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All the way back in the ’90s, Qualcomm approached Apple to suggest that it might want to put a radio in its Newton PDA. It could have led to the first ever iPhone two decades early —but instead, Apple told Qualcomm to stick its radio chip somewhere else.
The news came out of a Charlie Rose interview with Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs which aired last night. According to Jacobs, he approached Apple to persuade them to include a radio in the PDA but was told where to shove it. So he took it across the Palm, which welcomed the idea with open arms.
Of course, Palm failed to capitalise on the deal: it turned the technology into the Qualcomm PDQ, which is so obscure it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. In fact, it could be seems as a precursor to the smartphone. Kinda. At least, it had a specially designed mobile operating system along with cellular connectivity.
Still, 25 years down the line Palm doesn’t exist and Apple leads the smartphone market. So maybe it wasn’t the worst decision, all things considered. [Charlie Rose via VentureBeat]
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I had a Newton 2000, and other than the hilariously inaccurate handwritter rednodnition, it was a superbly intuitive device. In a way, it blended OS X with iOS – the lovely puffs that occur when you erase or discard an item for example, made the whole thing very natural and fun to use. However, as this article eludes to, Apple made the very same mistake as a company that actually preceded (Apple) Newton, Palm, Samsung (ALPS), Casio – and who to date, produced the best PDA ever developed – Psion. My father had 4 until his passing this year, using them to salvage parts if one went wrong, because he never found a device as good, not the iPhone, Android, Symbian or other. The Psion UX, OS, stylus, touch screen and keyboard were all superb. HOWEVER, as per Apple, total lack fo connectivity killed them. If only they had adapted. I do understand that Psion and Nokia were in fact engaged in a huge project to develop a next generation device (possibly a mashup of Psion OS and Symbian that may well have become Meego or similar), but the project stalled and the world has still yet to be handed a decent PDA of the quality and usability of the Psion series.
iOS and iPhone may be pretty, but there is NO intelligence between the features, unlike Symbian – and of late, Android. It has a long way to go to match Symbian and Psion.
David Potter, are you receiving this?
Total lack of connectivity? I had a mobile data connection on a Series 5 using IRDA with an Ericsson 768 back in 1997!
“Apple leads the smartphone market.” – Apple has the biggest selling phone, that’s a very different thing. The original iPhone certainly led the smartphone market, combining several existing good ideas into a very attractive package. But iOS is way behind more modern OS’s in looks and operation and the phones are getting so samey and don’t have any real innovation to them, I really don’t think “leads” is appropriate.
1. This would have been an early PDA not a smartphone, Qualcomm were not offering a phone chip they were offering “connectivity” in world before WIFI.
2. Apple is not the leading phone maker, Samsung is.
3. Apple was in a sales void at the time and a radio would not have changed how buggy and rubbish the Newton was.