The Newton O.S. Creeps Toward New Hardware

GraWil writes "As previously reported, the Apple Newton refuses to die! The Worldwide Newton Conference 2004 has wrapped up (photos) and, thanks to Paul Guyot, there is real hope for an emulator. His talk, titled 'Newton never dies, It only gets new hardware,' describes and shows the Einstein Emulator, that will eventually allow the Newton OS to be built and run on top of Unix. Will your next Linux PDA boot Newton OS next year?"

My question is...

How much processing power does this need, i have an old palm IIIc and i like the newton OS... would that run it?(it WILL run some flavor of linux/unix IIRC)

Re:My question is...

I wouldn't try running it on an old Palm.

The Newton used a 16-25 MHz or so ARM, and even then it lagged quite a bit. The final models (before Steve killed it) had 166 MHz or so CPUs. The Palm has a 16 MHz 68000, so there's no chance there. On the other hand, modern PDAs (PocketPC, Palm ARM, Zaurus) use 200+ MHz ARM CPUs, so they ought to run the Newton OS in an emulator environment with no trouble at all. The important part is the total lack of need for CPU emulation.

Newton on Amiga

I'm holding out for a version of NewtonOS that runs under version 3.0 of AmigaOS running under emulation on my Atari ST.

Still viable

In spite of its detractors, the Newton continues to be a viable handheld platform (shortcomings of the hardware notwithstanding). As a current Newton user, I'm excited for a new lease on life. The genius of the Newton is the OS -- the HWR, the Assistant, and the soup method of data storage. Newton apps "see" each other's data and don't have to run any sort of conversion to use it as their own. You own the data, not the app. Plus, writing "10:00 meeting with lab group 10/14" in the Assistant and getting the proper entry in your calendar just rocks!

Re:Still viable

I gotta say, I've been wanting a feature like that on PalmOS since the day I got my first Visor.

Add in the ability to link different pieces of data (so if I have an appointment with somebody I can tap that person's name to bring up their contact info, and also include a link to a checklist of stuff I need to get done for that meeting, for example), and my Palm handheld might livie up to its name as a personal digital assistant rather than being a glorified address book and e-book reader.

Damn.

For a second I thought they meant a new Newton from Apple : (

Re:Damn.

Not your fault, they just changed the title in the last few seconds. It was originally "The Apple Newton Gets New Hardware".

bad apple

apple should have kept making newtons and bought palm when they could

GNUton Etc.

It's good to hear about the Einstein Emulator. I wonder what happened to the GNUton project [sourceforge.net]; it seemed to be working in the same direction and as far as I know actually got a bootable system running through the magic of Python. Granted, there's been no status update since 2000, but I've certainly seen free software projects go dormant longer.

Recently Newton's Library [newtonslibrary.org] has gone live again; I'm one of the volunteer librarians. If anyone is interested in helping out, let me know. The Newton MessagePad is a great device for reading e-books, and the potential of new hardware certainly can't hurt.

One of the most underrated technological devices

The Newton got a bad rep in it's early days due to being released too soon. The handwriting recognition just didn't work well enough.

Unfortunately, people never gave it a second chance. The 2000 and 2100, the final models of the Newton had excellent handwriting recognition and a faster processor that was pretty darned fast for the applications the Newton ran.

I'm glad to see holdouts trying to keep the heart beating. With the technology available today, a screamingly fast Newton could be housed in something no larger than your typical Palm. And that mid-90s software is BETTER than today's PalmOS.

Oh, and Graffiti SUCKS!

Re:One of the most underrated technological device

I dissagree.... in '94/'95 I took ALL my univeristy CS notes on my Newton. While everone else was luggin around either texbooks or the odd Notebook computer. I had my trusty Newton. Saved as handwriting in class...coverted to text in the evenings... gave me extra incentive to re-read all my notes that day in the evening.

worked like a charm!

Re:One of the most underrated technological device

That may be true - that's it's "faster". But at what cost? I.e. 'faster with more typos left in'. I find that writing in my weird blend of cursive and printing using ink-text that I can consistently out-write myself when using graffiti. I'm not slouch with either. I've used both palm os devices and newtons for years (see my previous post in this thread). With graffiti you kinda of have to 'correct as you go' or take a hit in speed while you carefully make your strokes (and graffiti doesn't store your actually strokes so if you misspell someone's name in a quick note, you can't go back and see what you 'meant' to scribble down). With ink-text you just go all out, then bulk recognize when time isn't as pressing. With my Pilots (and visor's and cliés) I almost never took quick notes with graffiti, always opting for the Sketchpad. Second, I could never keep up with a lecture on a Pilot, while I could easily take notes with either ink-text or full HWR with the outline mode on my Newton MP2100.

