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I'm not too impressed with the viability of Einstien as it will always (and can only be) a black and white interface with sixteen shades of grey. The Newton never had internal color support. Without source code (or even real internals documentation) this won't change. I should have noted that I ebayed a Message Pad 2100 and recently compared it with the 770. I love the 770 hardware, but boy does its Linux gnome based interface suck. If you thought gnome was unwieldily as a desktop, try it in a handheld. A 2.6 Linux kernel running a full 'nix distribution with X and Gnome - running on a 250mhz ARM processor with 64MB of RAM. OK - I've seen X kindof run on a 4MB Sun 3/50, it did better with 8MB on a Sun 3/60 and actually ran well with 16MB. But that was with twm as a window manager, an xclock and a few xterms. Nothing else. Add gnome and a web browser ... damn, forget it.

And here we get to the crux of the problem. Everyone wants a handheld device that will browse the web well. But a modern web browser has to render a complex markup language with images, (html ain't simple no more), interpret several scripting languages such as javascript, java, and flash, and users even expect it to do this with multiple pages at a time (tabs). Ever wonder why browsers consume so much RAM? Well, add a browser and gnome and you have a s-l-o-w mess on your hands.

The Newton took the alternate approach. Make it do a few very useful things extremely well. The original Palm was like that too, only even more stripped down. These devices did useful stuff for a handheld: make grocery lists and track purchases, calendaring, note taking etc. But browsing the web is really beyond them - and clearly, so is it beyond handheld hardware today. As an example, I used skweezer.com to squeeze a plaintext version of the bbc down even further (remove images) onto my wireless Newton using Newt's Cape (web browser). It took nearly ten minutes to render PLAIN TEXT! The Newton is not a serious web platform. But try to browse the web on the 770. It too is remarkably slow for a device with no moving parts (disks). That's because it's RAM and CPU starved for web browsing. IOW: handheld hardware has not kept up with web feature creep over the last decade, so a decade old Newton is about as bad a web browser in 1997 as a modern Nokia 770 is today.... total stagnation.

Note that I'm generally pleased with the Newton. I've already used it to take notes in class and read ebooks at night. It's a great little (well, big) device. I wish I could get a modern version running on the 770. But Einstein ain't it. Even if it ran it would do so slowly. And no color. Yuck. IMO Newtonites should dump NewtonOS and use the UI and a functional programing environment like smalltalk or scheme to replicate the underlying design philosophy. But... that's JMO.

OK. Sp Apple's emate is on this list, which is very cool. The emate is essentially an MP2100 Newton screen, in a clamshell with a built-in keyboard. The processor is a little different between the 2100 and the emate, but they're both arch compatible. Anyway, what matters is not the chip, but the user and programming environment. Due to the recent /. discussion on the Q1 vs. MP 2100 article, I ebayed myself a newton out of curiosity. It *IS* pretty amazing. And *awfully* slow. I mean horribly slow. Newt's Cape (web browser) can take over ten minutes rendering cnn.com in *plain text*! In comparison, my trusty old 386sx/16 from 1990 used to browse the net with lynx no trouble. Real fast.

This is not to insult the Newton dev team. The Newton was never intended to browse the net anyway, and never had any internal acceleration for text manipulation and rendering. And the environment - whoa. It's the prettiest thing since LMI and Symbolics. NewtonScript is an ease to hack. If you care you can code up c++ snippets and call them from within Newtonscript. So, you can write fast stuff - but you're still limited to NewtonScript to interact with the OS for drawing and datebase access (no filesystem, a relational db for data storage instead). Actually, I bet the relational db is part of why the Newton is so slow too.

The Newton has a lot to teach for UI consistency and streamlined design. It really was a beautiful product. I look at Squeak and think: THAT should be the next Newton. Not Gnome, KDE, or Windows XP Tablet edition (Never mind CE). *sigh*

Want to have fun? Check out Einstein, a Newton emulator for MacOS X and Linux/ARM: You'll have to use your nefarious hax0r sk11z too find a Newton ROM and then you too can learn 'bout the Newton (and emate) without having to ebay one.

My apologies. It's $60+ US for a single Newton and $85 for a multiple-Newton license. Still expensive but not as bad as I thought.

The last of the Newton line. And I regularly use that with WiFi, networking, faxing, as well as any appointments I need to make.

I also share the opinion that the handwriting recognition on the Newton is the best I've ever seen. A friend of mine writes fantasy novels in her spare time and with all the weird names and spellings the damn thing had about a 90% recognition rate for her out of the box. And that was without a lot of training up front. And the thing learns so it's only going to get better.

Plus there's still people developing for the Newton - not too many but they're out there.

My only complaint is that the person who wrote the ATA/CF storage drivers wants almost $100 per Newton to be able to use large CF cards. :-(

But from that same site people are even emulating the Newton on other hardware. That say something in my mind as to how "right" Apple got it with the Newton.

The last of the Newton line. And I regularly use that with WiFi, networking, faxing, as well as any appointments I need to make.

