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Five Years Later, Newton Still Going Strong

Posted by timothy on from the well-engineered dept.

CrezzyMan writes "Today is the five year anniversary of Apple's cancellation of the Newton platform. In spite of this, the Newton community has remained stronger than ever: it has even been the subject of academic research. In just the last few days, an IrCOMM stack and a new connection library have been released, on top of OS X syncing and 802.11b support."

2 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You're wrong by Ponty · · Score: 5, Informative

    I love my Newton. I use it daily. I began using it last September. Before that, I had a Palm III, a Palm V, and an SPH-I300. This month, I tried going back to the SPH-I300, due to its greater portability, but it's just not the same. I realized that while I had convenient syncing with iCal and the Mac address book, I not once referred to the calendar on the device or used the to-do list. I would always wait and use it on my Mac. Once I went back to the Newton, I was doing those tasks daily.

    More than the Palm, it's a genuine personal digital assistant. The note taking is powerful (handwriting that works) and the flexible control and mastery over the data in the device hasn't been matched.

    It has its problems (TCP/IP slowness, dying backlights, five year old LCD screens), but five years later, it's still better than everything that's happened since.

  2. Not a surprise by gordie · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a lot of older/discontinued hardware out there still going strong. Take the old Radio Shack Color Computers are an example, there is even a convention held each year in the Chicago area billed this year as the 12th Annual Last Chicago CoCoFest.
    http://members.aol.com/clubbbs/glenside
    SJust because a company gives up on a product, does not mean that it is no longer useful!