So yeah. Maybe I would have preferred graffiti on my H1000 ... as the hwr just sucked, and ink-text wasn't even available yet, but on the latest/last MP, real writing surpassed graffiti.

NewtonOS Clone?

considering how "ancient" (in computer/pda terms) the Apple Newton PDAs were, why don't people try to essentially rewrite a clone of it. i understand the usefulness of an emulator, but an OS clone would be much more convenient. you can get the features, look, and feel of the Newton OS while also having the luxury of adding upgrades when the needs arise. Also, it could be ported to newer hardware (instead of the legacy/aging Newton one.)


i, not being a programmer myself, cannot fathom the complexity of writing such an OS, perhaps. but it makes more sense, to me atleast, to take what everyone seems to love about the old software and move on to a new one.

anyone care to explain how hard it would to write an entire new OS for a PDA (similar to that of Newton's) ?

Fans of the Newton acknowledge it's perfection

The Message Pad 2100 (baring it's size) is really the epitome of the PDA. In that ... it's actually able to 'assist' in what you typically use a pda for. Voice recording, calendaring, little black-booking, emailing.

I have a 2100 and also was an early adopter of the Palm series (had an original palm pro, a palm three, then got a visor deluxe, then a clié -- depsite the clié's higher resolution and jog wheel, I gave it up and went back to the visor). I haven't bothered to move on to the Zire line because... although graffiti is usable, it just sucks compared to the -- let me stress this again -- awesome recognition of the Newton MP. I know there are some folks out there working on embedded GTK interfaces, can any of you let me know where HWR is at on the embedded Linux scene?

So, the reason no one is 're-writing' a clone OS of the Newton is the unfeasibility of creating, from a hobbyist public domain vector a platform as perfectly suited to the PDA as the Newton OS. I am enamoured with tablet computing... I even have one of the first IBM Thinkpads (Type 2524, all screen, no keyboard). Which you could say is loosely a sibling of the same era. It uses Windows 95 with the 'Pen Computing' crap (since the Pen Windows or whatever was killed). The recognition is horrible. And that's with a 486DX, which should arguably have more horsepower than the ARM the Newton's had.

Anyway, I know this post goes no where in specific but here's the main thrust: I have used basically every pen based system that has been commercially available. The Newton MP 2100 was the most elegant and useful of any of these. If Newton had survived Jobs re-emergence, or had been spun off, we would all have 3"x5"x.5", color, 180dpi, nearly edge to edge screen, pressure sensitive, useful, intelligent PDAs with HWR as good, or better, than the MP's for probably a lower price point than the original MP's. I'm thinking like $350. I would die for that.

Oh, and let me say too... That ThinkPad is cool, I still sketch on it in Photoshop 3.5 with it, but the HWR is horrible. Damn you Microsoft. I just don't see why the whole industry just freaked out and let HWR wallow for so long. Even Ink in OS X isn't as good as the Newton HWR.

Let the rebuttals fly!

Re:Fans of the Newton acknowledge it's perfection

Actually, the HWR in OS X *IS* the very same Rosetta HWR engine that was in the MP 2100 (The printed/mixed engine). It even has the same easter eggs as the Newton does. Just write "Rosetta! Rosetta! Rosetta!" and it will recognize it as "Rosetta! Rosetta! Hey that's me!"

Unlike the cursive recognizer, which was developed in Russia, the Rosetta engine was written and developed in-house by Apple. If you do a search, I think that you can still find the ACM papers written by the guys who developed the engine. It's an interesting mix of Neural Nets, traditional HWR, and dictionary based guessing of the words.

Re:Fans of the Newton acknowledge it's perfection

I wonder what you get it you write "Developers! Developers! Developers!" into a Windows Pocket PC?

Is it OpenSource?

I cannot find Einstein anywhere. I'm a newton user and dabble in coding apps. Is Einstein open source? If so, where is the code?

First photo

Isn't that Torvalds younger brother in the picture?

John

let id die...

What do they mean? 'Newton never dies, It only gets new hardware,' mine always died after about an hour of use then I had to change batteries The only new hardware they could add is a solar panel..

