Inkwell No Longer From the Newton?

CrezzyMan writes "From this post on the Newtontalk.net mailing list: Some of you may be interested to know that in the Inkwell section on Apple's website the following original text (straight after the keynote): 'Based on the Newton's 'Print Recognizer'-widely considered to be the world's first genuinely usable handwriting recognition solution-Inkwell's handwriting recognition is highly accurate and extensively tested' has been changed to: 'Built on Apple's Recognition Engine - Inkwell's handwriting recognition is the best in the industry.' Steve must really hate the Newton..." I'd be more likely to consider Inkwell a good technology if I knew it was from the Newton, but I was an actual Newton user. Most people erroneously think the HWR in Newton OS was bad (thanks to The Simpsons!).

Comments

Handwriting Recognition and Rumor Sites

[iamiuru]

All over the mac rumor sites there had been (well the conversations pop up ever now and again) conversation about a new PDA. People figured, hey if its in Jaguar then they have to be working on a new PDA, even though Apple has stated they do not want to get back into that world (could be disinformation though).

Personally I think its pretty cool to be able to hand write something (typing can be faster but not for everyone) into any application or draw a quick middle finger to your boss in an email (quicker then ascii art - unless of course you have a repository of that sort of thing).

But hey the first uses of the handwriting recognition on OSX have been at the apple stores. I may be incorrect but the pad that you sign your name into for your credit card receipt may be using it. Heard someone at the NY store talking about the fact that the little signature devices were also using the handwriting recognition software to match up against what your credit card's stripe has on it. If it's true, its a nice real world experiment to tweak out the software.

Re:Handwriting Recognition and Rumor Sites

[jpellino]

*probably* not. Pen-based POS (point-of-sale) terminals simply capture signatures, though there was talk this past spring of some recognition schemes getting the green light for development, particularly in restaurants & hotels...

Plus, they'd never get mine - thanks to its style, and the same goes for most signatures - they are hightly stylized, and the recognizers rely on you using *fairly* standard block and cursive letters.

If that *is* an Inkwell pad on their POS mac, it's likely just for capturing. Associating the ascii on my credit card just once to a scrawl is pretty useless. Once trained, it might be of some use, but then you'd have to spread those trained signatures across the Apple retail system so they'd be of use in subsequent sales, and that gets unwieldy not to mention scary...

New eMate?

[bdesham]

I really hope Apple decides to release something like the old eMate. I have one, and it's great- it's got a nice big screen, and the option to use the keyboard or handwriting recognition for text input. It can even surf the net (with a 28.8 modem, no less)! A portable device running OS X aimed at the education market really seems like a great idea. I know that my school, for one, wouldn't even consider buying any of its students 'real' laptops, but at an affordable price, they might look into these.

Oh grow up.

[fm6]

Most people erroneously think the HWR in Newton OS was bad (thanks to The Simpsons!).

No, it was thanks to the thousands of Newton early adopters (including me) who experienced this problem. Not only was the handwriting recognition itself problematic, but the features that were supposed to work around the problem were very badly designed. (The code that added new words to the recognition dictionary, for example, didn't understand that punctuation wasn't part of a word!) They did fix these problems in later versions, but by then the product had no hope of being widely accepted.

Re:Oh grow up.

[BitGeek]

This is just wrong.

I had a original 1.0 release of the software, and very poor handwriting.

I had no trouble getting it to recognize my handwriting, and found it to be a delight to use.

The product was rather widely accepted before Jobs came back and killed it. Spinning Newton Inc out was the correct idea and would have made apple money-- they certainly were a profitable organization.

The newton was widely adopted and very successful. It just wasn't "Mass market" like the palm. But there was a huge industry.

Like NeXT its one of those technologies that pundits poo pooed (ignorant of technology they are anyway) and people assumed was a failure that wasn't profitable.

Hell, like APPLE.... even when it was 3 times the size of microsoft in revenues.

Class notes

[PD]

I once took notes from a fast talking History professor for an hour and a half straight on my Newton 130, without a single error in reading my handwriting.