Microsoft has ‘innovated‘ again by introducing the Apple Newton 13 years after Apple originally did. From my previous post you might derive that I was a big fan of the Newton and was a bit surprised by the complaints about the form factor.
Yet here we are in 2006 and MS has produced an even larger, heavier unit that even the largest Apple Newton. Have a look at this MS article that describes how the Newton was the wrong form factor, it should have been smaller like a Palm Pilot or larger, like a tablet:
The Newton hardware could have been developed along a number of lines, making it either larger or smaller. Instead, it was left in that dead zone of being too big and heavy for a pocket and too small to have a large, visible screen.
So which part of the ‘dead zone’ does that leave their new product in?
I liked the Newton, though I bought a Palm Pilot instead.
The UMPC (Origami) does things no PDA has ever done — like run a standard version of Windows, making all your regular software available, stream hi-res video, and store tens of gigabytes of data.
Of course, if the Newton were released now, it might be able to do those things as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple resurrect it. But for now, we don’t have a choice between the two, and if the price is right, and the battery life is extended, I could see myself trading in my 7 pound laptop, MP3 player, and PDA for a UMPC.