Sorta Newton related...

I am looking for something that has about the power of a PDA, but is larger... like 5-6" screen type deal. I thought the Newton was a bigger piece of hardware than it actually is (people certainly complain about how big it is enough), so I was looking at it.

What I want is something that has some decent screen real estate so I can use it for document review (both text and - maybe - images), do basic internet stuff, like limited webbrowsing email and chat, and also some basic PDA type stuff like note taking/calendar/phone book; enough power and the hardware to play MP3's would be nice, too.

I don't need anything super powerful (doesn't need to play video or any games at all), touch screen would be good, but so would some sort of built in pointing device w/ external keyboard. Color screen is even optional (image review isn't a requirement, just would be nice).

Also, either a PCMCIA or CF slot would be good, for both data storage and I NEED to be able to put in a WiFi card and a modem card for connectivity. Battery life can be mediocre, only would NEED 2-3 hours between charges.

Now, I don't think that this is alot of requirements, a very old tablet PC would do he trick, if there is such a thing. The real difficulty comes into budget: I want to get this cheap. If it starts to get up to the $300 range I could get an old G3 iBook and be done with it... so anyone have any ideas?

Re:Sorta Newton related...

Well if you dropped the budget requirement you would seem to be a perfect candidate for an OQO [oqo.com] ultra compact PC. It's 4.9*3.4 inches, has a 800*480 display, has a full keyboard, thumb mouse, pen input, scroll wheel, etc. It has Firewire, Bluetooth, 802.11b, and USB built in. It lasts aprox 3 hours on battery. It has a 20GB HDD for storage. The biggest problem for you would be the price, I believe the first generation are around $1800.

The Einstein Emulator

...and in a few years the Einstein Emulator (also known as Einstein Emulator Special Version) will become obselete with bugs and head towards death only to be replaced by the Einstein Emulator General Version which solves most of the bugs. Some bugs remain, however, which were only resolved after the Quantum Plugin was released.

Lucas, Meet Jobs. Jobs, meet Lucas.

This is out of hand. Newton is 10 year old hardware that has an adamant user base that consistantly reaches over backwards to keep alive. Yet this hardware device is one that Jobs is staunchly against and has consistantly given the middle finger to.

What gives?
The only other person besides Jobs who so fearlessly tells a fan base to go collectively screw themselves is Lucas. Being a very technical user who has 2 mac laptops, a G5 desktop and an iPod, I could definitely put a Newton device to good use.

I can only hope that Apple current dealings with Motorola's cellular device division is working on an intigrated OS X compatable PDA for the iPhone to allow users to bluetooth and/or websynch (.mac account?) data from iTunes, Mail.app, Calandar and AddressBook.

Re:Lucas, Meet Jobs. Jobs, meet Lucas.

You have to catch up on your Apple folklore.

The reason, wich is widely regarded as truth, that Jobs killed the newton is pure retaliation against Scully.

John Scully invented the concept and drove the outcome as the Newton shortly after he had fired Jobs in their power feud of mid 80s. Scully had killed the Lisa and Jobs took over the Mac not to be empty-handed. When Jobs was back at the helm of Apple, he was just pleased at destroying the Newton rather than building on it. To this day, Jobs keep dismissing PDAs altogether while telling everyone that phones will inherit the futur. What does he do next? A frickin' music player.

Jobs has done a lot of good stuff for Apple since his come-back. But the Newton murder wasn't one of them. Marry Newton OS and the iPod and then you start having something interesting. But ego makes this product impossible. Or highly improbable.

Re:Lucas, Meet Jobs. Jobs, meet Lucas.

The reason, wich is widely regarded as truth, that Jobs killed the newton is pure retaliation against Scully.

Umm, Sculley also introduced color displays and expansion slots to the Macintosh line, and Apple didn't abandon those.

Seriously though, this is a bit of a stretch. When Steve returned to Apple, the company was having a near-death experience, and anything that detracted from the core business (like the printers, or the newton, and an awful lot of the Macintosh models of the time) had to go.

-jcr

Re:Lucas, Meet Jobs. Jobs, meet Lucas.

This is out of hand. Newton is 10 year old hardware that has an adamant user base that consistantly reaches over backwards to keep alive. Yet this hardware device is one that Jobs is staunchly against and has consistantly given the middle finger to.

