I wrote a remembrance when he died a few years back. The timing of this story (2005) is a little unfortunate, because the genius of the Newton investment only showed itself later, even with its failure: https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7jdgw/larry-tesler-the-inve...
See, Apple invested in ARM because of the Newton, which means they held Newton stock. And on top of the fact that this gave Apple an inside line/competitive advantage with ARM that we’re still seeing today, it also meant that Apple owned ARM stock—and could sell it. When the company was near its nadir in the late 1990s, it nursed itself back to health by selling shares of ARM.
So even Tesler’s biggest failure was a stroke of genius.
I have an old messagepad (110) and ran across it a few months back when I was going through some of my storage boxes. Plopped some AA batteries in it and it booted right up.
Still a great user interface and the handwriting recognition still works great (though it is a little slow).
Very much ahead of it's time, the early palm era was such a massive backslide (aside from size and price).
See, Apple invested in ARM because of the Newton, which means they held Newton stock. And on top of the fact that this gave Apple an inside line/competitive advantage with ARM that we’re still seeing today, it also meant that Apple owned ARM stock—and could sell it. When the company was near its nadir in the late 1990s, it nursed itself back to health by selling shares of ARM.
So even Tesler’s biggest failure was a stroke of genius.