it often failed and translated into random and weird sayings. Critics derided the hand-writing feature.

  4. Remembering Apple's Newton, 30 years on

    Jeremy Reimer - Jun 1, 2022 10:45 am UTC Enlarge 197 Thirty years ago, on May 29, 1992, Apple announced its most groundbreaking and revolutionary product yet, the Newton MessagePad. It was...

  5. The Apple Newton : The Story of a Failed Revolutionary Device

    Substack is the home for great writing. Apple Newton, a personal digital assistant (PDA) launched by Apple in 1993, was a device unlike any other at the time. It had a 6-inch grayscale touchscreen display and a stylus for input. It was designed to be a portable, all-in-one device that could be used for note-taking, organization, and communication.

  6. Newton's August 1993 launch set the stage for what would become the

    It came out on August 2, 1993. Its initial sales were good, for the time, with a reported 50,000 Newton MessagePads sold by the end of November 1993. However, whether through promotions or ...

  7. Apple Discontinued the Newton 25 Years Ago: Here's What Happened ...

    Why Apple Discontinued the Newton. The ultimate discontinuation of the Newton PDA was the result of a lot of factors. But the final call was made by one person: Steve Jobs. Jobs founded Apple in 1976 but resigned as CEO in 1985 after a power struggle with John Sculley. After Sculley was ousted by Apple's board in 1993, Jobs was brought back to ...

  8. Apple's original tablet, Newton, was a major failure

    01:17 Scientists confirm 'God Particle' exists 10 years ago. Watch CNN's coverage of the discovery 02:34 The iPhone turns 15 today. See CNN's report on its debut in 2007 02:49 Internet Explorer...

  9. How The Apple Newton's Failure Led To The iPhone

    But as Mashable puts it, the Newton MessagePad was a beautiful failure. The Apple PDA was dragged down by a weak processor, bad display, and sub-par software experiences. But the lessons lived on ...

  10. Apple's Newton, 20 years later: it was a failure, but oh

    And I admit, the Newton was a failure, too expensive and not quite good enough, and the world couldn't even get the concept of a general-purpose computer in your hand. But oh - you could smell the ...

  11. What the Apple Newton taught us about UX 27 years ago

    One of Apple's biggest failures was years ahead of its time. Jesse Freeman · Follow Published in UX Collective · 12 min read · Jul 4, 2020 1 have always loved the UI of Apple's Newton. Considering that nothing like it existed at the time, it's incredible how well thought out everything was.

  12. Roman Pixell

    Hindsight is 20/20, so it can be easy to dismiss the insight of a historical case study. There is, however, an additional interesting variable in this particular case: the Newton community has succeeded in keeping the Newton going for a longer period of time than Apple did (1997-2004, vs. 1993-1997).

  13. The Rise and Fall of the Apple Newton: Lessons in Innovation and Market

    The Apple Newton was a groundbreaking device that promised to change the way people managed their lives. However, due to a number of factors, including inaccurate handwriting recognition software and a high price point, the Newton was a commercial failure. Nevertheless, there are valuable lessons that can be learned from the Newton's demise.

  14. Remembering the Newton MessagePad, 20 years later

    Packed inside the 1-pound, 7.25-by-4.50-by-.75-inch device were a 32-bit ARM 610 CPU running at 20MHz, with 640KB of RAM, and a 1-bit, 336-by-240-pixel LCD. Apple's choice of a battery-sipping ...

  15. The Story Behind Apple's Newton

    The Story Behind Apple's Newton. Tom Hormby - 2013.08.06. In the late 1980s, Apple appeared to be in the middle of a resurgence. John Sculley had forced out the volatile Steve Jobs in 1985, and a cadre of older, more experienced executives focused on building the Apple and Macintosh brands. The company was beginning to grow complacent ...

  16. Apple's biggest product failure and what you can learn from it

    The failure of the Apple Newton Message Pad is a stark reminder that even the most innovative ideas can falter if not executed properly. It's a lesson in humility for tech giants and a case study of the importance of understanding market dynamics, delivering on promises, and aligning internal stakeholders.

  17. From the Newton to Lisa: Failed Apple products

    The Lisa The Apple Lisa SSPL | Getty Images Released in 1983, the Apple Lisa was notable for being one of the first commercial computers to be sold with a mouse and to feature a graphical user...

  18. Apple Newton

    Later history and cancellation The Newton was considered innovative at its debut, but it suffered from its high price and problems with the handwriting recognition element, its most anticipated feature. The handwriting software was barely ready by 1993 and its tendency to misread characters was widely derided in the media.

  19. How Apple Newton Failed but iPad Saved the Day

    How Apple Newton Failed but iPad Saved the Day 500 Oops, something went wrong on our end We're working to get this error resolved. Take me back to posts Another product failure case study from Apple to learn from.

  20. History of the development of the Apple Newton Case Study

    Because of such developments, the company managed to realize large volumes of sales and increased profit gins up to the later years.However, as fate would have it, the development of Newton would be discontinued in 1987 when the company realized that it would not be viable at all.

  21. PDF Has the Apple innovation machine stalled?

    This case study examines the success and failure of new products from Apple. Many analysts have argued that the death of Steve Jobs has had a sig-nificant impact on Apple's innovation ability. What is more likely is that competition has increased and profits have been reduced; but did Apple make mis-takes? Difficult times may lie ahead, but ...

  22. Apple Newton Case Study.doc

    BUSINESS 101 Consider the case of the Apple Newton. Analyse the root causes for the products failure and evaluate what could have been done to prevent this. Considering what other organisations can learn from this. 1

  23. Apple's greatest failures

    The TAM turned out not only to be a tad overpriced, but a failure in its functionality despite looking the part. With a $7500 price tag on launch in 1997, it was discontinued by 1998 at a price of ...