About TabletPC

D

designer

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Hi all,

I saw TabletPC stuff.

What's the difference btw the TabletPC and Newton?

And why apple didn't push the Newton technology?

I think that M$ will act like they are first company who developed a technology. I know that Newton technology wasn't developed by apple entirely: I think apple bought out Newton from other company-correct me if I am wrong.

Anyway, I hope to see Newton stuff again.

iPod with Newton will be good :)
 
Apple lost lots of money from poor sales from Newton I think.

I think Jobs was thinking too ahead when he released Newton.

Well, that is Apple for you. Hope they can keep the spirit up. New gears please, Jobs.
 
The market wasn't, at that stage, ready for the Newton. Very few people were using internet services at that time, and Apple were looking a little too far into the future.
Since Apple abandoned the project they seem to have formed a good relationship with Palm, and regularly push Palm products in their sales literature.
The TabletPC is an interesting development, however it is just an extension of PC notebook technology and will still be bound by all the hassles that go with that. I think the 'convertible' models, which have a swivelling screen-hinge attached to a conventional notebook, will make for an interesting bit of hardware. Microsoft will certainly earn money from the venture since they only sell the operating system, and that is a modified version of Windows XP.
However, having used and programmed for Windows CE, I'd have to say I'm not expecting much. Only MS could make a palmtop computer with a blue-screen-of-death.
 
Originally posted by plastic
Apple lost lots of money from poor sales from Newton I think.

I think Jobs was thinking too ahead when he released Newton.

Well, that is Apple for you. Hope they can keep the spirit up. New gears please, Jobs.
Click to expand...

Just a historical note, Steve Jobs was not responsible for the Newton. Steve was forced out of Apple by John Sculley (that's why Steve Jobs created NeXT), and the Newton was John Sculley's pet project. It is possible that Steve views Newton with enimity, since it's the pet project of his chief rival at Apple.

Anyway, the Newton was too expensive, too underpowered, and too ahead of its time. It was over a thousand dollars when it was released in the early 90's (the dollar was worth more than too!), and it was plagued with handwriting recognition problems. Brilliant concept, but the world wasn't ready for it.

Now, the Tablet PC concept isn't new either. MS released a version of Windows 3.1 called Windows for Pen Computing that allowed PC makers to make Tablet PCs. In fact Compaq made a very nice one in the early 90's. There really wasn't a market back then for it, and I doubt there is one for it now. Incidentally, an amazing competition to the Windows 3.1 pen computing edition was called "Go Point" (or something like that), it was widely regarded as the vanguard of pen OS's at the time. It too has gone away.

In other words, nothing new here... Just hype.
 
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