History of the Apple Newton

Sabah Arif writes "We've all heard of Apple's Newton, the portable handheld device under John Sculley's rule at Apple that debuted to big media attention and much fanfare but never managed to take a strong footing in the marketplace. The same handhel that went on to be 'Steve'd' when Mr. RDF killed the project after taking control of Apple. That's the extent of knowledge most of us have with regard to Apple's first handheld device. OS Opinion sheds light on the early days of the pocket Apple." From the article: "Apple in the late eighties had become stagnant. The Macintosh had become Apple's cash cow like the Apple II that had preceded it. To protect the Mac, Apple was hesitant to start or pursue any project that might compromise the company's revenues. Several people in the corporation were weary of this approach, and began to look at the future of computing. One of those people was Steve Sakoman."

Beat up Martin

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat up Martha

what is the history of a fig newton??

[Cutting_Crew]

at first when i read the headline i thought it was talking about fig newtons with apple flavor..

Re:Had Newton and no Personal Computer

[justforaday]

Anyway, there's a great Newton book - Defying Gravity - which was released. I've got a copy. Best thing is the typo on the spine.

I'm not sure you're making such a good case for this book...

Re:Way ahead of its time

[Anonymous Coward]

An employee suggested to me that we use Newtons on a few employees here as an evaluation. I was skeptical at first but he explained the benefits of using Newtons instead of having to buy those crappy Treo 650s. So I decided to let him replace the Treos for 5 employees's to see how the employees got on. Besides, our IT manager had been using a Newton at home and he hadn't reported any problems - why not try it on our employees?

Once he'd got the employees up and running with the Newtons we let them try it out. It all seemed fine to start with: The Newtons were a pretty good replacement for those shitty Treos we'd used before and the employees could still do their work as normal.

Alas it did not stay that way. After a few days, I had lost count of the number of complaints received from our employees. Users could not do things they could before (like read their email). The final straw came when one employee lost several hours work when the Newton "stylus" suddenly mistranslated his writings, destroying the 70 page legal document he had been working on (subsequently, the defendant was sentenced to death for a parking ticket.)

Needless to say, the Newton team, having been dead for a decade, offered no support whatsoever. I made the employee destroy the Newtons and lets just say he's not with us anymore.

The caption is wrong.

[hawk]

Thisis zketh the new ton with handwriting skjkl35. To be accurate, no sksk article can possibly de free of garbled tect.

:)

hawk

Re:RDF

[ch-chuck]

The "power" of Steve Jobs to convince those around him of any truth he wishes them to see.

So Jobs is a Jedi?

<waves hand>You will pay too much for this music player</waves hand>

I will pay too much for that music player.

The hosting company carries its name well...

[OlivierB]

PostNuke... as in PostSlashdot!

Re:Replacement for keyboards

[NeoSkandranon]

Does anyone see anything replacing keyboards anytime soon?

Datajack. :)

Re:RDF

[InfoVore]

So Jobs is a Jedi?
Does that make Bill Gates a Sith?

Hmmm. Lets see, the attributes of a Sith:

1. Ruthless. Check.
2. Almost unstoppably powerful. Check.
3. Desire to dominate all they see. Check.
4. "Always there are two, a Master and a Apprentice". Gates & 'Monkey-boy' Balmer, Check.
5. Has questionable personal hygene. (At least until he married Melinda) Check.
6. Routinely double-crosses 'partners'. Check.
7. Corrupts others with their dark power. Check.

Looks like a match so far, though I'm not convinced Jobs is a Jedi. He's more like Centauri from The Last Starfighter [imdb.com]

Surely you've heard this one. :-)

[Stealth Potato]

Q: How many Apple Newton users does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Faux! There to eat lemons, axe gravy soup.