Isn't the iPhone a Newton, essentially? And I know a lot of Slashdotters are going to say "no you idiot it's a phone and doesn't have handwriting recognition and X and Y and Z!" but come on people that's not what I mean. The iPhone is a little, handheld computer, yes? It also has voice-communication built in, which we call a phone. So it doesn't have handwriting recognition. That might actually be a good thing! Actually maybe it is a lot harder to make apps for the iPhone? (I don't know.)

I would indeed buy it. I still use a MessagePad 2100 that's far more reliable and longer-lived that the iPaq I purchased to replace it - even if, yes, the iPaq had more capabilities.

I'd love to have the best of both worlds - reliability, great handwriting recognitiion (yes the last Newtons had that), with a color screen, WiFi, and hackability.

I don't believe the rumors, though.

for the iPhone. Perhaps they're holding off for a iNewton? I'd friggin buy an OS X PDA in a second, just for safari, and the flexibility of a UNIX subsystem would just be extra goodies.

Best handwriting recognition of any device still, hands down. Though right now its more of a franken-newton, being cobbled together of as many new parts as possible. The only original part is now the motherboard, which is from a newton I salvaged in a yardsale a long time ago. And if I could clone it, I would in a heartbeat.

Though I am tempted on trying to compile the Einstein emulator on my iPhone, and using one of the two styluses designed for the iPhone that are being produced. But its not just the fantastic handwriting recognition that brings me back to it every year; its the large screen. The Newton was never meant to be a PDA, as it was made before that term was even cobbled together. It was originally developed to try and supplant the current buisness laptop. Longer battery life, more portable, and you can write, fax, etc with it. If you realize this, and that it was not a device built for comically big pockets, then it hit the mark perfectly.

How can you tell it hit the mark? Alright, users of Palm 3's, rase your hand. (*glances around*)
Psion 7 out there? (*glances around, sees a couple hiding in the closet*).
It hit the mark because we still talk about it. We still crave for it to come back. It might of even been around today if the spin-off company making them was not bought back by Apple shortly before Jobs got back, which he axed with childlike glee becuase it did not fit into his picture of a "user experience" device.

If they decide to enter the ultra-portable computer market ala OQO and others, it will not - ever - be called "Newton". No-way, nada, snowball in hell has a better chance.

Why?

Oh - I don't know - apart from the fact that that project was the darling of the very man WHO HELPED OUSTER JOBS IN 1985. But as we all know - Steve Jobs wouldn't dare knee-jerk product decision based on grudges or personal feelings. Naw. Never. Pay it no mind.

Newton's back - ayep...

If they took the technology in the iPhone and put it into a form factor that was more like a Day Planner than a Phone, then you would have a Truly Awesome companion device. Make it cover most of the functions of the iPhone, except for the phone part, and have it sync with the phone over Bluetooth. Give it WiFi and the ability to use a stylus -- but only in a pinch for lots of data entry or sketching. You'd want to build on the multi-touch goodness. Heck, with multi-touch my iPhone is already a better eBook for PDFs than my Sony Reader, and it's not even hacked! (I just put them on my personal website and view them in Safari. I put them in their own tab, and they stay there for a couple of hours without my having to download them again. Multi-touch rocks for reading stuff.)

There are situations where you wouldn't want your phone *and* a planner, but there are plenty of situations at work where you would find both very useful, but it would be cumbersome to drag a full-blown laptop along. In a larger form factor, the apps already on the iPhone would really rock. The iPhone would still be vital because of its form factor. You could still enter contact data and look at your agenda in a pinch. But for heavy-duty work, the additional screen real estate would be a big win.

Exactly; Newton didn't "eventually flop". From what I've read, it flopped on Day 1, but then became useable and a decent product. However, the Newton was never able to overcome the baggage of all that initial bad press. Building a good product isn't enough, you've also got to market it right.

I can very close to buying a Touch but it is still crippled. No BT, no calendar edit, no mic, etc.

Here is what I want:

No bigger than the iPhone
Bluetooth
HWR
SD Slot
WiFi
Java
Microphone
32GB Flash
8 Hr Battery

I worked on some of the first third party software, released on Newton's day one. It was a very, very good and solid product to use and develop for. By the last model, there was only one thing still wrong with it as a device - the form factor. It was a bit too big and heavy for a pocket. But that would have been very quickly addressed. Politics alone killed the Newton. Now, I look forward to a true successor, the tablet TouchMac. It WILL happen.

