[ubermonkey]

What's weird is to consider how unusual in the whole history of Apple for it to get the market so fundamentally wrong, as they did with the Newton's connectivity. The platform was sound (if expensive); if they had realized that sync was the future, it still would've had an uphill battle vs Palm's ubiquity and low price, but they'd have had a shot.

[giantrobot]

I think it's important to remember this was Sculley's Apple which was not at all good at judging market viability. I think the problem with the Newton platform, as it actually shipped, was sort of designed (and priced) for the jet setting executive. There was no real content creation, "office" capability, or even long-form input. It was an electronic briefcase with a built-in secretary. The Newton didn't synchronize with desktop PIM apps because executives had people to do that for them.

The Palm Pilot was designed for people that actually have work to do so it synchronized with the software on the desktop they used. It was also priced to be affordable by someone that didn't have the corporate black AmEx in their wallet. It was a handheld extension of their PIM software with a calculator.

[ubermonkey]

>I think it's important to remember this was Sculley's Apple which was not at all good at judging market viability.

Oh, 100%. My comment is really more about "they've been so good for so long..." than anything else.

BTW, though, the Newton DID sync with the Newton Desktop in v1. It wasn't as nice as the Palm desktop, or sync with Outlook, but it was usable. Then they dropped it for v2, which was just dumb, dumb, dumb.