The Apple Newton MessagePad revisited: Warts, wins, and all

There’s a lot of talk today about the lack of innovation in mobile and how the once-vibrant market is stagnating because not much more can be done. Apple has been criticized hard, and the latest rumors that it’s resorting to a gold color option for the upcoming new iPhone typically come with the commentary of “what else can it change today other than the color of the case?” Samsung, having explored pretty much every possible size for a smartphone, has taken similar critiques.

I do believe we’re in a technology pause after several years of unprecedented rapid innovations. But I don’t believe the innovation is over. The newly released Steve Jobs biopic reminded me of both how far mobile has come and how the fundamentals last a long time. I’ve been playing with my original Apple MessagePad, the Newton OS-based 1993 personal digital assistant (remember PDAs?) that Apple launched to polarized reviews.

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It was very innovative, featuring handwriting recognition, a technology that even today is often inexact — and became the butt of many jokes, especially once cartoonist Garry Trudeau satirized it in his “Doonesbury” comic strip. Still, it presaged the notion of the portable information appliance; it’s easy to forget the iconic Palm Pilot most people think of as the first PDA debuted four years later. Unfortunately, the Newton was also too big to fit in a pocket.

We saw the same phenomenon play out with the iPhone, which was derided by many early critics as incomplete and overpriced. It probably was, but very quickly it redefined the notion of a smartphone and transformed the mobile industry. Six years later, many of us have forgotten this point. The MessagePad was similar: It too was ahead of its time, and it delivered less than promised — at a high price, to boot.

Then-CEO John Sculley took a lot of blame for the MessagePad, but ironically the Newton effort was probably his best decision. Without the Newton, the Palm Pilot might not have come to be and wouldn’t have been key to showing that an item the size of a phone could be a small computer. Remember, the BlackBerry of the time was a messaging device married to a phone. The Palm Pilot evolved into the Treo devices that combined PDA and smartphone, which Microsoft picked up on to deliver the Windows Mobile OS used in the briefly popular Compaq iPaq.

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. At the time of the MessagePad, what existed was the notion that computing could be even more personal, and the technologies seemed in reach to achieve that. It turned out the handwriting part was not, but nor were components yet small enough to make pocket-size devices, and the LCD screens were very difficult to read. It’s amazing what we put up with on all PDAs!

But in using my MessagePad MP100 — which actually works, though it’s 20 years old — I see a lot of what we take for granted today. The MessagePad’s icon row at bottom lives on as the Dock in today’s iOS. The calendar, note-taking, and contacts apps bear a striking resemblance to those in today’s smartphone, no matter the OS. The pop-up dialog boxes are similar to today’s operating systems too. The ability to switch among apps also evokes what we do today.

You could argue the striking similarities between a 20-year-old MessagePad and a smartphone of today proves there’s little innovation to be discovered. Had the cloud existed in 1993, perhaps the MessagePad would have done the syncing we take for granted in Google’s and Apple’s services — the notion of syncing was well known.

But I believe the MessagePad argues the opposite. As people, we’ve tackled certain tasks for centuries, such as taking notes, organizing contacts, and maintaining calendars. But the methods evolve over time, growing more capable and introducing new notions; the simple alert of an upcoming appointment is a humble example, whereas the anywhere, anytime synchronization is a transformative example that required the whole cloud infrastructure and API notion to take root.

You really see the evolution of the methods and the enabling technologies when you look at the surprisingly capable MessagePad of 20 years ago and an iPhone or Android smartphone of today. But you also see the ability to film and edit movies on today’s devices, way beyond the scope of a PDA. I’m sure we’ll see more innovation in both their methods and in unexpected new capabilities (or unexpectedly refined ones) in the devices yet to come.

The MessagePad of 1993 shows how much can change even when so much seems to stay the same. We’ll realize the same in 2023, or even 2018.

This article, “The Apple Newton MessagePad revisited: Warts, wins, and all,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.