iPhone Versus Newton - Techno Grudge Match [Humor]

In the mid 90’s Apple’s Newton (actually Newton was the OS name; the device was called Message Pad) was king of the PDA mountain. A decade or so and about 7 iterations of Moore’s Law later, the world was introduced to the sleek and chic iPhone. Did the Newton fail to draw a mainstream following because it was ahead of its time? Is the iPhone truly as revolutionary as it looks on those snazzy ads? To help answer these questions, these two techno-masterpieces must compete in our “completely scientific” head-to-head comparison. Only one can come out on top (unless there is a tie in which case there is no tie breaker protocol). Much is riding on this winner-takes-all competition. If Newton wins then iPhone will undoubtedly be a commercial failure. If iPhone wins then Newton owners will no longer be able to command tens of dollars on eBay for their little plastic artifacts from the roaring 90’s. They may even have no choice but to start selling their Newton’s on Craig’s List (oh the humanity). Let the battle begin.

Criterion	iPhone	Newton	Winner
Design(pictures are worth a thousand words)			iPhone (hmm. . . duh)
Inspiration For Name	Infogear (later bought by Cisco) came up with the name, Apple “borrowed” it.	The Newton is named after the discoverer of gravity and the inventor of calculus, also, a tasty little snack that everyone thinks is a cookie, but is really fruit and cake.	Newton
Target Demographic	Apple hopes to sell an iPhone to every man women and child in the world with between $500 (4GB version) and $600 (8GB version) of disposable income, in other words, about 0.1% of the global population	Newton owners are primarily professors at elite private liberal arts colleges and their students who are forced to buy Newtons by said professors because they are promising “pedagogical utensils”. In other words, Newton’s target market is slightly smaller than iPhone’s.	iPhone
Most Useful Feature	You will get attention from hot yuppie women when you flash it around at bars. Of course you are also likely to attract Eugene, the office techie, who will incessantly ask to borrow your iPhone so he can try to install Ubuntu on it.	Pocket Quicken	iPhone (Some women and one Eugene are better then no women at all.)
Will I Buy One	Before I can afford one, the magic money tree I bought from the gypsies needs to start bearing fruit. That doesn’t seem likely so I will probably just save up and wait for iPhone generation two. Until then, there is nothing an iPhone user can do that I can’t do using my regular cell phone, my iPod nano, my rolodex, my digital camera, and my Rand McNally road atlas.	I’m going to buy every single Newton posted on eBay (the current going rate is like $20). Then I’ll wait for the Christmas rush and sell them at like a %2000 percent profit.	Newton

The Champion Is: iPhone

Sorry Newton, it is hard to compete with a $600 chick magnet. But, you don’t have to go quietly into the night. Many people who are looking for old and pointless electronics will continue to collect you for years to come. Since you are an Apple Computer novelty, you may even be quite valuable some day, like the original Apple Computer or that potato chip that is shaped like Steve Job’s head. On the other hand, iPhone don’t get cocky. With all of your bells and whistles you should have slaughtered the Newton. And, the day will come when you too will be replaced by the next best thing. Then you will also be relegated to the trash heap of obsolete electronic gadgetry. : (