That is just untrue. Steve has said that he could have saved Newton, but that he didn't have the management talent to do it. I believe that was just part of the story. The Newton group was working on StrongArm based products before things were killed. The StrongArm was a part of DEC that was acquired by Intel (When they picked up the Alpha technology & Engineers), at that point in time, Intel wasn't really sure what they wanted to do with it. It would have been insane for Apple to spend time rebuilding a business when they didn't know if it's major supplier was going to keep manufacturing. I was the last person hired into the Newton team.

Re:Lucas, Meet Jobs. Jobs, meet Lucas.

So at this point is it "economically unfeasable" for Apple to Open Source the entire Newton OS and not just the toolkit???

Well, let's suppose for a moment that you were an executive at Apple: how much budget would you allocate to 1) finding the code, 2) determining whether it embodies any patents that Apple licenses from other parties, 3) seeing if it builds, 4) documenting it?

Apple doesn't use open source as a dumping ground. Darwin is live code. It's maintained, because Apple is using it today.

The thing is, it's just not as simple to give code away as many people think it is. Certainly not for a large, publicly-traded corporation.

-jcr

A much better link

http://wwnc.newtontalk.net/program/paulguyot/slide s-paulguyot.pdf

Turns out to be quite the interesting talk.

more from the conference:

http://wwnc.newtontalk.net/program/

Sniff, whats that I smell?

I smell NERDS! [tow.com]

Good to hear the Newton isn't dead yet, I still have my 130 and 110s, sold my 2100 a while back however (the things where selling used for as much as a notebook PC, I just couldn't resist).

the question is

Does it run the New AmigaOS?

NewtonScript & memory management

Putting my nerd hat on, the really cool thing about developing for the Newton was the programming language that it used, called (unimaginatively) NewtonScript. Don't let the "Script" fool you...it was a serious language: bytecode interpreted, garbage collected, fast, compact. Pretty impressive for something running on a handheld back in the early 90s! I spent a while tinkering around with writing a NewtonScript emulator, and the internals of the language were beautifully designed. (I still struggle with Java today because it just feels so incredibly clunky in comparison.)

One thing which would make emulating a Newton difficult is the memory management. It used an incredibly fine-grained MMU. I can't remember the page size, but basically it did mark-compact garbage collection, and did the compact bit by just shuffling page mappings in the MMU! Very neat, but difficult to fake efficiently on other hardware.

Data soup

I'm wondering whether the "Data Soup" concept will be adopted by any major free, open source software (FOSS) system.

The Newton, the Canon Cat, the shareware word processor Yeah Write, all had some kind of system where the user didn't need to worry about files. (I don't really know enough about the Newton data soup to comment on how similar or dissimilar these all were to it.)

The only project along these lines that I know of is Gnome Storage [gnome.org].

steveha

Re:Data soup

Soups are just relational databases. Their relational aspect is what made them so useful on the Newton. If you stored an entry in your contacts it wouldn't end up steveha.vcf or something of that sort, instead the data would be added atomically to the Names soup. Later when you go to send an e-mail or fax to the contact (yourself for the sake of explanation) you would simply pick the steveha entry in your names to send it to and all of the appropriate information would be filled in because it would all be related in the database to the steveha entry. A note you wrote would be associated with its creation date and if you decided to file it in a group letting you not worry where it was and what it was called.

This system is incredibly powerful because all sorts of data ends up linked to other sorts of data. It is possible to find all of the e-mails that have been sent to you by a particular person or a bit of text stored in a note you got passed by someone. The Newton through its soups had content searches far before things like Sherlock or Spotlight.

I'd love to see Apple PDAs

Apple should join the PDA market. If they stick to their current trends, their PDA would be super stylish, super user friendly, and compatible with iCal and such. Mac fans would buy them just because... Many others would buy them because of the statement (if not perhaps fashion statement) they would make. Call it a iNewton with old Newton emulation and you would get many loyal Newton advocates to buy them also.


Cheers,

Adolfo

reminds me..

reminds me when my buddy went to defcon this year and had kevin mitnick autograph his newton! [webfire.ca]

I'll keep posting this until I have one!!!

Take: 1 Newton 2100 for handwriting

CompactFlash for Music and Storage (microdrive)

1 Zaurus SL-C860 for touchscree display, keyboard, Linux (Or FreeBsd/OsX)

add Ethernet, Bluetooth, and 802.11b/g

Full day battery(8 hrs) battery life with user replacable, standard AA NiMH batteries

Support and a vendor supported dev. community

Stir Vigoriously, pour into a sub $600 package

Sell hundreds of thousands of units!!!

