Dave Lawrence at Newton Poetry linked to the NYT’s original MessagePad review earlier this week. Here’s some of that review:
The bottom line on the Newton Message Pad is that Apple promised too much and failed to deliver a useful device for everyday executive chores. On the other hand, the Message Pad practically hums with untapped potential, and six months (or moths) to a year from now it is likely to be a popular executive tool.
Of course, the Newton never really became a popular tool for executives (or anyone, really), unlike the iPhone. Lawrence drew this conclusion:
I’m just trying to think of a situation where today’s Apple would release a product that had more “untapped potential” than actual usefulness.
The original iPhone, maybe? It didn’t have apps, cut/copy/paste, or any of the things we all take for granted now. But then we didn’t have to worry about faulty handwriting recognition. Today, it seems a new Apple product must have an immediate pick-up-and-use aura. Potential comes through iteration, sure, but you’re not left holding a device that inspires a yawn – or a question of its practical aspects.
Comparing the Newton and the iPhone is a very tricky thing. The original iPhone software was plenty powerful enough for just about anyone, even without copy/paste, apps, etc. The original Newtown software could also get the job done, but wasn’t nearly straight-forward or easy to use for the public who was (at the time) unfamiliar with mobile computing devices.
A major complaint of Newton users was the difficulty they had syncing data back and forth between their devices and desktop computers. Even as the software evolved, it never was great.
Apple’s most ingenious move with the original iPhone was to make the device sync just like an iPod. It worked on Day 1, and in a way everyone could understand.
Finger-based input was also a great move. Here’s Peter H. Lewis, in that original Newton review:
And the pen-based handwriting recognition technology is frustrating, once the novelty wears off. Because it “learns” the user’s handwriting from experience, the handwriting recognition software actually gets better and yields fewer goofs as time goes by. But even when the recognition engine is well trained, it is still slow.
The handwriting recognition got a lot better in Newton OS 2.0, but by then, most people had written the Newton off. The reputation was just too much to overcome.