Five Years Later, Newton Still Going Strong

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."

Comments

Apple sadly behind on pen computing

[WillAdams]

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