Not to open this wound but here is my opinion.
As founder of the National Newton Association and friend to Planet
Computing, I was in contact with alot of people at Apple regarding this dark
past.
1. The Newton was in the black with the success of Emate and the ever
increasing success of the Newton 2000 in late 1997 to early 1998
2. I know the Apple Rep who worked in the midwest who told me that the
cancellation of newton was a personal decision for Steve Jobs. And not a
business decision.
3. It's true that Apple was hemorrhaging (sp) money. Gil and Elen Hancock
stopped many of the projects that were competing with other technologies.
But we had a friend with Gil who was very pro-newton.
4. I remember the fateful day that I was doing an Emate demo in downtown
Chicago when an Apple Rep came in to say happily that Microsoft had invested
$150 million to Apple. This was January of 1998.
5. As far as Newton Inc., it's all heresay, but I know that Newton Inc. was
very interested in building upon its base. Interestingly though Emate was
still inside Apple. When Steve Jobs brought Newton back into the company he
pissed off Sandy Bennett so much that Sandy leaked to the press that Newton
had been cancelled. It was one of the few times that anyone in Jobs' reign
has been able to speak out against Apple. Obviously, he was fired for it.
6. Simply, Jobs hated the Newton and his buddy Bill Gates in their $150
million dollar deal was for Apple to stop all work on Newton so Gates could
take over the vertical markets with the Windows Ce. Gates gave him the money
for the development of the Imac and for securing future versions of Mac
Office.
Just some of the stuff I knew.
Steve Kramer
Nwou Mobile Computing Group
"Think Green"
> From: Woo Lee <vitcitylb_at_earthlink.net>
> Reply-To: newtontalk_at_newtontalk.net
> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:42 -0700 (PDT)
> To: "newtontalk_at_newtontalk.net" <newtontalk_at_newtontalk.net>
> Subject: Re: [NTLK] Apple to unveil ... - OT, rant.
>
>
> Ouch! Hindsight is great, huh.
> Apple never released the specifics about Newton's Loss/Profit sheet. I
> posted some URL's to suggest Newton was profitable, otherwise Gil S. would
> have never spun it off. Remember, he alone 'cut the fat', Steve just
> waited till the last drop of blood to take the throne.
> Answer this question, why was he not the CEO and just a iCEO?
> ------------------
>> When Steve killed the Newton Apple was hemorrhaging money. Dozens of
>> projects (many of them competing against each other), poor implementation
> of
>> licensing, and years of inept "leadership" was killing Apple.
>>
>> One of the first things Steve did was to say 'Focus is saying no'.
>>
>> Many people think that Steve killed the Newton because it was Sculley's.
>> Some think it was because Steve wanted to keep the technology in-house.
>> Remember that Apple was spinning off the Newton at the time. I happen to
>> think is was a little of both.
>>
>> If anyone ever popped the question to me 'What would you rather have at
>> Apple? Newton or Jobs? ' Well to me that is a no brainer. I'd take Steve
>> any day.
> ------------------
>
> ---------------------
>
> !ooW %-)
> "Ask not what your country can do for you,
> Ask what you can do for your country."...JFK, 01/20/1961
>
> Pres. of Los Angeles Newton Users Group!
>
>
> --
> This is the Newtontalk mailinglist - http://www.newtontalk.net
> To unsubscribe or manage: visit the above link or
> mailto:newtontalk-request_at_newtontalk.net?Subject=unsubscribe
>
-- This is the Newtontalk mailinglist - http://www.newtontalk.net To unsubscribe or manage: visit the above link or mailto:newtontalk-request_at_newtontalk.net?Subject=unsubscribe
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Nov 01 2001 - 10:02:27 EST