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

[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. :)