Apple Newton
Written by Fred Brown
I am getting excited by the imminent arrival of an Apple Newton, and the year is 2008. This is not normal behaviour, I grant you, so let me explain.
A small museum is growing in the London office of Last Exit - mainly mobile phones, Apple Laptops and iPods - to which I dream of adding some of the earliest Macs - from the 128k through an SE to a Colour Classic. It was while researching these on eBay that I stumbled upon some Apple Newtons. For some reason they have never really been on my radar - but looking back I am not sure why? But they are on my radar now and beeping loudly.
Whatever you may dislike about the Internet I defy you to say that eBay and Wikipedia are not wonderful. eBay has an early Apple MessagePad 100 for sale, complete with box and all the toys, meanwhile Wikipedia tells me all about them. It didn’t surprise me to learn whilst reading the Wiki that the creators of this early Apple user interface went on to found Pixo, the firm that developed the iPod interface. What did surprise me was reading the results of a 2006 comparison test between a 1997 Newton and a 2006 Samsung’s Q1 PDA running Windows mobile. The Newton, by then nearly a decade old, won. That is impressive.
As for that Newton, it might just fill the size gap between my MacBook Pro and my iPhone, and it will be just the job for note taking in meetings. In other words, it is not going into the museum when it arrives but back into service.
If you happen to be a client, looking for a new media agency (and we are experts in some modern things, too - like Papervision 3D) then please feel free to request a meeting and I’ll bring it along.
I think I need an ethernet card for it next… I’ll let you know how I get on.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. Replacing our encumbering filofaxes with digital tools was fantastic back in the 90’s but now we have very capable smart phones. As you say, it might fill that gap between your Mac Book Pro and iPhone, but surely the Air does very good job of that?
Regardless, very exciting to see if they do release one and doubtless I’ll buy one - just to add to my growing mountain of Apple products.
Interesting thoughts, thank you.
The Newton was pressed (briefly) into service - the stylus feeling very intuitive to use in a way that a mouse maybe never will. To do lists and wireframes for a client website were created - but in the end four things have seen it consigned to the museum:
1. The quality of the display. Compared to a modern laptop or mobile phone it is not even close - in most lighting conditions it is really hard to read.
2. The speed at which it operates. Again, compared to modern devics it shows its age.
3. Connectivity. I am a member of the very lively newtontalk.net where users assist each other with all sorts of things, including hooking a Newton up to OSX, but for me it was a hassle factor too far.
4. Carrying another item around - sadly too much bulk for not enough benefit.
So, a MacBook and an iPhone remain my weapons of choice. But we have all been impressed with the Newton - its product design is stunning and it was clearly way ahead of its time.