Talk:Apple Newton

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Hardware models[edit]

What different models of the Newton were there? What are the physical dimensions of various models. Funkyj 66.129.225.151 (talk) 20:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For some obscure reason, there is a separate article here: MessagePad —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwaisberg (talk • contribs) 09:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dylan section needs review[edit]

i noticed that the section on the dylan programming language says that one reason for lack of acceptance was it's lisp-like syntax, which would make sense if versions of dylan made available to developers actually had a lisp-like syntax, but it didn't, mostly because the designers of dylan realized that lisp-like syntax probably wouldn't go over well.

the authors of this article would be aware of this had they bothered to read the wikipedia ariticle on dylan! (or any other history of the language.)

if this is wrong there may be other mistakes, so a fact check is probably in order. also, since this wasn't the reason of apple pulling the plug, it might be nice to know what acutally was. (could the sudden industry-wide interest in java had anything to do with it?) 69.248.248.11 (talk) 00:23, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Better coordination between newton related articles?[edit]

there are several articles related to the newton platform, newton based products, etc. the contain a lot of overlap, and yet some topics seem to fall through the cracks. it might be good to work out some of coordinated revisions.

69.248.248.11 (talk) 00:26, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Newton, Inc.[edit]

What role did Newton, Inc. play?--78.54.220.174 (talk) 21:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relatively little. Apple spun off Newton, Inc. on May 22, 1997 during desperate times, and then Steve Jobs cancelled the spin-off and shut down the group on February 27, 1998. —Pippinitis (talk) 00:22, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

PDA Project[edit]

Under the "Development" section, it states that "the Newton project was a PDA platform", yet elsewhere it is listed as a reinvention of personal computing. This is confusing; that the Newton became the first so-labelled "PDA" is a given, but that was not the original concept or goal. Perhaps "project" should be removed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.218.243.174 (talk) 22:42, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why change Apple Computer, inc.[edit]

The page lists the developer of the product as Apple, Inc. Apple, Inc, didn't exist at that point, it wasn't until 2007 that the name changed. Is it Wikipedia policy to update names of companies on old products, or should pages accurately depict the name of the company that created the product at the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:282:600:162B:C74:675C:8ABF:6F18 (talk) 15:53, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Better infobox image needed?[edit]

Regarding use of File:Apple_Newton_and_iPhone.jpg.

This is probably a very minor concern, but what is the purpose of that image as the first one in this article? Miniaturization? Two samples from the history of Apple Inc handhelds?
It seems like an anachronism. Shouldn't the comparison be something more contemporary to the Apple Newton, if any at all?
If the purpose is to demonstrate size — well, then, wouldn't it be better to place a ruler or similar measurement device in the image?
— JamesEG (talk) 22:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"...it was the first to feature handwriting recognition."[edit]

WRONG!

That distinction belongs to the Amstrad PenPad, launched March 1993.[1]

The first Newton (MessagePad) was announced August 2, 1993 at MacWorld Expo. Did not ship until some time later.

I will wait a reasonable period before correcting this error, if someone can demonstrate that the above facts do not warrant. Wikkileaker (talk) 17:37, 16 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Demonstrated or shipped? The Amstrad PenPad March 1993 release date is UK only. The Newton was unveiled on May 29, 1992 at the Consumer Electronics Show.[1] —Pippinitis (talk) 00:38, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "PC Mag, October 12, 1993, page 143, Amstrad PenPad 600". books.google.com. Ziff Davis. Retrieved July 16, 2019.

Pop Culture/ Media Portrayal[edit]

A major flaw of the Newton was spoofed in an episode of The Simpsons. The very poor reputation for recognizing written characters was illustrated when one of the three bully characters (possibly Kearnie) attempts to write reminder on the PDA. He attempts to write “Beat up Martin” but “Eat up Martha” appears instead. The episode was titled “Lisa on Ice”. Additionally the action figure toy of the bully in question (released around 1999) came with a tiny plastic Newton as an included accessory. I don’t know how to properly research and document this information to be included in the official article. I am hope this will provide somebody with the necessary skills & experience enough background to get started on an official article edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.235.68.109 (talk) 01:40, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Naming convention[edit]

