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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."

4 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. What About DOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'm sure there are still DOS users out there too. Why don't they get any coverage?

  2. The Obligatory by 1nsane0ne · · Score: 0, Troll

    Looks like their webserver is being run on newton, 10 comments and already /.'d. Oh well I guess they figured adding 802.11b support was more important then adding /. defense.

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  3. Apple sadly behind on pen computing by WillAdams · · Score: 1, Troll

    esp. w/ Microsoft doing so well w/ Tablet PC.

    Business week had an article on them exceeding analysts' sales expectations and even selling out at Best Buy:

    http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/f eb 2003/tc20030226_5785_tc024.htm

    and the San Francisco Chronicle had an article on Compaq crediting them with much of the little good news they had:

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ ch ronicle/archive/2003/02/26/BU189565.DTL& type=tech

    Although the print recognizer from Newton OS 2.0 lives on in Mac OS X as ``InkWell'', the cursive recognizer (licensed from Paragraph) is now central to the Tablet PC (and it's able to learn one's handwriting / improve recognition over time)

    Ironically, one of things which Tablet PCs are often criticized for, battery life is a strong suit of Apple's Power PC.

    Got modded down for it over at www.macslash.org, but I simply don't understand why Apple can't at least do a pen-enabled convertible version of their iBook. I'd buy it---ideally I'd like a single system to replace my NeXT Cube, Wacom ArtZ tablet, Newton and Fujitsu pen slate and Docking Station---an Apple pen convertible, or an iMac w/ a detachable pen slate display unit would do that very nicely.

    William

    --
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  4. Re:I switched.. .then switched back.... by Chester+K · · Score: 0, Troll

    We get PalmOS converts daily signing up.

    Sweet! I want to get a brand-new, top of the line Newton and join in! Unfortunately I can't seem to find any for sale at Best Buy. :(

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