I also share the opinion that the handwriting recognition on the Newton is the best I've ever seen. A friend of mine writes fantasy novels in her spare time and with all the weird names and spellings the damn thing had about a 90% recognition rate for her out of the box. And that was without a lot of training up front. And the thing learns so it's only going to get better.

Plus there's still people developing for the Newton - not too many but they're out there.

My only complaint is that the person who wrote the ATA/CF storage drivers wants almost $100 per Newton to be able to use large CF cards. :-(

But from that same site people are even emulating the Newton on other hardware. That say something in my mind as to how "right" Apple got it with the Newton.

just in segmented form. It's sprinkled throughout OS X and the iPod. One can only hope that an iPhone would bring the bulk of that functionality and organizational power back in one device. And if you're really obsessive about using a Newton on newer technology, check out the Einstein project. It's moving along at a good pace.

... it will be the perfect platform for running the Einstein Project on. For those who haven't heard of it, the Einstein Project is the Newton OS running in emulation on Linux PDAs, so you can ditch that klunky designed-for-the-desktop Windows OS and replace it with something better. Photos and more info here.

A handheld based around Inkwell

Some folks have it working in principle using a Nokia 770 and Einstein.

I think there's some truth to the parent post. A single PDA that merged the best features of both the Newton and the Palm could be really slick. While I'll assume that most people reading this are pretty familiar with the Palm and what it has to offer, I recognize that the Newton may be a bit more of a mystery. I blogged a bit about what the Newton has to offer in 2006 elsewhere and won't repeat it all here.

The Newton has actually been mentioned on various news sites a lot lately, due largely in part to the recent Worldwide Newton Conference but also because of recent advances like the Einstein project and the Newton book reader for Firefox.

I'm personally hoping that maybe some of its innovative user interface ideas get carried over into other projects. Obviously Apple's current Ink tablet handwriting recognition system is a direct port from the Newton. Less obviously perhaps is that its Dock removal animation is, too.

>>Palms have had this for awhile have they not? Not handwriting recognition - you could, say, drag the pen from top to bottom and the backlight would come on.

Perhaps, but the Apple Newton Messagepad supported gestures (scratch back and forth to erase, Tap & hold to select, upward stroke to capitalise first letter or whole word, tap & drag to edge of screen to copy, etc.) way back when Palm was just a software company with only one product -- Grafitti, a text-input program for the early Newtons. Palm later went on to develop their own hardware and PalmOS, based on Grafitti as the interface. It was quite primitive compared to the Newton, but the market decided it was Good Enough(tm) and enjoyed good developer support by Palm, smartly, providign their developer kit and emulator to the masses at no cost.

[opinion]Personally, after using a Newton everything else felt too limiting. The Palm was functional, but not innovative and I could never adjust to writing funny-shaped letters one over the other in a single spot on the screen. I prefer using a PDA like a writing tablet acting directly on the words I wish to edit and having the computer learn MY writing style by IT adapting to ME, not the other way around.[/opinion]
For those like me who pine for a Newton on modern hardware, there's hope: The Einstein Newton Emulator project. http://www.kallisys.com/newton/einstein/

• A Bluetooth Stack/driver: http://www.40hz.org/Blunt/
• a 802.11b Wi-Fi driver: http://www.ff.iij4u.or.jp/~ngc/eng/newtwave.htm
• an ATA Flash Card driver: http://www.kallisys.com/newton/ata/

• Bluetooth support
• HTTP server
• Able to use ATA flash

First off, the handwriting recognition is fabulous. And the assistant is just too cool for words. Write "lunch next Wednesday with Connie" and it'll ask you to pick which Connie is in your address book if there's more than one, then schedule an appointment next Wednesday from noon to 1pm with her. Make a long to-do list of things like "Call Jim". As you're going through your list ticking things off, highlight "Call Jim" and activate the Assistant, which will ask which Jim you want to call from your address book and dial the number through the built-in speaker or PCMCIA modem card, then pull up a call log app with call timer and notepad. Speech synthesis. Audio recording and playback. I've got my Newt MP2100 synced to OS X's iCal and Address Book already. (My wife has her's synced to Outlook at work.) I can connect it into any network (via ethernet or WiFi) and print directly to any networked printer, surf the net, or send an email. I can swap the network card for a modem card and fax or dial in to an ISP. The only problem with the Newton is its size: too big when you're not using it but just right when you are. I have a Palm Vx that I carry with me so I have quick access to phone numbers and (most importantly) my checkbook. But if it wasn't for the checkbook software, I would have ditched the Palm completely in favor of the Newt.

If anyone out there is looking for the best in PDAs, look into getting a MP2100 off eBay... they're only about $100. Once you add a WiFi card, ethernet card, modem card, large-capacity storage card, and a couple pieces of shareware, you'll spend about $250 total, and you'll never regret it. Matter of fact, you'll be wondering why the Newt -- which the last model, the MessagePad 2100, came out in 1997 -- can do so many things that Palms and PocketPCs can't, even today.

