hello actually existed twenty years ago
When we turn on the apple device, the familiar "hello" logo that greets the eyelids, we know that this logo actually existed in the 1990s, it Accompanying generations of Apple users, today I want to talk about the biggest failed project of Apple in history: Newton. This project once shouldered an important mission in Apple's history and gave high expectations. Although it ended in failure, the imagination of technology products from generation to generation has pushed us to this day.
Today in history
At that time, laptops were not what we are familiar with today. At that time, there was no mobile phone, let alone the Internet. At that time, computers were still very heavy equipment, with screens of 9 inches and 11 inches. Mainstream.
In 1984, Jobs was still a small fresh meat, he urged the professional manager of , Pepsi_span_span_span_span_span_span and John Scully to join the Span6span Apple the most. The famous passage finally touched John Stanley, "Are you willing to continue selling sugar water, or we will change the world together". After John Stanley joined Apple, Apple launched the Machintosh computer in 1985 and became famous.
Young Steve Jobs
In 1990, with the rapid growth of the personal computer business, the PC began to enter American households widely and became a mature device. At the same time, PC products formed two camps, namely IBM compatible PC and Apple Computer, after IBM opened the PC architecture standard, personal computers based on the Microsoft operating system have gained a large user base, except for the first camp of IBM,HP and Compaq in the second camp, followed by Gateway and Dell, are even more price killers. Their innovative operation methods have further reduced the cost of PC products, which has promoted the popularity of personal PCs. At the same time, although Apple computers have formed A solid user base, but the overall market share is squeezed at around 10%.
Apple CEO John Stanley
The cause of the Newton project
In 1990, a personal digital assistant (PDA), which is now called a digital product, emerged in addition to PC products. A digital device that integrates the user's address book, schedule management, calculator and other gadgets. In 1991, Persian, the first real personal digital assistant, was officially released.
Persian Personal Digital Assistant
At the same time, Steve Sackman, an engineer who joined Apple in 1984, also realized that there must be a new product category in the personal PC field. He once designed the world's first portable computer HP100 at HP. Yes, it can be said that this is also the prototype of the earliest notebook computer. In fact, in 1987, Sackman led a team to start the research and development of PDA products in an abandoned warehouse in Cupertino .
personal computer pioneer HP 100
So Apple has been working hard in the field of personal portable computing for several years, and there are industry giants like Sackman, and naturally hope to join the battle of the new category of PDA. The project of the team led by Sack is named: Newton.
Newton project Logo
Apple has high hopes for Newton, because since 1985 Apple has not had any new product belts except for the Machintosh personal computer. To grow its business, Apple has been worried for a long time.The digression here is that at this time, in fact, Jobs had been driven out of Apple by John Stanley, whom he personally invited for five years.
The news about Jobs leaving Apple appeared on the front page of the magazine
Newton product design
Researchers from the Newton project team developed a handheld handheld computer whose shape is very similar to the current iPad. Based on the technical hardware level at the time, the researchers focused on the rough description of the product technology platform: touch screen, stylus, handwriting recognition, storable hard disk, infrared port (infrared communication can be used alone)
research The staff also made an initial idea of the product form, which was indeed a revolutionary product at the time. The product envisaged at that time had three forms, based on different screen sizes and different prices, and finally this Apple determined 4.5* The 7-inch product form is the most suitable size.
In January 1992, Apple CEO John Stanley announced Apple's PDA product at the famous CES exhibition in Las Vegas, which will be officially sold in April 1992 , And announced that a few weeks later, it will be publicly displayed in Chicago, but the entire product was still too advanced at the time. Apple’s technical staff had to solve thousands of product bugs in just 2-3 months, and at the same time Faced with various problems such as the performance of the processor cannot meet the requirements of the application.
After switching to the ARM processor for PDA products, the code runs faster and more efficient, but the product is still unreliable, and the device is very hot during operation, which makes the infrared interface unable to communicate. All this forced Apple to postpone the release of the new product to August 1993, and will demonstrate it to the public at CES in the same year. That period may be the darkest moment in the history of Apple employees. Because of the strong pressure and workload of the new products, everyone continued to work overtime technically for countless weeks and 16 hours of work. The intensity is no less than that of our current Internet giant 996.This led to a tragedy. Koisono, a 30-year-old software engineer, committed suicide. A week later, another programmer went to jail for crashing and attacking his roommate.
The New York Times’s Suicide News of Apple’s Engineers
In August 1993, the Newton project finally came to fruition. Macworld published news about Apple’s Newton’s new MessagePad, but the wireless function as the main selling point was not available. New products It can support handwriting recognition, but the software is still flawed and the media is not optimistic.
In the following years, MessagePad has been improving. In fact, there is a reason why Apple is so anxious to promote MessagePad. From the perspective of the industry at that time, personal digital assistants are under the technological environment at that time. The only chance, because Apple has been at a loss since 1990, there is not much time left for John Scully.
In 1995, MessagePad launched an improved product MessagePad 120, and then in 1997, Apple split the Newton project into a new company and began to sell the latest product MessagePad 2000.
Newton's Logo
Since then, this boot animation "hello" has been accompanied by Apple users, from the initial black and white to the present colorful. MessagePad2000 was equipped with a 166Hz processor, 1M memory, 2M storage, and 480P display at the time. It was one of the best PDA products at the time. We can’t imagine that they developed a browser dedicated to MessagePad in 1993, which was Newton’s killer application at the time, and then the popular Netscape browser only became popular on PCs in 1995, and the Internet speed at the time was still Less than 144k/s
The end of the Newton project
When Newton started operating and listed,Apple's board of directors could no longer bear long-term losses and was on the brink of desperation. At this time, after Jobs left Apple, he established the famous Pixar company . Pixar became famous for producing the first computer animation "Toy Story". The board of directors decided to invite Jobs to return to Apple.
The boy who had left when he returned was already full of beards. After giving the famous speech "Think different" after returning to Apple, Jobs decided to suspend his investment in the Newton project. I hope to lead the company to focus more on the direction of focus in the next five years.
As a product of the Newton project that Jobs was absent from beginning to end, the idea was too advanced, completely out of the reach of the technology, hardware and software at the time. This was in line with the technology companies at the time generally pursuing high-tech and peculiarities and being good at open associations. The application scenarios are related. In fact, there are different project teams within Apple that have similar products that are out of reality. Although these ideas at the time have been realized now, the CEO's deep understanding of the technology and vision of the entire product is not enough. For products, MessagePad is too expensive for ordinary users and too weak for corporate users. However, Newton products are the continuous pursuit of future technology applications by generations of scientific and technological people.
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