Trade-off section: Contrasting the Palm Pilot versus Apple Newton through the lens of fidelity/convenience
3 min readAug 1, 2017
This presentation refers to a section of the book Trade-Off, when Apple Newton is contrasted with Palm using the fidelity/convenience lens. The ideas of the book might be biased with my interpretation.
Palm Pilot versus Newton
The Apple Newton was created by a multi-billion-dollar corporation as a promise to be a successful PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) turned out as one of the major failures.
The Palm, created by a founder that was desperately in need of money, on the other hand found its place as the successful case for of a PDA, while not the first.
Newton through the lens of fidelity/convenience trade-off
- In retrospect, Apple Newton (released in 93) was too expensive — not convenient price, leaving a possibility to be a fit as high fidelity;
- However, it was not as good, in terms of quality, performance, and flexibility, contrasting with a laptop;
- Contrasting with the pen+paper, It was not as convenient plus quite expensive, us$700-US$1500;
- It didn’t really changed or pushed the borders defining a category. It did not pushed the borders of the existing options in the at the time “category” of personal assistant applications (hand+pen+pencil, laptop, etc)
Palm Pilot conception
- Demoed in 1996, launched based on knowledge of the PDA failures;
- Graffiti was a way to capture writing with the stylus pen, requiring a learning curve, which by the way was not too complex, and worked;
- New synching category unveiled;
Palm in contrast with fidelity/convenience
- Palm was not super expensive (US$ 300+);
- Screen made sense, used little battery, sun compatible;
- Fit in the pocket, worked say in an airplane;
- Synching was fine and unveiled capture and review, making sense to the PDA category;
- High fidelity, on the go, due to size and battery, not beating high fidelity of laptops, but offering a good enough experience when laptop could not be carried around;
- Highly convenient to take out of the pocket, and be able to annotate, for data that later would be useful, say for a calendar of as annotation;
Growth market and relation with adopting curve
- PDA that make sense, size, screen, weight, data capture and writing;
- Aura was okay, compatible with a way to escape the wrong way of the possible future; was the only way for a PDA to survive, and people knew it;
Pushing the borders and unfolding new experiences, needs and aspirations
- Palm won a sustainable condition for a small window of time, with the audience that would be the early adopters of what would be the PDA/mobile;
- Was a success, within the timeframe, if you look from the aspect that technologies were not sitting still. In a way it was a safe window of opportunity til something else appeared, probably something else directly influenced by palm too, therefore Palm redefined the borders of fidelity and convenience;
- While Apple learned with the Newton, and buried it, they have in a way also learned with the other failures, and explored the possibility in the right moment to come up with the iPhone, the most exciting personal device;
- “Early disasters and not necessarily disasters forever, and early victories don’t guarantee long-term success.” 1
