As the Apple Turns: Scene 989: What Day Is It? (9/3/98)

What Day Is It? (9/3/98)

At last, new light is being shed on a long-standing mystery: Why did Apple kill the Newton just as it was starting to live up to its promise? After all, with the advent of Newton OS 2.0, handwriting recognition really worked, and once the MessagePad 2000 rolled around, speed was no longer an issue, either. So what prompted the sudden dropping of the entire project like a hot potato?

A seemingly innocuous bug reported by MacSkandia (a Scandinavian Mac OS web site) may hold the key. According to MacNN's translation, the MessagePad 2100 incorrectly indentifies the week of any date after January 1st, 1999. According to European convention, week 1 of 1999 starts on Monday the 4th, but the MP2100 calls that week 2. It's a minor bug, we think, but we could see how it could really annoy some users.

According to MacNN, this bug is still unconfirmed, but if it's real, could it account for Apple's move to sink the Newton? After all, date bugs are currently a real PR black eye, what with Year 2000 looming just around the corner. Mightn't Apple have discovered the bug, and rather than have to deal with it, just shut down the whole project? Then there's the coverup conspiracy... Oh, the humanity...

SceneLink (989)

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The above scene was taken from the 9/3/98 episode:

September 3, 1998: A new feature in Mac OS 8.5 has some Internet search engine companies gnawing their own legs off in frustration. Meanwhile, Microsoft must fork over a slew of documents that may reveal how they pressured Intel and Apple not to develop competing products, and a newfound bug in the Newton MessagePad 2100 may unearth a dark and desperate conspiracy...

Other scenes from that episode:

987: Searching for Sherlock (9/3/98) Mac OS 8.5 ("the system software formerly known as Allegro") is nearing the Golden Master phase of its development, and should hit store shelves in a about a month. All the feedback we've gotten from (cough) beta-testers indicates that it'll be a must-have upgrade, with several people saying the jump from 7.6.1 to 8.0 was actually less significant than the upcoming bump from 8.1 to 8.5...
988: The Dog Ate Them (9/3/98) And in "Redmond Justice," it's another setback for Microsoft, who was just ordered to turn over a slew of new evidence to the Department of Justice. According to the Seattle Times, the software giant has to fork over "key documents" that detail its relationships with mondo-huge chipmaker Intel and our own beloved Apple Computer...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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