Apple Computer never branded its Newton products as "Apple Newton", just like how Apple Inc. does not call its current mobile platform "Apple iOS". It didn't even precede the Newton name with the Apple () logo, and instead used the Newton-specific light bulb logo. I think a more applicable name would be "Newton (platform)", which already redirects here, or "Newton (Apple Computer)". —Pippinitis (talk) 00:30, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unclear/wrong phrasing[edit]

The first paragraph in the Development section says. "He founded Hermann Hauser, with the Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processor, and put together Advanced RISC Machines (now ARM Holdings)." I'm pretty sure Larry Tesler didn't found Herman Hauser. I don't know enough about what actually happened to fix it properly. FrankGevaerts (talk) 13:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Peaceray (talk) 18:59, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Uncited material in need of citations[edit]

I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, WP:BLP, WP:NOR, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 15:17, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Extended content

Development[edit]

...the Dylan programming language, at one time intended for use with the Apple Newton (and for development of the Apple Newton operating system), was relegated to experimental status in the "Bauhaus Project" (and eventually canceled outright in 1995). Its replacement, NewtonScript, had garbage collection and tight integration with the "soup" storage and user-interface toolkit, and was specifically designed to run in environments with small RAM and large ROM. It was mostly developed by Walter Smith from 1992 to 1993.

Product details[edit]

Application software[edit]

Most Newton devices were pre-loaded with a variety of software to help in personal data organization and management. This included such applications as Notes, Names, and Dates, as well as a variety of productivity tools such as a calculator, conversion calculators (metric conversions, currency conversions, etc.), time-zone maps, etc. In later/2.x versions of the Newton OS these applications were refined, and new ones were added, such as the Works word processor and the Newton Internet Enabler, as well as the inclusion of bundled 3rd party applications, such as Notion: The Newton List Manager, the QuickFigure Works spreadsheet (a "lite" version of Pelicanware's QuickFigure Pro), Pocket Quicken, the NetHopper web browser, and the EnRoute email client. Various Newton applications had full import/export capabilities with popular desktop office suite and PIM (Personal Information Manager) application file formats, primarily by making use of Apple's bundled Newton Connection Utilities (or the older Newton Connection Kit, which had been sold separately for Newton devices that used the 1.x versions of the OS).

Notes[edit]

The Notes application allowed users to create small documents that could contain text that had been typed, or that had been recognized from handwriting, as well as free-hand sketches, "Shapes", and "ink text".

In version 2.0 of the Newton OS, the Notes application (as well as Names) could accept what Apple termed "stationery", 3rd-party created plug-in modules that could extend the functionality of the basic applications.

One of the new types of Notes stationery added to Newton OS 2.0 was a hierarchical, bullet-ed, collapsible, multi-line "Checklist", an implementation of outliner software. This could be used for organizing thoughts, priorities, "to do" lists, planning steps and sub-tasks, etc. Each bullet point could contain as many lines of text as desired. A bullet point could be dragged and placed underneath another bullet point, thus forming a hierarchical outline/tree. When a bullet point was dragged, the entire sub-tree of child bullet points underneath it (if any) would be dragged along as well. If a bullet point had child bullet points, tapping the hollow parent bullet point once would "roll up" or collapse all the children ("windowshade" effect). The parent bullet point would become a solid black circle and all the children would disappear. Tapping the parent bullet point again would make the children re-appear. This functionality arrived in Newton OS 2.0, but several third parties made similar software previously for OS 1.x Newton machines, the most notable of which was Dyno Notepad, released in 1993.

Names[edit]

Entering a date in Names for fields such as birthday or anniversary automatically created corresponding repeating events in the Dates application. Each contact had an attached free-form notes field available to it, that could contain any mix of interleaved text, ink text, Shapes, or Sketches. Like Notes, Names could be extended by developers, to create special new categories of contacts with specialized pre-defined fields. Names shipped with 3 types of contacts, "people", "companies", and "groups", but a developer could define new types, for instance "client", "patient", etc. Stand Alone Software, Inc. also created a Newton software package called the Stationery Construction Kit, which allowed users to make stationery themselves without aid of any other tools.

Dates[edit]

Dates supplied calendar, events, meeting, and alarms functions, including an integrated "to do" list manager. It offered many different display and navigation styles, including a list view, graphical day "time blocking" view, or a week, month, or year grid. As with Names and Notes, Dates items created either on the Newton or on a Windows or Macintosh desktop PIM could be synchronized to each other.

