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Steve Jobs had a vision, 1983


Jeff Wexler

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The Next Web writes of a speech Jobs gave in 1983 at the Center for Design innovation. After that speech, he had a question-and-answer session that covered a wide range of topics, one of which was an incredibly detailed assessment of Jobs' vision for a "computer in a book" that one could learn how to use in 20 minutes.

"Apple’s strategy is really simple. What we want to do is we want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes. That’s what we want to do and we want to do it this decade," says Jobs. "And we really want to do it with a radio link in it so you don’t have to hook up to anything and you’re in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers."

The full recording of the speech including the Q&A is available at LifeLibertyTech.com, with the Q&A starting about 21 minutes in.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

Courtney, you ever see that fake SNL "Apple Newton" commercial, with the computerized "Post-It" notepad, where you'd have to hit a button and it'd say "warming up, warming up, warming up" for 10 seconds before you could write a note? And then whatever you wrote, it'd guess the wrong word and auto-correct it, like "your duster is in the storm," as opposed to "dinner is in the stove." Aaaaa, you had to be there.

 

There's a long list of Apple Disasters, and the Newton is high on that list. I think they have far more successes than failures, but man, that thing was a turd. I wonder how many iPhone users today even know what a Newton was?

 

I was there at the 1993 CES press conference where John Scully introduced the Newton Message Pad, and man, we really got swept up in the fervor of that demo. But once we saw the thing in real life, it was like, "what? This thing is a piece of crap!" I think ultimately, this cost Scully his job. 

 

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You really think it was a failure? The last version of it was a lot better than the previous ones. More importantly, it was a good bit ahead of the Palm Pilots at the time. Who knows what they would have been like if Steve Jobs was around while they were being designed. 

 

I think Apple had a LOT of problems at the time of the Newton, which is probably the only reason they brought Jobs back in, and gave him the authority to sweep the table. The rumors were that Apple was months away from going bankrupt. When Jobs came back, Apple was licensing clones (that were eating their lunch, esp Power Computing), there were 40 different Apple versions of the Mac for sale, they were also pursuing consumer devices like the Newton and Quicktake camera, that were not big sellers.  

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Yes, it was a huge failure. As one example, read Rotten Apple: Apple's 12 Biggest Failures.

 

http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/rotten-apple-apples-12-biggest-failures-231&current=4&last=1#slideshowTop

 

It was a whole different Apple by the time Steve Jobs returned in July 1997. (Note that in October 1998, Apple's stock had dropped to $8. It soared past $700 in July of 2012, but has since gone way down.)

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