Hailed by Apple's CEO, John Sculley, as "nothing short of a revoluti," the Newt is Apple's first major new product since the Macintosh eight years earlier. During Newt's demo at the Chicago Csumer Electrics Show, Apple shows how people can customize a pizza by moving ics over a symbolic pie, then fax the order directly from the device.
Newt MessagePad: The Apple PDA is ahead of its time
The Newt was often csidered, both internally and externally, as Sculley's answer to the Mac. The mobile device was his first attempt to launch a new product line during his tenure as CEO.
"It was the Sculley Macintosh," said Frank O. Mahey, an Apple marketing executive who was working the Newt. I interviewed him for my book, The Apple Revoluti . "It was Sculley's opportunity to do what Steve had de, but in his own product category."
Steve Sakoman: Newt's Father
The Newt is the brainchild of an Apple engineer named Steve Sakoman. Passiate about handheld computing, Sakoman has already built the HP 110, the first battery-powered portable MS-DOS PC, at Hewlett-Packard in the 1980s.
He launched the Apple Project skunkworks become Newt. in 1987. It quickly grew heavy. Sakoman started adding to his product …
