Why Steve Jobs Passed on the PDA

[ciscobull]

From and interview in the Wall St Journal, June 14, 2004:

What's your favorite thing you've not done?

A PDA. We got enormous pressure to do a PDA and we looked at it and we said, "Wait a minute, 90% of the people that use these things just want to get information out of them, they don't necessarily want to put information into them on a regular basis and cellphones are going to do that." So getting into the PDA market means getting into the cellphone market. And you know, we're not so good at selling to the enterprise where you've got, in the Fortune 500, five hundred orifices called CIOs. In the cellphone market you've got five. And so we figured we're not going to be very good at that.

***************************************************

You've been criticized forever for not playing in the low end of the PC market. Is the iPod your $400 computer?

Yeah, we actually approached it that way. We said we're going to invest in the iPod rather than a PDA and we also said it looks a lot like a $400 computer. And for us the volume is pretty good, so yes. But we want to make them cheaper still. I mean, we're not happy with iPods costing $300 and $400 and we want to keep driving the prices down on them so we're working very hard on that.

[Nine]

Pity...

[StevenColorado]

I thought that the Apple Newton was indeed an Apple handheld. Did that occur when Jobs was away from Apple?

[DanLyons]

Originally posted by StevenColorado
I thought that the Apple Newton was indeed an Apple handheld. Did that occur when Jobs was away from Apple?

You're right, the Newton was the first PDA from Apple. When he returned Jobs killed several "non-core" operations, including the Newton.

[dej]

Originally posted by StevenColorado
I thought that the Apple Newton was indeed an Apple handheld. Did that occur when Jobs was away from Apple?

the newton was john sculley's vision.

[Eurisko]

The Newton was the Debil.

[stuartguthrieuk]

Is it true that the Palm is based on Apple's Newton technology?

Stu :-)

[Skylab]

i guess this is a great example of foresight IMHO.

smartphones... convergent devices, i believe ARE the devices of the future, and i think it will really surpass even the mighty PDA.

i love my Tungsten.. still take it everywhere with me.. but somehow i know that once a superior smartphone is available, one that performs as good as the tungsten and as efficient as a sony ericsson mobile phone - that is the device that i , and most probably alot of many other 2 piece users will get on with.

[tnmike1]

I'm one of those who runs a retail business six days a week, hardly ever mobile anymore--altho I was once travelling across the country in sales--and whose cellphone is used only on weekends to call the kids during my "5,000minutes free" long distance time.

Therefore, my cellphone sits dead most of the time.

I have no use for an all-in-one device and I just wonder how many others of us there are out there? Those that hve a T3 mainly as recreation, or as a true "digital assistant" to keep track of stuff I use to keep track of on a notebook--and that's long hit the dust pile now that I have the T3 with wireless keyboard, Docs to Go and other "notebook" related excel kinda stuff.

In short: I'm not all that mobile. Still, I LOVE the T3 and the whole Palm concept. Would hate to see it transmuted into something where I'd be forced to integrate into another communciation device--cellphone or who knows what else??

[dej]

Originally posted by stuartguthrieuk
Is it true that the Palm is based on Apple's Newton technology?

Stu :-)

i don't think so... that would be lawsuits from apple (which i never heard of). i think palm just took the idea and ran with it, implemented it well. i also think at the time apple had a lot of great ideas, but poor management. many great thinkers, but independent thinkers.