XO Laptop is eMate Redux?

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The One Laptop Per Child initiative seeks to bring technology to the developing world to make up for historic educational and economic inequities. Though I think the project has plenty of problems (Did anyone check to see that a laptop was the best way to repair inequalities in Africa and South America? Or, as Om Malik so succinctly put it, “What about the people?“), the actual XO laptop they’ve produced is quite cool and has capabilities rare on mainstream machines.

The machine is outfitted with a touch screen, a stylus, and a keyboard. In other words, it’s exactly like Apple’s eMate, a Newton product line extension from 1996 targeted at the educational market. Jason O’Grady has a great rundown of both the XO and the eMate over at ZDNet, but there’s a bigger point here that hasn’t been made: Technologies are not inherently interesting or bound to succeed. They require the right context and adoption strategies to take off. Though the XO is far from guaranteed to succeed in the long run, if it does, it won’t be because its technology or design is so superior to the eMate’s. It will be because it connects with people in just the right way. That’s all innovation is — the right idea at the right time for the right people.

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4 responses to “XO Laptop is eMate Redux?”

  1. John Whorfin says:

    “exactly like Apple’s eMate”?!?!

    That’s an astonishingly ignorant statement.

    True, there are superficial similarities (and some echoes of the eMate in the OLPC), but these are radically different systems, especially in terms of their screen, power and networking technologies/capabilities – all their hardware and software in general, actually.

    The eMate was a Newton in a clamshell case with a built-in keyboard. That’s it. The OLPC is quite a bit more. You could call the eMate a precursor to it, but not “exactly like” it.

  2. spacemonkey says:

    Um, the XO-1 doesn’t have a touchscreen. As much as I love the eMate, the XO-1 can do mesh wifi networking, videoconferencing, can be programmed and reveals it’s source code, and beyond all it’s technical wizbangs, it will be actually marketed better and in the end, won’t be Steve’d. The poor eMate never had a chance. The XO-1, might with the power of the community and FOSS, make it.