What's that smell

I'm not big on toilet humor, but while flipping through the Newton Conference photos, I'm just wondering who farted... [tow.com]

LS

Missing the Point

Einstein is crucial to the Newton community. The problem we're stuck with is pretty straightforward: our machines are aging and slowly falling apart, but the software contained therein is still better than anything on the market. We'd like to jump to a new platform. Honest. We really would. But the existing offerings (software-wise) blow chunks compared to the big clunky Newtons we've got in our hands.

Einstein, if we're lucky, will give us the chance to have our cake and eat it too. And trust me, the Linux-on-a-PDA folks would be very very lucky to have the myriad of high-quallity Newton apps running on their boxen. Beats the snot out of the crap running on Yopis right now, that's fore sure.

a milestone!

"and shows the Einstein Emulator, that will eventually allow the Newton OS to be built and run on top of Unix."

Cool. Classical, Modern, and the Strong Force... Looks like we're upon proving Grand Unification Theory [salavon.com]. Now all we need is solve the weak force issue (*cough* XP) issue.

Sign me up!

I really hope somebody is able to put something together based on this. The only reason I don't still use my 2100 today is the size, a tiny Palm was just too good to pass up. But a lot of the reasons the Newton was so big back then don't apply today - we've got Secure Digital cards instead of PCMCIA, my Tungsten's screen is quarter-VGA like the Newt's, and it uses a similar but even more powerful ARM processor. On top of this, Palm completely dropped the ball with their insultingly lame Tungsten 5, and there's still a market for people who want a sleek, streamlined PDA instead of an "I can't decide if I'm a bloated PDA or a crappy computer" PocketPC.

But you know what would be enough for me? If somebody would port something like the Newton's notepad to PalmOS. I haven't used a notepad app that even comes close. I really liked the whole application suite on NewtonOS, but in particular the way you could switch between handwriting recognition, sketches, outlines, and checklists so easily really got me hooked on PDAs.

The only problem, really the ONLY problem...

...is that the Newton sucked.

Trust me, I had to support that piece of crap. They tried to make it fancy rather than easy to use. All it succeeded in being was buggy.

And the hardware, oy! It kept getting bigger and bigger til it was as big as a much more capable notebook. Palm did it right, make it simple, small, and make sure it works! Create a useful organizer for the many people with computers.

No, leave the Newton in its grave where it deserves to be.

Microsoft's (iPaq's) HWR?

Remember when Microsoft paid out all those millions just about the time Stevie was killing the Newton?

Ever notice how MS's HWR looks like, and mostly acts like the Newtons?

I'm guessing that somewhere in all those millions there was a transfer of technology that helped the iPaq along.

BTW, anyone else remember GNUton?

http://gnuton.sourceforge.net/

Witness the power of the throwaway Simpson's joke.

I counted at least three "Eat Up Martha" jokes in this thread, and I didn't try very hard. It's kind of sad that had to be the Newton's legacy. Just as it's kind of sad Al Gore must go down in history as the man who claimed he invented the internet (though in reality he said no such thing.)

The Newton was a great little machine with possibly the best OS of any PDA-- and it did have great handwriting recognition. I'd love for it to have a new life, though it's obviously not coming from Apple...

We want new newton!

Damnit, Apple should so release a new PDA - they'd have instant fame with anyone who liked the newton and if they actually did it right they would be able to sell to all newton lovers, all iPod lovers and all Apple lovers in general, not to mention *nix geeks. Plus they already have the supply of mini hard-drives.

ipod

i'd love to see an ipod running newton os or better yet a newton modded to function like an ipod... a big 10lb ipod...

Jobs *is* finally right in 2004: smrtfons not PDAs

Whatever the (highly debatable, apparently) case may have been in 1998, modern times have caught up with the worldview of Steve Jobs: the PDA concept is yesterday's news.

It's natural successor is the smart-phone concept--or, in other words, the "everything-a-PDA-was-ever-supposed-to-be-PLUS-A-C ELL-PHONE-AND-WIRELESS-INTERNET-(STUPID)" concept. (And throw in a digital camera and pocket mirror etc etc NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY!?!)

