Comment Re:Should have kept the Newton (Score 4) 192
I happen to be wearing my Newton Developers t-shirt this morning, so I had to respond.
I really loved developing for Newton and working with the Newton team at Apple. While I only really did Newton Books I came to love the Newton Development Kit. Everything about the Newton was cool.
Unfortunately Apple probably did the right thing in dropping Newton. That market belongs to Palm, and Palmish devices. Microsoft and its partners have followed down the path that Apple recognized as a dead end. Consumers want batteries that last forever and a tiny form factor. Watching movies on a PDA, or running big apps looks great during demos, but these over-built PDAs cost too much and burn up their batteries to fast.
I had this crazy idea that Apple should have replaced Copland with the Newton OS. It was architecture neutral (p-code based) so they could run on Intel or anything else. It was OO to the core which made it a pleasure to program. It was more stable than any OS I had owned up to that point, and it could truely revolutionize how we use computers.
With OS X and its Java API we will have a lot of what Newton could have brought to the table. I am not sure a handheld version fo OS X would be as cool as Newton because, again, it would result in a large and costly battery killer. Add a color screen and you are guaranteed a flop.
Jon
I really loved developing for Newton and working with the Newton team at Apple. While I only really did Newton Books I came to love the Newton Development Kit. Everything about the Newton was cool.
Unfortunately Apple probably did the right thing in dropping Newton. That market belongs to Palm, and Palmish devices. Microsoft and its partners have followed down the path that Apple recognized as a dead end. Consumers want batteries that last forever and a tiny form factor. Watching movies on a PDA, or running big apps looks great during demos, but these over-built PDAs cost too much and burn up their batteries to fast.
I had this crazy idea that Apple should have replaced Copland with the Newton OS. It was architecture neutral (p-code based) so they could run on Intel or anything else. It was OO to the core which made it a pleasure to program. It was more stable than any OS I had owned up to that point, and it could truely revolutionize how we use computers.
With OS X and its Java API we will have a lot of what Newton could have brought to the table. I am not sure a handheld version fo OS X would be as cool as Newton because, again, it would result in a large and costly battery killer. Add a color screen and you are guaranteed a flop.
Jon
