I miss the Newton.

[firecat]

I worked at Apple through most of the uncool non-Steve-Jobs years.* One thing I worked on was the Newton.

A few days ago, someone bought a mint Newton off eBay and reviewed it.

http://techland.time.com/2012/06/01/newton-reconsidered/

20/20 hindsight may make the MessagePad’s screen look worse than it seemed in 1993; its battery life, however, benefits from a couple of decades of diminished expectations. Back in the 1990s, people squawked that the MessagePad H1000 drained its four AAA batteries too quickly. I found, however, that I could go for a couple of weeks on a set. In an age of smartphones that conk out after less than one day, that was more than enough to keep me happy.

Its legendarily awful handwriting recognition actually worked pretty well for me.

Now, about that handwriting recognition. (It was, incidentally, developed by a team of Russian computer scientists who later went on to create Evernote, the gem of a note-taking app for the iPhone and other devices.)

(Which makes the icon for this post inaccurate, but it's the only Apple-related icon I have.)

Comments

[submarine_bells]

I remember when I first ran into the Newton. It was before the era of easily tote-able and usable laptops, and I had long felt the need for a "portable computing solution" of some kind. I'd tried carting about a little electric typewriter so that I could type up coursenotes in class (even then, my typing was much faster and more legible than my handwriting) and that was heavy and very limited. I had a little Casio organzizer that had an addressbook and could store notes, but with the teeny tiny pushbutton keyboard and *very* limited smarts, it was better than nothing but not really what I was longing for. Then I saw an Apple Newton being demonstrated at a computer show, and thought "YES! That's the sort of thing I want!"

Of course, being a lowly base-grade officeworker at the time, I could in no way afford such a device, even if they were on sale yet (which they weren't; IIRC, the demo model was the only one around at the time). By the time I could afford something of that kind, technology had moved on and Palm Pilots were on the market. I loved my Palm Pilots to bits, until they were made obsolete by current-day smartphones. But I'll always have a fond thought for the Apple Newton even though I never owned one - it was the first member of a class of gadgets I actively wanted even before anyone had actually made one.

[firecat]

My department at Apple brainstormed an iPad-with-Siri back in 1989. Only it came in a portfolio that also had a pad of paper and a pen. :)

[flarenut]

I saw them demo'd and still have a friend's beta(!) unit in my closet. But they never seemed quite enough. Possibly because they were from apple and promised the world -- and then only delivered a continent or two. I jumped right on the palmpilot because claimed to be mostly crap. But the minimal things it did, it did very well. (And some of the apps, like the USDA nutrition database, still really haven't been duplicated. For a while I had a palm emulator on my N810, just so I could use them.)

[selki]

Yes! That USDA nutrition DB was excellent. I loved Handy Shopper, too -- used it for packing lists just as well as for shopping.

[patgund]

I still have my MP100.....and for a long time, the best laptop I ever had was my eMate.

Ah, memories.....

[kshandra]

I was expecting a different strip ("Hell, jars, Howard yoyo?"), but I knew just where you were going before I hit that second link.

[firecat]

Egg freckles!

[maize]

I have at least one, possibly two eMate 300s that might be happy to find a hope where they'd get some use, if you'd like to nostalgize more. I have no idea how working/non-working they are. Also, they've had rechargeable batteries installed, one by me, one by a third party, and I don't know what condition those are in. One has had the hinge fix done, the other has not, I think? All in all, it's the kind of old tech that might require a lot of TLC, but might be fun if you're willing to do that. (Another caveat: They're really a pain in the butt to sync with modern Macs. Ironically, it's easier to do under Windows. This may not be a big deal if you don't ever plan to sync them, but I found that what I did most with them was just use them as a focused way to write, and then want to transfer those over to my desktop for editing and so on later.)

[firecat]

Thanks for the offer! I have a couple of Newtons somewhere around here, so clearly I'd rather write about feeling nostalgic than actually use it. :)

[elainegrey]

Thanks for the link, 'twas a good read.

*Marvels at weeks of use on a charge*

[firecat]

We pay highly for our interest in color...

[flarenut]

And our insistence on reading inside.

One of the other things that died with newton, iirc, was the MCL OS extension. Common Lisp with the most accessible window manager I've ever used, as an alternative to applescript. But it ate a whole 700K. The world might have been a touch different.

[grammarwoman]

I had a college course in programming for the Newton in 1994. It was utter hell, as the professor had no idea what he was doing, and the TA could barely scrape together revised assignments that we had a chance of finishing.

I kept the textbook, and a couple of years ago gave it to David Hewlett at a con after I found out that he still had one from splurging on it as one of his first big purchases from his acting income.