Operating system and programming environment[edit]

The Newton OS consists of three layers. At the lowest level, a microkernel handles resources like tasks and memory. On top of the microkernel, the bulk of the operating system is implemented in C++, including the communications layer, handwriting recognition, and the NewtonScript environment. The top layer consists of built-in and user installed applications written in NewtonScript.

The Newton Toolkit (NTK), an integrated environment tailored to the graphical nature of the Newton platform, was developed specifically for developing applications for the Newton platform and included a graphical view editor, a template browser, and an interactive inspector window for debugging. Initially, it was only available for Macintosh computers, and later a Microsoft Windows version was developed. The Technical Lead for the Newton Toolkit was Norberto Menendez; other engineers on the team were Ben Sharpe and Peter Potrebic.

Data storage[edit]

Data in Newton is stored in object-oriented databases known as soups. One of the innovative aspects of Newton is that soups are available to all programs; and programs can operate cross-soup; meaning that the calendar can refer to names in the address book; a note in the notepad can be converted to an appointment, and so forth; and the soups can be programmer-extended—a new address book enhancement can be built on the data from the existing address book. The soup system also made it easy to synchronize data, and the Newton Connection tools could be used for importing and exporting data. Among many file formats are the Rich Text Format, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Works, and many more.

Another consequence of the data-object soup is that objects can extend built-in applications such as the address book so seamlessly that Newton users can sometimes not distinguish which program or add-on object is responsible for the various features on their own system, because the advanced nature of Newton devices makes it easy to accept such add-ons. A user rebuilding their system after extended usage might find themselves unable to manually restore their system to the same functionality because some long-forgotten downloaded extension was missing. Data owned and used by applications and extensions themselves is tossed in the "Storage" area of the "Extras" drawer in 2.x Newton devices; on 1.x systems, they can only be found or removed in the Memory section of the built-in Prefs application, in the Card slip (also built-in), or with third-party tools such as NewtCase. There is no built-in distinction between types of data in that area. For example, an installed application's icon could be sitting right next to a database of addresses used by another installed extension further down the list.

Finally, the data soup concept works well for data like addresses, which benefit from being shared cross-functionally, but it works poorly for discrete data sets like files and documents. Later, the 2.0 release of the Newton OS introduced Virtual Binary Objects to alleviate the problem of handling large data objects.

Package installation, capacity planning, and disaster recovery[edit]

Several software utilities which accommodate data transfer to and from a host system exist for the following platforms:

Newton technology after cancellation[edit]

but was reabsorbed several months later when Apple CEO Gil Amelio was fired by the board and Steve Jobs took over as then interim CEO. Two ex-Apple Newton developers founded Pixo, the company that created the operating system for the original iPod. [citation needed]

The Rosetta name was later used for Apple's PowerPC software translation layer for Intel-based Macs.[citation needed]It has again been used to describe the Macs transition from Intel based chips to Apple silicon M1.[citation needed]

Some of the handwriting recognition technology from the Newton later found its way into Windows CE. The letter preferences menus showing the different ways that people write cursive characters were pixel identical on Windows CE to those previously used on the MessagePad.[citation needed]

The tablet likely eventually evolved into the iPhone or iPad.[citation needed]

Future[edit]

Rumor sites jumped at the possibility of a new tablet PC-style Macintosh. This later turned out to be the iPad, which currently runs Apple's proprietary iPadOS System Software.[citation needed]

Development[edit]

Hardware mods made by Newton users included a board for USB connectivity, headphone jacks, and replacing the backlight with different colors.[citation needed]

In popular culture[edit]

In the 1995 action film Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, the main character uses an Apple Newton to send an SOS message.

Wiki Education assignment: Advanced Writing and Research[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2023 and 12 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): JohanKusanagi (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by JohanKusanagi (talk) 02:34, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The sony Palmtop had character recognition already in 1990[edit]

It seems it was Japan exclusive, it's size and functionalities don't exactly differ that much from the newton. It's curious how it's called the PALMtop too, hmmm... Also https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mobile-computing/18/320/1781 the model from 1991 seems to actually match the size of the apple newton. Mirad1000 (talk) 23:05, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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