October 8th, 2007
The low-cost laptop that Apple should have built (and sort-of once did)
The buzz around the XO Laptop, aka the One Laptop Per Child group’s “$100 laptop” is growing, with an innovative donation program coming in time for the holidays. But this colorful, rugged computer could have come from Apple, and in another time, it did.
The One Laptop Per Child organization recently announced a donation program for the holiday season: you buy two of the XO Laptops for $400 and you get to keep one. The other is donated to a child somewhere in the world who needs it. The program will start Nov. 11 and you can request a e-mail notification from the site. As far as I understand, this is the first time the machines will be sold to the public in the States. I’m looking forward to getting one.
I got some hands on time with one of the machines last January at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Mario Murphy, the books processing engineer at the Internet Archive (and a former member of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group) had one for show and tell.
I was impressed with the small, green machine. The hardware’s look and feel is a lot of fun and it provides an understandable software interface as well as a useful productivity package. It all looked very useable.
While it’s lightweight, the hardware appeared to be rugged, with a built-in handle that I appreciated. And the keyboard was covered with a rubbery plastic that must be waterproof (we didn’t test this on the show floor).
I pinged Mario the other day and he said he has seen several of them floating around the office.
“They are neat. However, the only downside for me is its keyboard. Both [in] the size and spacing of the keys and the squishy feel. In particular, I find it hard to hit a spot on the space “bar” that will produce a space character,” he told me.
“But I like that they run Debian [Linux] and that they’re full computers,” he continued.
What I will appreciate in the XO is having a computer that I can take outside that won’t make me worry if dust or sand blows on it, or even buries it. Or worry if I drop some water (or beer) on the keyboard. And I will be glad to have a machine that provides a full computing experience for only $200 (or $400 depending on how you are counting) that won’t kill my wallet if it falls on the floor. That’s always the worry with my MacBook Pro, even with its MagSafe power connector.
Of course, it isn’t a MacBook and won’t offer the rich experience of my powerful desktop substitute and Apple software. Still, for a low cost it can provide the basics: access to e-mail, a browser and productivity tools.
At the same time, I remember a time when Apple made a comparable machine to the XO for the education market. It was called the eMate 300 and was based on Apple’s Newton OS.
For MacWEEK, I wrote about this device in late October 1996. It’s hard to evaluate specs and costs from those times with today’s commodity pricing for hardware. Processors, RAM and LCD screens were expensive in those days.
Code-named Shay, the eMate 300 integrated a keyboard and display in a green shock-resistant ABS plastic enclosure shaped like a clamshell. It came with 1MB of DRAM for running applications and 2MB of flash for storage. It ran a 25-MHz ARM 710 processor.
Here is the XO Laptop spec sheet.
The eMate’s software bundle included Newton Works, a productivity suite with word processing, dictionary, drawing and calculator modules; as well as the usual PIM address book and calendar tools.
One big difference between the eMate and the XO are their screens. The eMate had a small backlit LCD that offered 16 shades of gray and a 480×320-pixel resolution. The XO provides a full-color 7.5-inch LCD with 1,200×900 resolution. Remember that the XO supports a web browser and the eMate didn’t. [Image via Dan's Data blog]
Of course, the cost difference is also great. The eMate 300 cost around $700 to education customers. It was sold only into education.
From the MacWEEK 10.28.96 issue:
Apple said the device will fill a low-cost niche below desktop Macs and PowerBook models for basic computing tasks. Its strategy will push a “distributed learning environment” that lets students compute away from dedicated labs and classrooms.
They were rugged. Raines Cohen, Berkeley-based software consultant and environmental activist (and former BMUGer) years ago put his eMate on a bicycle that he rode around Burning Man for several years. It survived the heat, the dust, the rain and spills, no doubt.
Apple planned to expand the eMate line to target business users. Here’s what my late MacWEEK colleague Don Crabb wrote at the time.
Later, Apple will produce eMates for other markets, each with hardware and software to suit them. For example, in traveling businessperson’s guise, an eMate selling for less than $800 would let you surf the Net; handle e-mail; keep expenses, client lists and related business data; plus other traveling cyberessentials. All in a solid-state device that’s light and rugged.
I can almost hear the skepticism bubbling-up. Hey, I’d be skeptical too if I hadn’t tried these things. Let’s be honest: Despite Apple’s steady Newton progress, the whole category of PDAs hasn’t exactly set the computing world on fire. But that is changing, and the new Newtons will help solidify Apple’s position as the PDA innovator.
However, about 9 months later, budget problems led the company to spin off the group as Newton Inc. I wrote the story and later attended the launch party during the June PC Expo at the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
The eMate and the Newton Messagepad didn’t take off as expected. And there was some dissonance within the company over the platform.
Here’s a snippet from my reporting at the time:
“The Newton has always been an outsider from Apple’s main business — and that has created problems,” said a source close to the group. He added that the new company should be able to expand the handheld device’s capabilities more quickly and move into territory usually claimed by PowerBooks. “Now we can address things ‘the rules’ wouldn’t let us,” the source said.
There wasn’t time or funding for that optimism. No investors could be found for the spinoff.
Shortly thereafter, Apple decided that maybe the eMate might have a place in its lineup and it opened a spot for the eMate in its education marketing plans. It was all short lived.
Still, Apple soon shifted its focus to its core markets and circled the wagons around the Macintosh platform. In February 1998, during one of the then-frequent restructurings of the company, the plug was pulled on the platform.
David Morgenstern has covered the Mac market and other technology segments for 20 years. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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