Apple finally drops Newton

In a long-needed move suggested by Steve Jobs, Apple finally dropped theNewton division and will spin it off as its own, separate, company. The official announcement came this afternoon but sources have leaked thatApple had unsuccessfully shopped the technology around to Hewlett Packard,Sun, Inventec, and others but no one was interested. The Newton has neverturned a profit and while new hardware running the operating system--theNewton MessagePad 2000 and eMate--is selling relatively well, Newton isbeing left behind in a handheld market dominated by the USR PalmPilot anddevices based on Windows CE. Early models were plagued by buggy handwritingrecognition and poor displays. The biggest problem, however, was that Newton was visually dissimilar with the Macintosh, Apple's popular line of desktop computers. When Microsoft created Windows CE, they used Newton's failure as an inspiration for what not to do: Windows CE looks and feels just like Windows 95 and it has reinvigorated the handheld PC (formerly known as "Personal Digital Assistant" PDA) market.

The new company will be called Newton, Inc. and it will see the MessagePaddevices. Apple retains the rights to the eMate handheld, however. NewtonInc. will target new markets, such as health care and education and willprovide developers with tools and products. Apple is currently looking fora "seasoned CEO" to run the company.

Might I suggest Gil Amelio for the job