I think this Newton rumour is more likely because Apple is being aggressive at keeping third party apps off the iPhone and particularly the iPod Touch. Wouldn't want those two interfering with the launch of a real PDA, would we?

Jobs is famous for not allowing a product to see the light of day until it meets his standards. PDAs with styluses really do suck, but everybody seems to love the idea of a multitouch PDA.

I don't think it's going to be the equivalent of a tablet PC though. No keyboard is a big drawback there. In the future, when multitouch matures a bit, maybe Apple will consider a tablet with an onscreen keyboard though.

IMO, the Newton was killed just when the market and technology was ready for it. The Palm Pilot just hit the market and was taking off. Now, we have Apple with the iPhone they need to restrict to make telco's happy but they also have this really nicely patented and usable UI and packaging... They could rip out the telco chips, throw in a video driver chip and make an 3rd party open device for the Nokia N770/N800 space. With VOIP and wireless, email, PIM, and a VGA connector for presentations it would make a splash at any office meeting.

Sounds cool to me but I would rather see a Linux implementation if they could get all the nice gesture stuff working smoothly as Apple does. It is marketing which killed of the PDA market more than the phone market. I don't see even halt the number of smartphone users around as I used to see using PDA's(Palm, Handspring, Sony, and even iPaqs). When the marketing stopped and it didn't seem cool anymore, people slowly left the devices in the desk and doing that for just one month can kill the battery for good. Non replaceable batteries also fixed the life expectancy and probably lead to many EOL scenarios.

Ive me a fully open iPhonePDA and a keychain telco wireless phone module with Bluetooth support and it'll be cool once again to have a PDA. IMO.

LoB

yes, we do.

I want an affordable (>$500 2007 dollars), multi-purpose (music / web / email / ebook / addresses), computing device, that isn't tied to being a cell phone.

Consumers don't want Windows Mobile, and they don't want Palm OS Hacket, but they do want PDAs. Otherwise, hacking the iPhone and the iPod wouldn't even be an issue.

The truth is that something the size of a steno pad would not sell, because it's simply too large to have with you all the time - even sub notebooks just aren't as popular as real notebooks.

I also disagree the Touch (or iPhone) screen size is too small. I watch it while jogging (on a treadmill) and it's perfectly easy to view. Being able to hold it steady and/or closer (as on a plane) would only make it better. And on a plane specifically I would not want a larger screen because they are too distracting - even the LCD's they have on the backs of many seats now I find too distracting if someone is watching a movie, and a laptop is really bad - I've tried watching my own movies on a flight before but I shot the laptop screen down after a while because it was too large (not to mention how awkward it is to use when the person in front of you has the seat back).

If it's much bigger than my N800, doesn't have any kind of physical keyboard* support, and is as closed/limited as the 'Touch or iPhone? Then I'll stick with my N800.

I chose the n800 over Apple because:

= open - great 3rd party app ecosystem (incl ssh and vnc)

= bluetooth keyboard, stylus screen keyboard, finger screen keyboard*

An N800 + freedom input slim (thumb) keyboard == micro laptop. Plus, theres rumors that the nextgen will have a slide-out keyboard. And WiMax.

(* I just wish the N800 had support for usb keyboards, like the dreamgear mini (thumb) keyboard ... Apple will have to beat the N800 in this regard ... and I greatly preferred the N800 finger keyboard over the iPhone's)

The N800 has been a big surprise for me. I have been a NeXT fan for 15 years, and as a result hated any Linux gui I came across before Hildon (thee n800's gui). I've also always been a pro bsd bigot (and anti-windows bigot ... so windows mobile is right out). So Apple has been my natural choice for the last 7 years. I bought the n800 for the above reasons (bluetooth keyboard, ssh, open 3rd party software platform), instead of the iPhone or iPod Touch, and am in love with it.

If they get it to sync contacts, calendar, and bookmarks with google (or bookmarks with delicious), and maybe more dynamic/integrated spell checking, then I don't know why I'd ever look back. Esp since someone is working on a version of hildon for the desktop.

So, most likely, ven though 9 months ago I'd have drooled over an OS X PDA like the rumored Newton II ... at this point, I doubt I'll notice nor care.

