Jerry Kaplan's book Startup tells the story about how Sculley stabbed GO in the back with Newton -- actually, both GO and General Magic. They got a lot of press and flopped miserably. And of course, let's not forget Momenta (as easy as that would be, given that they failed so fast).
Meantime, Palm finally figured out something people would buy and use, by scaling back expectations and building a device that did something valuable.
1. Newton was designed with “natural” pen-based interactions as a core design goal. That had huge effects on the entire product from the OS to the UX, including the need to recognize normal writing. The Palm Pilot was designed as a fairly standard PDA OS with the keyboard replaced by an oddly modified set of character shapes that had to be learned by users before they could enter text. We thought that would be a deal-breaker for potential Palm users — we were wrong!
2. Newton was designed as a standalone system, the next generation of computing after desktops. The assumption was that it could be your only computer. Syncing to a PC/Mac was an afterthought. Palm was designed as an adjunct device for a PC, so its capabilities were far less and the sync functionality was core to the system.
There are lots of other differences but many can be traced back to those two. For example, the huge difference in the tech specs and therefore the cost of the devices is directly related to both of those assumptions.
Unfortunately, it wasn't generally accepted that those two goals were not achievable. That's engineering for you: figuring out what's actually possible.
There was a little sticker you could put on the back of your Palm Pilot that reminded you of the Graffiti language. As you said, it was not a deal-breaker.
The example of Palm vs Newton is great because it shows how clear goals trump excellent technology. Newton had this amazing OS where you could turn it on or off at any moment and preserve state. All data was available to all apps. And with that technology -- and probably some other choices-- and a great processor at the time (relative to Palm) it was useless because it was so slow. A handheld device cannot ever be slow. Palm did very little well and survived up until smart phones.
tip: don't pay the $80 for a new one. I got a used one for $8, and it came within 3-4 days.
A Google search is surprisingly unhelpful at a finding the book you mean. Who is the author?
I am considering getting a reMarkable to use as my "daily driver" replacement, and dedicating the Newton to my home office museum.
What makes it great for these tasks is that it wakes from sleep instantly and puts you right back where you were in your document as fast as you can open it. Saving is automatic. You just open it up, type some stuff, and close it again. It's light, rugged, and the battery lasts all day.
What's not great anymore is that it's non-trivial to transfer your writings to a modern system. However, it is still possible.
(I had an eMate 300 and loved it btw, along with the replaceable batteries)
Really? That’s a frequently asked question?
If you don't specify the context and namespace, don't be surprised when people don't know wtf you're talking about. You might as well make a "String Class FAQ"
Yes.
> What about the Palm Pilot?
The what?
Kidding aside, I doubt anyone who finds their way to this FAQ without knowing what it's about will care enough to find out. If they do, there's no shortage of obvious search terms throughout the text that will make the context very easy to come by.
They ceased production of the Apple Newton in 1998 according to Wikipedia. and the most recent Palm product I've heard of came out in 2010.
PDAs are basically floppy disks as far as the wider public knows.
Although if you just spent 20 minutes training it, it was frighteningly good at recognizing handwriting. It could read my writing better than I could back in the day.
