Newton Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

TUAW Retro Giveaway Part 1: Newtonian artifacts and the web in '96

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Apr 1st, 2009)

In the spirit of today's April Fool's/Apple birthday blasts from the past, we've got a giveaway prize pack that will remind us all of days gone by. [Yes, this is an actual giveaway, not a joke. -Ed.] Long before there was the iPhone, there was the little PDA that could: the Newton. While it may have ...

TUAW 1996

by Cory Bohon (Apr 1st, 2009)

Welcome to the TUAW newsletter for April 1st 1996. We're really glad that our subscriber base is growing, and that you are continuing to read our daily coverage of all things Apple, including Mac and Newton. We've got a lot in store for this issue, and would love to hear your comments back, so be ...

WWNC '09 official announcements and the 2010 bug

by Dave Caolo (Mar 4th, 2009)

Each year, a crew of Newton users, developers and devotees gathers to celebrate the little green device, discuss projects, share resources and generally have fun. As a Newton owner myself, I've wanted to attend one of these for years. This summer's event features sessions by Grant Hutchinson, Ryan ...

Ten Apple products Jobs had nothing to do with

by Mike Schramm (Dec 31st, 2008)

This is very interesting -- while investors and consumers alike are panicking every time someone says "Jobs" and "sick" in the same sentence, MacLife has decided to take a more optimistic view of the prospect of His Steveness leaving the company, by compiling a nice list of ten Apple products they ...

Date/time bugs throughout the years for Apple

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Dec 31st, 2008)

As 30GB Zune owners deal with the sudden bricking of their systems after midnight this morning, hopefully they can take comfort in the fact they are not alone in this. Throughout the years, Apple products had their share of time & date problems. In February 2000, Newton owners began reporting ...

30 years of Apple in three minutes

by Mike Schramm (Dec 16th, 2008)

Megan's great roundup of Apple history from the other day wasn't enough nostalgia for you? It should have been -- wow there was a lot of old Apple stuff in there. But just in case your itch for the days of Apple yore isn't yet scratched, here's a great little video compilation of every Apple ...

Strong chess game for the iPhone/touch

by Mel Martin (Dec 10th, 2008)

Chess goes way back in our history, maybe as far back as 100 A.D., and beautiful chess pieces were found in Scotland dating back to 1200 A.D. Tournaments started in the 15th or 16th century, so along with death and taxes, chess has been around a long time. With the coming of powerful computers, ...

2009 World Wide Newton Conference announced

by Dave Caolo (Oct 17th, 2008)

It's almost time for the annual tech event we all know and love. Not Macworld Expo, the World Wide Newton Conference! Started in 2004, the WWNC is a gathering of the most vocal and prolific members of the Newton Community. Projects that have come out of the WWNC include Einstein, a Newton OS ...

Copy and paste on the Newton

by Dave Caolo (Sep 8th, 2008)

While everyone waits for Apple to implement copy and paste on the iPhone (or hacks their own), Newton users have been enjoying it for 15 years. Here's a great video of the just how Apple pulled it off on a previous touch device. Clicking and dragging selects the text, and moving it to the side of ...

Found Footage: NSBasic on an iPhone

by Steven Sande (Jun 2nd, 2008)

Let's face it - my development skills suck like an out-of-the-box Dyson vacuum! Back in prehistoric times when I was a Newton developer, I started by using the standard Newton dev tools but quickly learned that my programming skills were stuck in BASIC and Fortran 77. Pathetic, huh? Fortunately, a ...

Found Footage: Understanding technology's past

by Steven Sande (May 9th, 2008)

When I think about a computer, I usually don't think about a 5-ton assembly of brass gears, cams, and steel rods. Yet in 1847 - 1849, Charles Babbage first created his design for the Difference Engine No. 2, a large mechanical computer that used these non-electronic components. Nathan Myrhvold, ...

The 10th anniversary of the Newton's death

by Dave Caolo (Feb 27th, 2008)

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 ...

What to do with 4,000 Newton modems

by Dave Caolo (Nov 27th, 2007)

When the cat's away, the mice will play. The cat being Steve Jobs (absent from Apple in 1996) and the mice a team of Newton developers who found themselves alone with 4,000 modems and a video camera. As you've undoubtedly surmised, they created an impressive domino-type arrangement of the modems ...

Rig of the Week: Newton as telephone

by Dave Caolo (Oct 2nd, 2007)

Who needs an iPhone when you've got a Newton 2100? Using a Nokia Card Phone 2.0 he got on Ebay for 10 Euros, a HDC-6D headset (Cost: 1 Euro), a prepaid T-Mobile SIM card (10 euros) and NewtSMS+ 1.10a beta (free), Marcus Hammerschmitt (original post in German and Google-translated) was placing calls ...

More "New Newton" rumors

by Dave Caolo (Sep 26th, 2007)

What's more annoying than Chocolate Rain and the pointless Kid Nation uproar? The incessant "Apple is coming out with a new Newton" rumors. Here's one from 2003: "...There's good reason to believe that a jazzy new Newton II will be forthcoming, perhaps in January" (Yup, that's our good friend John ...