Apple Delivers the Newton

The big news at MacWorld in Boston a few weeks ago was the official unveiling of the Newton personal digital assistant (PDA). In fact, Apple was selling Newtons at the show, just to erase any doubt that the Newton is for real, and sold out four thousand units (priced at $699) in the first two days of the show. Rumor has it that the machines sold at the show had some operating system patches in RAM instead of ROM and broke down if you did a cold boot reset or removed the lithium batteries. There were also reports of problems with the power supply and PCMCIA cards.

In spite of the glitches, the Newton is for real. And Apple was smart to sell a bunch of machines to enthusiasts at MacWorld who will test the machines and report the bugs. A base machine with a PCMCIA slot but without communications is priced at $699. If you add an external modem ($149) and Connection Kit software for communicating with your Mac or PC ($129 for a basic version, $199 for a version with export/import data conversion features), the package comes in at about $1000. That’s a lot cheaper than an EO personal communicator but a lot more than many potential users will be willing to spend.

We’ve discussed in detail the Newton technology in previous issues and suffice it to say that the basic concept remains the same (if it’s entirely new to you, see MacWorld magazine, Sept., 1993). The Intelligent Assistant is the core of the Newton technology. The initial version supports both printed and cursive handwriting recognition (the cursive recognition is provided by Paragraph, the Russian software company), and the accuracy is surprisingly good and gets better as you work with the machine, although it is far from perfect. (Is almost 100% accuracy good enough for the typical user? We doubt it.)

Although the Newton isn’t perfect (its infrared communications or “beaming” function didn’t work very well at the product announcement), it represents a major step for the pen computing industry. As John Sculley put it, this first offering, which is called the Newton Message Pad, is just the first in a “family of intelligent electronic pads.” In the coming year, we’ll see Newtons appearing in the form of telephones, pagers, electronic design pads, an educational Newton for children, and other handheld devices. Much like AT&T’s strategy with the Hobbit and EO, Apple plans a host of different Newton-based communications and personal information devices.

Good Development Tools

One thing that sets Newton apart from some of its rivals, including PenPoint and GeoWorks, is that Newton already has in place a solid application software development tool called NewtonScript. It is reportedly very easy to use and it’s affordable, costing eight hundred dollars rather than a couple of thousand like some other platforms’ software development kits. NewtonScript is basically a prototyping tool with built-in objects for creating text and graphics elements in the application. Apple claims that Newton applications take one fourth the time to develop and one fourth the memory of equivalent PenPoint applications, but we’ve been unable to confirm this, since developers with experience on both PenPoint and Newton are reluctant to take sides. Apple also claims that over 1500 software companies are working on Newton applications.

In any case, software developers appear to be enthusiastic about the Newton and some 25 companies demonstrated their applications for the Newton at MacWorld. These included Business Forms and Financial Assistant applications from PenMagic (the makers of Numero for PenPoint), database management from Oracle, a Personal Time and Billing application from Great Plains Software, a geographical information system from GeoSystems, and an expense manager from State-of-the-Art Software. There are also reports of some Newton shareware applications appearing on bulletin board systems already, which is a good sign of interest from software developers.

Financial Services and Health Care Initial Target

Most of the applications demonstrated at MacWorld were for financial and information management and Apple clearly is targeting the broad business market of people with busy schedules and expense accounts. But Apple emphasized in the product rollout that medical and pharmaceutical industries represent a key market for Newton. Apple showed a prototype medical application, which included a patient database, charting facilities for use in medical examinations (we can imagine blood pressure monitors being hooked directly to a Newton and results recorded directly into the patient database), and a database of charts of the human anatomy. As we’ve discussed in earlier issues, the health care industry is definitely a key market for pen computers and the Newton is no exception.

A Marketing Challenge

While the Newton MessagePad is an impressive first start, it has a long way to go to prove itself in the market. Some key functions are pretty rough or non-existent (the initial version cannot receive faxes, but a free update with this capability will be delivered this Fall). And it costs about a $1000 to get a fully configured system. Let’s face it — the Newton is nothing more than a glorified Sharp Wizard if it isn’t equipped with communications capabilities and desktop computer host software, which is included in the $129 Connection Kit. Although cheaper than the EO, and about the same as the Tandy/Casio Zoomer, the Newton will be a tough sell initially. BIS Strategies predicts that Apple will sell 60,000 units by the end of this year. That seems extremely optimistic.

The Newton will probably do much better in Japan initially, where there is far greater popular interest in handheld electronic devices. Apple plans to ship Newtons to Europe and Japan later this year.

In spite of our reservations, we think the Newton will be a major player and could well become the market leader. Apple knows how to sell computers; it has in place an enthusiastic development community; and unlike the Macintosh, Apple is licensing Newton technology to other companies. It could well be a winning combination.

NewtonScript is available through Apple’s developer association called APDA. In the U.S., call 800-282-2732. The APDA International number is 716-871-6555.