[Macworld]

Post your comments for The Forgotten eMate 300--15 years later here

[John]

My first reaction was somewhere along the lines of "Gak!" It wasn't just ugly but Nostromo alien poo ugly. It was pretty much a bad idea from the start. When today's readers consider the price, it was not as scarey as one might think. A half gig hard drive back then cost about the same as the eMate.

[feralman]

I reviewed it for use at a major research university--the killer problems it faced was that it wasn't a color display and the word processor was basically MacWrite. At the time I thought it was worth about $500. Very rugged, I liked it pretty well, but the price was too high.

One side note, the top of the unit looked a bit like a halter top with fasteners in a, shall we say, titillating position. The laptops that followed had a much more subtle but similar effect.

[jdb8167]

The Jobs comment was almost certainly disingenuous. He didn't understand the Newton and its technology. At the time he was quoted as asking the Newton team where was the mouse. He is well known to have hated pen computing.

When Jobs killed the Newton Inc company spinout from Apple and fired Sandy Bennett (Bennett officially resigned but it is unlikely that he had a choice), pretty much the whole Newton team quit on the spot. That left nearly no one inside of Apple that could work with the technology. Five months later Newton was officially canceled leaving literally hundreds of millions of dollars in sales of the eMate in limbo.

[John]

Quote

The Jobs comment was almost certainly disingenuous. He didn't understand the Newton and its technology.

The Newton was released years before its time and it's imperfect handwriting recognition made it became the instant target for comedians and comic strips - immense negative publicity. By the time it had reached maturity the price was really insane. It was killed off for good business reasons, not the lack of realization of its potential. If Jobs had not been ousted I think that there is a good chance that the Newton would have eventually made an appearance, but not until it was done right, which would have meant a late 90's launch, with the wrinkles all worked out. There was a 14 year span between the launch of the Newton and the launch of the iPhone - plenty of time.

[BrunoForcierewcj]

This product had a bright potential future in the corporate maket as well.

As a presales engineer at Inso Canada, I remember getting into talks with Nova Bus (now part of Volvo Bus Corporation) for specifying a project scope that would have seen all new LFS series buses coming out the assembly line with an emate 300 filled with mecanics manual as well as instructional animations and a way to do monthly or quaterly updates by sending CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs. Of course, that plan failed to materialize once Apple pulled the plug on the emate.

[Joel001]

I have 3 eMates, all of which are working well and they are lovely machines to own and use. My mother has the choice of an iPad, Mac and eMate and it's the latter which she likes by far the best. There is a charm about Newton OS and the eMate hardware especially which is not possessed by most new kit.

The problem now is maintaining good data transfer with modern OSs but our eMates operate happily as little islands of often referenced data, doing a solid job, year after year, with no hassles.

[AppleFan1]

Well, you can't say that Apple wasn't gutsy. Apple has been known to put out some dogs, but times have changed, and I don't think they have put out any "dogs' that have failed in a LONG time.

Personally, the first generation iMac was what I though the original Mac SHOULD have been. Imagine what would have happened if the first Mac had 1MB (expandable to 2 MB) RAM, a 10 MB drive, an internal floppy, 13 inch color screen, built-in ethernet, and a Unix based Mac OS back in 1984 that looked just like the first gen iMac, but with a better optical mouse instead of the round hockey puck?

[dgustavss]

Great article on a machine ahead of its time... My elementary a school had an eMate program, every 5th grader got one. I remember typing an entire report paper on it, and the fun of playing with the stylus and games, as well as using the peer to peer feature for a bootleg instant message option with friends. I often credit the eMate with helping me learn on a digital platform.

The comment about the green color is correct, students (ie 10-13 year olds) gravitated towards it because it looked like a toy but allowed for business like transactions our parents were doing with real laptops. I'm thankful I came to the 5th grade when I did, the program only lasted two-three years because of the cancellation of the program so soon. RIP eMate, and know your existence was not in vain.

[smallgroupdude]

The eMate was an amazing notetaker. Turned on instantly and had incredible battery life, combined with a good keyboard. It was also incredibly durable. I once dropped mine several feet onto a concrete floor as I was walking down a hallway and it didn't phase it. Try doing that with any of today's machines that are not in a case. I would probably still be using mine if it was not for data transfer hassles and it's diminished battery life.

[romad]

Quote

The Jobs comment was almost certainly disingenuous. He didn't understand the Newton and its technology. The Newton was released years before its time and it's imperfect handwriting recognition made it became the instant target for comedians and comic strips - immense negative publicity. By the time it had reached maturity the price was really insane. It was killed off for good business reasons, not the lack of realization of its potential. If Jobs had not been ousted I think that there is a good chance that the Newton would have eventually made an appearance, but not until it was done right, which would have meant a late 90's launch, with the wrinkles all worked out. There was a 14 year span between the launch of the Newton and the launch of the iPhone - plenty of time.

Block printing was recognized but more "sloppy" writing had a harder time until NewtonOS 2.x was released which fixed the problem.

It is now 2013 and Apple STILL hasn't improved on the HWR of NewtOS 2.x and doesn't even offer it in iOS. I don't understand why Apple doesn't take the NewtOS 2.x HWR and port it to iOS, especially now that Steve "I-hate-Scully's-PDA" Jobs is gone.