For those consulting tea leaves to see if Apple will release a tablet computer in the near future, there’s a new leaf. One of the main figures behind Apple’s previous tablet venture, the ill-fated but forward-thinking Newton, has returned to the company.
On Monday, Michael Tchao began work as vice president of product marketing at Apple. He was a key mover behind the Newton, which was a small, handheld tablet computer featuring handwriting-recognition software.
Learning from Newton?
Tchao last worked for Apple 15 years ago. His most recent job was as head of Nike’s Techlab, which develops athletic gear that is integrated with the iPod. His return has sparked speculation that Apple is putting into place the pieces for the launch, within the next few months, of a long-rumored tablet computer.
But Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said he wouldn’t “read anything into the hiring of any one individual.”
If a Newton veteran’s return is not necessarily part of a larger plan, one question is whether the Newton experience figures into Apple’s strategy. Will the Cupertino, Calif.-based company be able to use that experience as a guide if it launches a tablet?
Greengart said a key takeaway from the Newton experience actually derived from Palm’s highly successful Pilot, also an early personal digital assistant. “Instead of trying to create a portable computer,” he said, “Palm made it an adjunct to the PC.” By contrast, he said, Newton was less successful because it tried to be its own computer platform.
But Newton also had the problem of being ahead of the technology, he said, both for the form factor and the handwriting-recognition software.
A Different World
Today, Greengart noted, we are in a different world, one in which the technology is highly developed for touchscreen interfaces, and powerful processors coupled with high-speed…