Design Article
Apple teardowns guide in learning from the failures of the past
Bill Schweber, Planet Analog
10/29/2008 11:14 AM EDT
At the Embedded Systems Conference, Allan Yogasingam and Steve Bitten, technical analysts for EETimes and TechInsights, did live teardowns on the Apple Newton MessagePad and Bandai-Apple Game Console of the 1990s. Both products combined leading-edge ICs with older ones (some of which are still made!), and their failures in the market have lessons that still apply--and some that don't.
The Newton, developed in 1992 and released in 1993 was the first personal digital assistant (PDA), and combined calendar, notepad, a 9600 baud fax/modem, and similar basic features with notepad-like handwriting recognition capability. By our standards, it was quite a handful, approximately twice the size of a modern PDA.
Inside the unit was an Am610 processor, a cutting-edge 32-bit RISC unit. It was supported by 4 MB of AMD ROM, Epson RAM, an Intel 8 MB flashfile memory (used in lieu of additional static RAM), and a 12-bit analog/digital converter from Analog Devices. The back of the single PCB was mostly analog circuitry, while the front was primarily digital. An RS-422 line driver and a dc/dc switching regular, both from Linear Technology Corp., rounded out the bill of materials.
But a product is more than its BOM. Although there are Newtons still in use, and even user groups for it, the PDA was a failure, most likely for these reasons, according to Yogasingam:
- Apple tried to re-invent computing, by saying the Newton would replace the PC (or Mac) rather than position it as an adjunct device
- Even as an adjunct of the Mac, it had synchronization problems
- The high price of $700 to $1200 was a real obstacle
- The large and bulky form factor, due to technology at the time, contradicted the PDA product message
- And most critically, the handwriting recognition simply did not work well. Yet this feature was the focus of the marketing and pushed as a key feature.
Development of the Newton took between three and four years, and Apple suffered a serious "black eye" in the market and red ink as a result of it. But there were some positive outcomes: its operating system was sold to Palm, and became the basis of the Palm Pilot OS, and it put end-users on the road to non-QWERTY portable devices as a product line. Since it consumed so much of Apple's R&D resources, set such high (and unrealistic expectations), and fell so flat, it also cost John Scully his job as Apple CEO.
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jesup
10/31/2008 1:07 PM EDT
For the time, a 14.4Kb modem was fast enough for interactive, online activities, and certainly for 'chat' - PlayNet/QuantumLink (later ported to the PC and relabeled AOL) proved that, starting with 300 baud modems.
You would have to be smart in how you used the modem, but it was not the reason this failed. It probably contributed more to the demise of Pippin by the fact that it wasn't used, or if used wasn't used well.
Other competitors of the day included CDROM systems from Commodore (CD32 game system in Europe, a follow-on to the CDTV which competed with CDi) and CDi systems from Phillips and others (which weren't really "gaming" systems in the classic sense).
The Amiga CD32 system shared a lot in idea with Pippin - based on a cut-down version of a home computer (Amiga 1200) with a CDROM for running programs. However, the Amiga OS and hardware was far more suited to games, especially the style of games played on a console, and so it was an easier (and cheaper) adaptation -- not to mention much cheaper. Neither was in the end successful, though I'd argue that the CD32 might have had a chance if Commodore hadn't been on it's last financial legs at the time.
(Randell Jesup, ex-Amiga SW engineer who worked on the CD32)
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