The Story Behind Apple's Newton - 2006.02.07 (updated) In the
late 1980s, Apple appeared to be in the middle of a resurgence.
John Sculley had forced out the volatile Steve Jobs in 1985, and
a cadre of older, more experienced executives focused on
building the Apple and Macintosh brands. The company was
beginning to grow complacent, working to protect Macintosh
revenues at the cost of interoperability and new technology.
John Sculley, Apple's CEO, had toyed with the idea of creating a
Macintosh-killer in 1986. He commissioned two high budget video
mockups of a product he called Knowledge Navigator. Knowledge
Navigator was going to be a tablet the size of an opened
magazine, and it would have very sophisticated artificial
intelligence. The machine would anticipate your needs and act on
them. One video showed a college professor working with the
device to effortlessly prepare a lecture while the computer
created the graphics and simulated different models. Sculley
believed that such a device would be the next b