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The 10th anniversary of the Newton's death

by Dave Caolo Feb 27th 2008 at 12:00PM

It was ten years ago today, February 27, 1998, that the Apple Newton was officially killed. During the five years that the Newt was in production it garnered nearly as many detractors as admirers, was the butt of jokes and set the ground work for Palm, Handspring and the like.

There's still an active community of Newton users out there, and they've made some incredible accomplishments in those ten years, like:
It beat the Windows UMPC in CNet's head-to-head battle, and there's even been a successful port of the Newton OS to other handheld devices. The Newt is gone, but not really. Long live the green PDA!

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It was ten years ago today, February 27, 1998, that the Apple Newton was officially killed. During the five years that the Newt was in...
 

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Morgan Aldridge

I've added a short addendum to yesterday's "10 Years Ago Today", mostly hardware hacker additions:

makkintosshu.dyndns.org/journal/state-of-the-newton-addendum

February 28 2008 at 11:21 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
owlgarden

Anyone want to help port Einstein to the XO?
I'll have to dig up my newton files from 10 years ago
(on a scsi disk somewhere)
contact me owl(at) owlgarden.net

February 28 2008 at 8:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to owlgarden's comment
Morgan Aldridge

@owlgarden You'll see fairly poor performance of Einstein on the XO as it's not on an ARM architecture.

While the current version of Einstein is a number of times slower than a MessagePad 2x00 on ARM-based hardware (like some of the Zaurus, Nokia, or PepperPad devices), but emulating the ARM processor as well requires quite a beefy processor and I'm not sure how well the XO would do at present.

February 28 2008 at 2:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
BillB

There was a special "White" newt made for the pope!

February 27 2008 at 9:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to BillB's comment
Ryan

Circle gets the square!

Black/greenish black... limited edition clear sent to developers... and white (MP110s, I believe) for his holiness.

February 28 2008 at 8:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ishimaru

ROFL:

http://www.mirrors.ausmac.net/ftp/Quicktime-Movies/misc/the-simpsons-newton.mov

February 27 2008 at 2:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Ishimaru's comment
Mike

Yes, yes. It is very funny but not even close to the truth with regards to the 2X00 series.

BTW, I had text to speech in 1997 on my 2100. Ten years later PDAs (and smartphones for that matter) still can't get it right.

February 27 2008 at 3:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
KR

Eat up Martha.

February 27 2008 at 1:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MiraN

I still miss mine. It had me completely spoiled. My Newton could read my handwriting (better than my mom). I've tried palm devices, which suck, and always get returned or sold off. I haven't yet decided to get an iPhone, but we'll see after the official 3rd party apps are released if it will measure up.

February 27 2008 at 12:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ryan

Newton toting AOL users might appreciate this trivia question from the Monday night "Nuthin' but Newton" chat archives:

Over the years, the Newton line of devices was produced in how many colors? (hint: black and greenish-black count as the same color for this question). Extra credit if you name them.

February 27 2008 at 12:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Ryan's comment
Mike

Tough question Ryan,

I know there was also a transparent model but aside from that I can't recall any other colors beside the black and dark green.

Cheers!

February 27 2008 at 1:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CZ

Well, I know there was a lovely transparent green/blue (teal?) one, called the e-Mate. I had one. Nifty gadget, if only it had a way to interface with a modern Mac easily.

Otherwise, I thought the MessagePads were only ever in black.


February 27 2008 at 2:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike

If only the iPhone would incorporate the Newt's Assistant function. That would be an unstoppable combination.

Sigh...

PS. still pissed at Jobsie for not allowing us to buy the spun off company.

February 27 2008 at 12:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Snaggy

Egg freckles forever! :-)

February 27 2008 at 12:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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