4 ms·

I always wonder what would have happened if Apple had given away the NTK for free instead of charging a lot of money (I think it was $2000?). I think a lot of h

I always wonder what would have happened if Apple had given away the NTK for free instead of charging a lot of money (I think it was $2000?). I think a lot of hobbyists would have proceed cool stuff but were deterred by the cost. If I remember correctly Palm game their SDK away for free when they released. The 100 version of the Newton was not very good but the 130 version and then the 2000 were really nice. Also I think Apple should have been more forthcoming with a C++ SDK so people could write own drivers and implement stuff that needed more performance. NewtonScript was just damn slow. I still like playing with my Newtons from time to time. I also have a 2 MB storage which cost $200.

wrs 7y ago
Yeah, I wonder that too. Apple had always charged for the development system (heck, initially to develop for the Mac you not only had to buy the tools, you had to buy a Lisa!). I don’t remember it being quite that much, though maybe in 2020 dollars it was. There was a C++ dev kit eventually, but only for drivers (though some people figured out how to use it from NS). I also did a “native NewtonScript” compiler that under the hood compiled NS to C and encapsulated the native code into a NS function. What really freaked people out was the 1% (?) royalty on apps, which I don’t think lasted long. Now of course Apple gets a 30% royalty and that’s considered normal! (I should mention that we wanted to have a Newton App Store, but you would have accessed it by modem, of course!) The 2000 had the StrongARM processor that ran about 10x as fast as the earlier models. That was really the first hardware that gave something like the experience we were trying for.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I don't remember the royalty but I remember really well how the NTK killed the finances of a friend and me who wanted to get started with Newton dev right when the MessagePad 100 was released. Plus we had to buy a Mac (Quadra 610?) which also cost a lot. We talked to Apple Germany and the product manager told us if the cost is a problem then they didn't want us. They only wanted "professionals", no amateurs. Big mistake. I guess Apple always had a slightly arrogant touch :-). I remember there was a C++ dev kit eventually but at that time the momentum for Newton was already gone. It makes me kind of sad thinking about this. I think with today's connectivity and processing power combined with the ideas of the Newton devs we could have much better devices than what we have today. The iphone feels a little boring. Well made but boring.
- matthiaswm 7y ago
  Making the NTK so insanely expensive killed my enthusiasm pretty quickly. I was working as a SW engineer in L.A., so even if it would have been only a small game, I would have had the ability to at least add something to the pool. Even the Palm SDK was commercial in the beginning. But a free toolchain was put together by some hacker after a year or so, which subsequently convinced Palm to lower their price and eventually give it away for free IIRC. Then again, even VisualC 6 cost 400$ or so back then.
kabdib 7y ago
The Mac development environment (MPW) wasn't free, either. I was in the MPW group before joining Newton, and made an obnoxious ass of myself saying that MPW should be free. One of the common objections was "how do we support hordes of random developers piling onto the platform?" My response: That's a good problem to have, have you seen the stock recently? Apple was going through some tough times and there was pressure to make money on every front, or at least look like you were going to make money. We just weren't set up to do a C++ SDK; too much of the system wasn't documented, or designed with third parties in mind, and frankly a bunch of it probably would have had to be cleaned-up in order to be usable by outsiders. Native debugging was done on expensive, hand-built and very specialized hardware ("bunwarmers") which were NuBus-attached boards with a bunch of static RAM and some other things unavailable on the real hardware, and we would have had to do some tools work to make that usable outside as well. There was a serial debugger (substantially ARM's) but it wasn't a great experience. There never was a coherent installable driver story. That's probably my fault, we were writing code really, really fast without a lot of time for platformy conveniences (that "platformy" stuff was mostly at the NewtonScript level, with Walter, Capps, Martin Gannholm and some many other folks I've unfairly left out). So things like third party PCMCIA support would probably have needed an overhaul.
pjmlp 7y ago
I prefer to try to wonder how it would have looked like if Dylan was used instead.

wrs 7y ago

Yeah, I wonder that too. Apple had always charged for the development system (heck, initially to develop for the Mac you not only had to buy the tools, you had to buy a Lisa!). I don’t remember it being quite that much, though maybe in 2020 dollars it was. There was a C++ dev kit eventually, but only for drivers (though some people figured out how to use it from NS). I also did a “native NewtonScript” compiler that under the hood compiled NS to C and encapsulated the native code into a NS function. What really freaked people out was the 1% (?) royalty on apps, which I don’t think lasted long. Now of course Apple gets a 30% royalty and that’s considered normal! (I should mention that we wanted to have a Newton App Store, but you would have accessed it by modem, of course!) The 2000 had the StrongARM processor that ran about 10x as fast as the earlier models. That was really the first hardware that gave something like the experience we were trying for.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I don't remember the royalty but I remember really well how the NTK killed the finances of a friend and me who wanted to get started with Newton dev right when the MessagePad 100 was released. Plus we had to buy a Mac (Quadra 610?) which also cost a lot. We talked to Apple Germany and the product manager told us if the cost is a problem then they didn't want us. They only wanted "professionals", no amateurs. Big mistake. I guess Apple always had a slightly arrogant touch :-). I remember there was a C++ dev kit eventually but at that time the momentum for Newton was already gone. It makes me kind of sad thinking about this. I think with today's connectivity and processing power combined with the ideas of the Newton devs we could have much better devices than what we have today. The iphone feels a little boring. Well made but boring.
matthiaswm 7y ago
Making the NTK so insanely expensive killed my enthusiasm pretty quickly. I was working as a SW engineer in L.A., so even if it would have been only a small game, I would have had the ability to at least add something to the pool. Even the Palm SDK was commercial in the beginning. But a free toolchain was put together by some hacker after a year or so, which subsequently convinced Palm to lower their price and eventually give it away for free IIRC. Then again, even VisualC 6 cost 400$ or so back then.

kabdib 7y ago

The Mac development environment (MPW) wasn't free, either. I was in the MPW group before joining Newton, and made an obnoxious ass of myself saying that MPW should be free. One of the common objections was "how do we support hordes of random developers piling onto the platform?" My response: That's a good problem to have, have you seen the stock recently? Apple was going through some tough times and there was pressure to make money on every front, or at least look like you were going to make money. We just weren't set up to do a C++ SDK; too much of the system wasn't documented, or designed with third parties in mind, and frankly a bunch of it probably would have had to be cleaned-up in order to be usable by outsiders. Native debugging was done on expensive, hand-built and very specialized hardware ("bunwarmers") which were NuBus-attached boards with a bunch of static RAM and some other things unavailable on the real hardware, and we would have had to do some tools work to make that usable outside as well. There was a serial debugger (substantially ARM's) but it wasn't a great experience. There never was a coherent installable driver story. That's probably my fault, we were writing code really, really fast without a lot of time for platformy conveniences (that "platformy" stuff was mostly at the NewtonScript level, with Walter, Capps, Martin Gannholm and some many other folks I've unfairly left out). So things like third party PCMCIA support would probably have needed an overhaul.

pjmlp 7y ago

I prefer to try to wonder how it would have looked like if Dylan was used instead.