The eMate 300 – Apple’s strangest computer
Adam Banks remembers how the businesslike Newton spawned Apple’s strangest computer
Apple’s Newton MessagePad, which appeared in 1993 after a long gestation, was a groundbreaking product – but not a successful one. Handwriting recognition was central to its failure: it worked poorly, and the processing power and screen required were too expensive. As other features were added to increase the book-sized device’s appeal, its price rose unstoppably, and by 1997 it still wasn’t obvious who’d want to pay it.
The eMate was a solution – the kind of solution a marketing committee would come up with. Handwriting a problem? Give it a keyboard! Too expensive? Cut the price! No clear audience? Target a market!
In fact, although this happened just before Steve Jobs’ return to Apple, the strategy was one he’d tried with his workstation company, NeXT: if nobody else would buy it, maybe academics would. Indeed, the ‘e’ in eMate stood for ‘education’. One of the first products styled for Apple by Jonathan Ive, the $800 eMate had a bulbous translucent case that prefigured the 1998 iMac. In brightly lit pictures its colour resembled the iMac’s Bondi Blue, but in the flesh (or under grim office lights) it looked far more like a dark sea-green – closer to HR Giger’s designs for Alien than a fun toy.
While the combination of keyboard and stylus made it feel practical and fun, the monochrome screen was less than engaging. However, although no sales figures were ever released, the eMate seemed fairly popular. Even when Jobs disbanded Newton, Inc in November 1997, he told a concerned customer: “The eMate has a bright future – and it is for this reason that I am pulling it back into Apple.” He discontinued the whole range just three months later.
Having seen the rise of netbooks and tablets, we might conclude the eMate was actually ahead of its time… kind of.