John Sculley Wins After All
John Sculley was (probably still is) in love with the idea of the Knowledge Navigator it was “a device which can access a large networked database of hypertext information, and use software agents to assist searching for information.” Usually realized in a tablet computer form factor.
The marketed realization of that dream was the Newton. It was a wonderful piece of technology and never garnered as much respect as it deserved. Especially from Steve Jobs, who described it as a “little scribble toy”, spun Newton, Inc. back into Apple and killed the product line. That act is generally ascribed to a need to refocus Apple on it’s core asset (the Macintosh), and spite. Sculley had been central to Jobs being ousted from Apple.
But now there is the iPhone. A device which can access the World Wide Web (a massive, networked collection of hypertext information). It doesn’t have software agents, but do you really need a local program to search out information when you could just use Google? The iPhone is the Knowledge Navigator.
