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

[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.