In those old Newton days, the PDA concept worked (witness the Palms, etc.) but whatever, Apple was hemhorraging money, Jobs hated Sculley and wanted to kill his baby, he just didn't get it, or blah blah blah. Whatever, man. Water under bridge.

He may not have been right then, but he is now. These devices MUST have cell phone built in (which, conveniently, also comes with wireless 'net access).

Apple obviously realizes this, because Jobs admitted to analysts that Apple recently took a new PDA all the way to the functional prototype stage, but decided not to market it. Of course!! Who would want a modern version of the Newton without wireless Internet and phone? Not very many people.

(The obvious counterpoint is that a *LOT* of people would want a smart phone with the elegance of the Newton but smaller color hardware....)

Those Newton freaks are right, you know; there *still* is nothing even half as cool as the Newton OS in the handheld space...)

Darwin, Newton...

Does everything that comes from Apple have to be named after some heretic? God, even the logo is a forbidden fruit! Seriously, as a Roman Catholic I find it highly offensive and as a scientist who has just started to follow the recent study on ID science I think naming products after Darwin forgetting that his theory is only a theory is just plain stupidity and ignorance of modern scientific research.

While an emulator would be great..

Part of what made the newton so appealing was its hardware..

Not just that its size made it readable, but just the hardware device in general made it what it was, after you added the truly innovative and well thought out OS.

Jobs really screwed up when he had them drop it.

New Apple PDA product?

Some time ago I read on a danish site that Apple had attempted to patent a PDA-looking (more a tablet-looking..) product. A picture can be seen here: http://www.mediamac.dk/gfx/picture/mac_tablet.jpg Maybe they are making a new Newton?

New Newton hardware shown in photo!

http://www.tow.com/scripts/photo3.php?url=http:%2F %2Fwww.tow.com%2Fphotogallery%2F2004%2F20040908_ww nc%2Fimages%2Ffullsize%2F2004-09-04_1722-59.jpg&sn p=1 [tow.com]

Nobody has mentioned it nor pointed it out, but it's actually the black box that is mounted on a tripod standing on the right side of the photo ;-)

Still Newt'n

The 130 I carry with me attracts lots of (negative) comments: its too big, its too old, etc. But then I ask people how many Palms/Phones they've had for more than two years.... If it works, why fix it?

I want a tablet Mac!

Look, I am not a Mac zealot. I toy with the idea of picking one up every now and then but it quickly goes away when I realize that I just don't need one; my (Linux and Windows) PCs work just fine.

However, I still to this day use my Newton. Sure I have started to use the iPaq a little more out of convenience (it syncs with my employer's Outlook) but it just means that I now use two PDAs; everything else is done on my Newton.

I've tried the Palm and Pocket PC as replacements but they are just lacking. I still continue to carry my Newton with me along with my laptop and my iPaq.

Honestly though, I would like to get rid of it. I love the functionality but the hardware is aging. Batteries are nearly impossible to find. I know that any sort of repair service is out of the question.

What I would like is a tablet Mac. This could not only replace the Newton but my laptop as well. All the functionality of the Newton and the Mac OSX would be It may even be able to replace the iPaq, which would really be great. Then I think about how a tablet PC could replace my laptop and my iPaq and wonder how long I can wait.

Unfortunately, the only thing stopping me from purchasing a tablet Mac is that Apple doesn't make them. Apple needs to realize that if they don't start releasing tablet Macs then the people who want a tablet system will go to Microsoft. Sadly, many of the people who do want a tablet system are the geeks, artists, and educators who traditionally fall into the Apple camp.

Why would you want to got to a confrance like that

Ok when i go to a confrence i like to see trashy confrence bimbos that i can take to my hotel room later. that really is the only point to going to a confrence. the newton was a great peice of hardware but its never going to go anywhere. plus there were only two women there and neither one would probably flirt that much.

Re:To be honest...

It's kind of unfair judging the entire Newton line based on the original model.

It's a little like saying that Windows XP sucks (not for all the obvious reasons) because you've used Windows 1.0 (or even 3.1) and dislike all its limitations.

I think the whole point is

that you'll hopefully eventually be able to run the (brilliant) Newton OS on more modern & portable hardware.

Also, if your entire exposure to the Newton OS was on a 1.0 device, IMHO, you've missed out on what the real draw is vis-a-vis the capabilities of the later MessagePads & eMate.

Re:Pictures

Is it just me or is it apparently impossible to find a good looking woman at a Newton Forever conference?