What you're missing is that (we) business people aren't interested in a device's ability to play music, movies or games, except possibly as a secondary feature (the icing on the cake I mentioned). Imagine using the iPod Touch or the iPhone to review a business plan or software requirements document, annotating as you go, or looking at a spreadsheet or report of annual sales figures, then go on to a slide presentation that includes a lot of business graphics. I sit in meetings on a regular basis where these sort of activities go on. Laptops are a pain in the butt, and are more or less designed as shrunken versions of their desktop-bound bretheren. That's what made Palm devices so popular, until someone merged them with a phone. Really, what business people want is more along the lines of what the Palm-like device can do rather than the phone stuff, except that merging it with a phone reduces the number of devices you have to carry. I don't care what the underlying OS is; the device needs to perform functionally with business-based apps and have a useable form factor.

The upside to this is that such a device would be hugely popular in a variety of vertical markets. The processor and memory requirements of a targeted general computing device like this would make it more than capable of playing movies, music and games. If GPS wasn't onboard already, the required chipsets are small enough that it could be added with an unobtrusive peripheral. And, as for the size, look how many young people carry around a Nintendo DS, a PSP or other similar devices. A friend of mine carries an Archos video player with him to and from work each day, and, for the business crowd, look at the number of people you see lugging DayTimer-style planners. Sure, you wouldn't want to clip a Steno-pad sized device to your belt or put it in your pocket, but its not like you're toting a three or four pound laptop. Subnotes are unpopular becuase you're spending more money for something that's a smaller version of something. If you're going to carry a subnote, you might as well carry the regular sized notebook and be done with it.

Apple is well positioned to produce a device that I keep wanting to call the iSlate. The technology is already deployed in the form of the iPhone and the iPod Touch, it's just a matter of scaling it. There's virtually no development to be done, and their marketing machine can certainly sell it. Furthermore, it would fit well within their aesthetic lineup and create yet another product that no one else is really making well in a time that companies are playing catch up to Apple's phone and media player products. And, from the looks of things, they're going to catch up.

So, I'll continue to wait. April isn't too long to wait for something I want as much as this, and if the cost is reasonable (I would pay $800 and hope for $500), I'll look forward to owning one. But it had better not be some half-assed device disabled in functionality. I want to be able to load third-party apps when I want, and I want to be able to use it to do whatever its hardware is capable of.

Come on, Mr. Jobs, are you listening?

The late lamented Sony UX-50 Palm-based PDA of several years ago was (and I'll go out on a limb here) the finest PDA that *will have ever been built*. A usable thumb keyboard, WiFi, BlueTooth, still camera, video, audio record and playback, removable storage, and a fairly active Palm-based third-party app base. It worked well with my Macs and Windows. And it was pretty darn small. Its few drawbacks mostly were related not to its technology (which was amazing for three or four years ago and still solid now) but mostly related to Sony's hoogizzashit attitude toward cool products (release them, hype them, and in two years deny you ever sold them -- this goes back at least 20 years).

Sony could have leveraged that platform to own what we now call "UMPCs" but the current UX is overpriced, overloaded (with a Redmond operating system) and just not sized right. I adored just about everything about the hardware on my UX50, to the point where when my first was stolen off my desk at work, I went and got another immediately. No, it wasn't a phone, but it sported BT and I had a pretty good EDGE BT-capable phone.

My HTC Wizard may be a phone, and have a usable keyboard, WiFi and BT, but it isn't even in the same league.

Apart from the fact that I don't think Apple is interested in the PDA market, I would expect the Newton II to locate itself in between the Touch and the iPhone. Since ./ is a slightly skewed demographic, you have to think about the average person that has very little clue about computing and wants a device that does a lot of things. I, for one, would envision this device to incorporate:

• An OS X 'lite', with the UNIX backbone, iPhone UI, touch screen, etc.
• Safari, Mail, iCal, iTunes, Google Maps, all that stuff
• A webcam and mic just like the MacBooks, maybe located where the earpiece on the iPhone is
• WiFi and Bluetooth (obv.)

But the selling point, and one that they would be able to hype heavily (gotta have that), would be...

• Skype (!) - text, voice and video chat with the option of adding phone integration through SkypeIn and SkypeOut. They already have a deal with Google for their Maps so I don't see why they couldn't strike a deal with eBay and preinstall Skype as the communication vehicle of choice.

Skype users would buy it, Apple users would buy it, non-iPhone users would buy it and would see it as a good (hopefully cheaper, definitely so in the long run) version of the iPhone, and a lot of clueless people would hear about Skype for the first time and dig the Videophone capabilities.

It is unfortunate that this kind of device would certainly have weaker storage capabilities than my current 30-gig iPod Photo, which is what's keeping me from buying a new one in the near future. I don't really need the iPod Video without the full screen...