A word about my politics. I am not, as some readers seem to think, a liberal or other variety of communist, but rather a card-carrying "sizeist." My political philosophy is: Anything smaller than me is cute; anything bigger than me is scary--elephants, the ocean, Microsoft, the IRS, the IRA, IBM, ICBMs, committees and other mobs, Rush Limbaugh. It's not a perfect philosophy, but my experience has been that it's right more often than it's wrong, and in politics anything over 50 percent is a winner.
Speaking of cute, I attended the Newton launch at the Boston Macworld Expo in August. It's interesting that both the enthusiasts and the cynics draw analogies between Apple's first personal digital assistant and the original 128K Mac. That's pretty much all they agree about, though.
The enthusiast: The Newton MessagePad is something entirely new. It's not a computer. It has no keyboard, disk drive, or file system. Its user interface adapts itself automatically to your habits. You can put together an application in a week or two. If you're concerned about how much data it holds, you don't have the concept.
The cynic: It's an overpriced toy. After you've paid your $700, you can buy the RAM cards and the extras that you need to connect it to phone lines and computers. Then you can use it to take short notes and carry your address book in your pocket and send faxes (the ability to receive faxes will come in a few months).
I haven't been able to find anyone who's seen the MessagePad who is not either an enthusiast or a cynic. Some are both.
The Newton Developer's Kit, though (still in beta as I write this), is something else. It's a very high-level development environment; I'm hearing stories of three days to get up to speed, eight days to develop an application. Of course, as MacUser review editor Susan Janus says, the applications are so small, how long could it take?
But is there going to be a market for Newton applications? A $700 device, an uncertain market--is this a platform to develop for?
The answer, I think, is that that's not really the question. Newton is a technology, not just this one product. Apple is publishing its fantasies that we'll one day be using Newton fax/phones, Newton inventory wristwatches, Newton whiteboards, and other Newton-based products. Some of these products (we get to guess which) are really going to happen within the next year or two. Doubtless there are some great opportunities ahead for at least some developers who guess right.
The way I see it, the investment in time and money required to get into Newton development is so low that it's worth looking into even if you think the MessagePad will be a spectacular failure.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
Copyright © 1993, Dr. Dobb's Journal