I just moved. Moving sucks, no doubt. Good things about moving though, are that you can get rid of old junk you don’t need and also find things you thought you’d lost. I found my Apple Newton 120!
The Newton was completely ahead of its time. What a cool machine, with its big display, text recognition, infrared beaming of data (early 90′s mind you) and well laid out applications.
There are a few things the Newton did in the early 90′s that today’s iPhones and other smart devices still can’t do. I’d love to see a stylus on the iPhone and have Apple resurrect their text recognition software. That way you can actually “write” on the screen and have the words and letters converted. Palm has something like this called Graffiti, but you write in a single space at the bottom of the screen and you have to use strange shapes for many letters. With the Newton’s system, it “learned” how you wrote, even cursive.
When I powered up my 120, even after over 10 years of storage, my notes, contacts and appointments from November 1995 were still there!I’d like to see Apple step back and realize some of the awesome technology they had back then and try to implement that on an upcoming iPhone or PDA. Surfing around a few blogs, it looks like there are a few rumors about a new PDA but I’m betting the iPhone will be the machine of choice for a while.
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