Thirty years ago, on May 29, 1992, Apple announced its most groundbreaking and revolutionary product to date, the Newton MessagePad. It was released to great fanfare a year later, but as a product it could only be described as a flop. Derided in popular culture at the time, the Newton became the poster child for expensive but useless high-tech gadgets. Although the device improved dramatically over time, it failed to gain market share and was discontinued in 1997. But even though the Newton was a failure, it motivated Apple engineers to create something better – and in some ways led to the creation of the iPad and iPhone.
The vision thing
Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976, wooed marketing guru John Sculley away from PepsiCo in 1983 to become Apple’s new CEO. However, their relationship fell apart, and Jobs resigned from Apple two years later after a bitter power struggle. Although Sculley made Apple profitable by cutting costs and introducing new Macintosh models, he felt lost without Apple’s visionary founder. When Apple Fellow Alan Kay burst into Sculley’s office and warned him that “Next time we won’t have a Xerox‘ (to borrow ideas), he took it seriously.
