Apple Brings Back Old Tablet Developer

Apple has brought Michael Tchao on board as Vice President of Product Marketing. Reporting directly to Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, Tchao comes from Nike's Techlab, the division responsible for all the Nike+ gear. However, it's not Tchao's years at Nike that has people talking.

You see, prior to working for Nike, Tchao worked for Apple as one of the leading developers on Apple's Newton personal assistant hardware/software platform. No one at Apple has said Tchao will be working on another tablet or PDA but, as you can imagine ever since the news hit the blogosphere, folks have been speculating as to whether or not Tchao is there to market Apple's yet-to-be-confirmed tablet that is expected in early 2010.

Check out the full story here.

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11 Comments Comment from the forums

ssddx

"Because it wouldn't be right if there wasn't at least one Apple tablet rumor a week, now would it?"

Too bad we cannot + rate an article. +1 Jane

As for the news.. that makes sense. I suppose we have to wait and see.
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djackson_dba

I am not an Apple fanboy, but that is very good news for their tablet platform. I wrote software for the Newton and it was an amazing platform.
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captaincharisma

wasn't the newton a failure? if it was then this would be like Nintendo bringing back the creator of the virtual boy to make the next console
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Titanius

Newton was only a failure because it was way ahead of its time.
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aracheb

TitaniusNewton was only a failure because it was way ahead of its time.nope
it was because it was a pricey fancy toy......

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wildwell

This is just a rumor but I think Tchao would be an excellent choice to market the/a new tablet.
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quantum mask

captaincharismawasn't the newton a failure? if it was then this would be like Nintendo bringing back the creator of the virtual boy to make the next console
Sometimes, certain technologies fail because it's the wrong time for them, they can come back and be very successful. Look at the history of the fax machine for example. Did you know there was a similar device with the same concept in the 1800s? http://www.damninteresting.com/the-fax-machines-of-the-1800s
It failed because there was not a real need for them at the time. Might be the same with this device.
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djackson_dba

The Newton failed for a lack of support from Apple. A year after the device was release to the market, we were still writing software with the alpha development environment. It was a device with no competition, feature-wise.

One of the best dev environments I have ever worked in. I also used one personally and the user interface was tops.

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JohnnyLucky

PDA? Personal digital assistant? Personally I don't need one. My wife does a very good job of reminding me what I am supposed to do.
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How old is the "Old Tablet Developer"?
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