Apple rehires Newton tablet computer guru
Apple has rehired a former employee who worked on the Newton tablet computer project during the 1990’s, which may be yet another sign that a new tablet from Apple is in our immediate future.
The currently rumored Apple tablet computer is not the first of its kind in Cupertino. About 20 years ago, there was the Newton platform, which was an early personal digital assistant hardware/software platform developed by Apple. Development was started in 1989 and officially ended in February 1998. Some electronic engineering and the manufacture of Apple’s Newton devices was done in Japan by the Sharp Corporation. Most Newton devices were based on the ARM 610 RISC processor and all featured handwriting recognition software.
One of the people who worked on the Newton project at a high level was Michael Tchao, and Mr. Tchao returned to the Apple corporate fold earlier in the week, according to a PCWorld story. There has been no official word about Tchao’s assignment in Cupertino, but it is a good bet that it has something to do with Apples new tablet computer, which has assembled a thick veil of rumors without a single announcement from Apple to give credence to the story.
If he is working on the tablet project, it will be on the marketing side, since Tchao’s new title is Vice President of Product Marketing. As such, he reports directly to Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, which gives him a fairly high corporate profile. In his last stint at Apple, Tchao was member of the team of Apple executives behind the Newton project. Rumor has it that he is the person that was responsible for convincing Apple’s then-CEO John Sculley to approve the Newton after Apple’s own research and development people recommended against it. Tchao left Apple in 1994, a year after Newton launched.
Bringing Tchao back on board is yet another link in a chain of clues and rumors that have Apple launching at least one tablet computer early next year, amid a plethora additional rumors about tablets from other companies, like Microsoft, Samsung, and HP. Placed in a row, these rumors can be construed as placing the table computer in the position of The Next Big Thing, displacing the netbook from that position. Little of substance has yet occurred in this emerging marketplace, but there is way too much smoke for the tablet computer to be anything but a very large fire indeed.
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September 30th, 2009
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