FWIW the Newton community is very active and passionate, and there's a lot of support for OS X and iApps, as well as loads of software. Oh, and if you want developer tools, there's plenty to pick from.

True, it's not easy being green. But after using both a Palm Vx and a Newton MessagePad 2100, while it's a bigger thing to cary around, there's no comparison... the Newton rocks.

First off, the handwriting recognition is fabulous. And the assistant is just too cool for words. Write "lunch next Wednesday with Connie" and it'll ask you to pick which Connie is in your address book if there's more than one, then schedule an appointment next Wednesday from noon to 1pm with her. Make a long to-do list of things like "Call Jim". As you're going through your list ticking things off, highlight "Call Jim" and activate the Assistant, which will ask which Jim you want to call from your address book and dial the number through the built-in speaker or PCMCIA modem card, then pull up a call log app with call timer and notepad. Speech synthesis. Audio recording and playback. I've got my Newt MP2100 synced to OS X's iCal and Address Book already. (My wife has her's synced to Outlook at work.) I can connect it into any network (via ethernet or WiFi) and print directly to any networked printer, surf the net, or send an email. I can swap the network card for a modem card and fax or dial in to an ISP. The only problem with the Newton is its size: too big when you're not using it but just right when you are. I have a Palm Vx that I carry with me so I have quick access to phone numbers and (most importantly) my checkbook. But if it wasn't for the checkbook software, I would have ditched the Palm completely in favor of the Newt.

If anyone out there is looking for the best in PDAs, look into getting a MP2100 off eBay... they're only about $100. Once you add a WiFi card, ethernet card, modem card, large-capacity storage card, and a couple pieces of shareware, you'll spend about $250 total, and you'll never regret it. Matter of fact, you'll be wondering why the Newt -- which the last model, the MessagePad 2100, came out in 1997 -- can do so many things that Palms and PocketPCs can't, even today.

FWIW the Newton community is very active and passionate, and there's a lot of support for OS X and iApps, as well as loads of software. Oh, and if you want developer tools, there's plenty to pick from.

True, it's not easy being green. But after using both a Palm Vx and a Newton MessagePad 2100, while it's a bigger thing to cary around, there's no comparison... the Newton rocks.

That new connection library is awesome, if not a bit flakey. NCU is quite literally the last use I have for Classic on my iBook. If there's an OS X native file transfer utility available, I might just be crazy enough to re-install OS X without OS 9... well, once it can do system backups, that is :)

I use my Newton MP2100 daily. In fact it's sitting here next to me as I type this. I put Linux docs and HOWTO's relevant to my work on it that I need on it and well as various notes on Java programming. When SJ ended the Newton I tried other PDA's: CE, PalmOS (I stuck with that one for about 4 years) but in the end the *only* PDA I have *ever* used that allowed me to truly store and manage the information I needed for daily life was my Newton. So I switched back.

Now, Paul Guyot at http://www.kallisys.com has made an ATA driver for CF cards and instead of having a slot with a 20MB card for storage I have a slot with 128MB of storage divided up as 4 32MB stores.

Need support? Not a problem. The community is still alive and well. Sign up for the Newtontalk list at http://www.newtontalk.net and ask away. We get PalmOS converts daily signing up.

Surfing the web and checking email works fine on the Newton. I can even chat with people via IM programs like Jabber and ICQ or on the IRC. In addition to that I get weeks of use out of a set of batteries.

Now would I *like* for something newer/smaller/faster/prettier to come along? Sure. But so far nothing comes close to managing information for me the way my Newt does.

And unlike the Simpsons episode's depiction, when I type "Beat up Martin" it digitizes it into "Beat up Martin"... I really was hoping to see "Eat up Martha" but no such luck.. ;)

I use a Newton 2100 and I have everything in it going back to about 1997-- contacts, school notes, letters, e-mail, appointments, jots about this or that, maps and sketches, books, birthdays, archived usenet posts (yes, I read usenet on my PDA), old Web content (archive that too, if it's useful enough) etc. etc. etc.

I'm running out of space once again (right now I am at 44MB of storage) but thanks to the ATA driver for Newton, I'll probably be picking up a 128MB CompactFlash card for it soon.

I'm so worried about losing my Newton that I have two backup units sitting in a drawer, just in case.

this sounds like a really good hack, by my own definition of Good Hack, which is "do something nobody else has done yet, that's really hard and at the same time, almost completely useless to most people"

up there in my book would have to be the MP3 player for Newton MessagePads (which i installed, and it works really well. streaming MP3 on a newton? oh yeah...)

though, along with the ATA flash card driver for Newtons, it almost turns my MessagePad 2100 into my portable MP3 player. saves me $400 for an iPod (though i'm lacking about 4.9G of the storage...)

kudos to the hack, and massive props to apple][ users still out there who can take advantage of this and all the cheap storage of the new CF cards.