April 19, 1994: Gaston Bastiaens, the manager in control of Apple’s revolutionary new Newton MessagePad product line, elements methods with the corporate.
“We are able to’t say whether or not he fell or was pushed,” says an Apple spokesman. Stories recommend that the departing Bastiaens, basic supervisor of Apple’s private interactive electronics division, is leaving resulting from his failure to make the Newton a monetary success.
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Apple Newton: The following Macintosh?
The Newton MessagePad was meant as Apple’s subsequent insanely nice product within the early Nineteen Nineties. Many individuals, each internally and externally, regarded it as Apple CEO John Sculley‘s reply to the Mac. The private knowledge assistant, or PDA, grew to become his first try to launch a game-changing new product line throughout his tenure as chief government.
“It was Sculley’s Macintosh,” is how Frank O’Mahoney, one of many Apple advertising and marketing managers who labored on the Newton, informed me once I interviewed him for my e book The Apple Revolution. “It was Sculley’s alternative to do what Steve had finished, however in his personal class of product.”
The Newton began as a analysis undertaking in 1987. Nonetheless, it didn’t come to market till August 1993, when Apple unveiled it at Macworld. The yr earlier than that, Apple underwent a company reshuffle, which moved the Newton group into the newly fashioned private interactive electronics division, run by Bastiaens.
After Gaston Bastiaens left Apple …
Born in Belgium, Bastiaens joined Apple from Philips Electronics within the Netherlands. (He beforehand helped launch the Philips CD-Interactive participant there.)
The Newton ought to have been a triumph for Bastiaens’ division at Apple. Nonetheless, the machine bumped into issues. The most important one? The Newton’s handwriting-recognition know-how. Spoofed in a Doonesbury cartoon and on The Simpsons, it gave the MessagePad a foul popularity the machine didn’t fully deserve.
Photograph: Doonesbury
Later software program and {hardware} updates made the Newton a really highly effective device, however the fixes didn’t come quickly sufficient for Apple. Cupertino wanted the stylus-based PDA to explode and grow to be a direct hit.
Taking the autumn for the Newton’s failure, Bastiaens left Apple to arrange his personal enterprise. Sadly, his post-Apple profession hit some turbulent patches.
He grew to become CEO and president of speech-recognition firm Lernout & Houspie Speech Merchandise, which later was sued by stockholders. (They claimed the corporate cooked its books.) In Could 2001, authorities took Bastiaens into custody. He was extradited to Belgium to face prison expenses. And, in 2010, a courtroom sentenced him to 3 years in jail.
Newton MessagePad improves, however Steve Jobs pulls the plug
The Newton MessagePad, in the meantime, continued to enhance as a product. Nonetheless, it by no means achieved sufficient business success to grow to be a success in its personal proper.
Steve Jobs canceled the product upon his return to Apple in 1997. However there’s a silver lining: The thought of an app-based cellular machine with a contact interface grew to become the premise for the iPhone and iPad.