Blast from the Past: Getting Started with the Newton

So how much ahead of its time was the 1993 Apple Newton? This video may give you a good idea. In a world where the Palm did not yet exist, where PocketPCs were still a dream, the Newton blazed the path that many other PDAs would follow. Handwriting recognition, transformation of sketches into high-quality graphics, device-to-device information beaming, and printing/fax capabilities were just some of the features that were built into the Newton. I still look back at the device and wonder what might have developed from it were it not rushed too fast to market, at the wrong price point, with unfinished and buggy software, especially when the world was just waiting for the right PDA. The right PDA turned out to be the 1996 Palm, with all its pseudo-handwriting Graffiti, lower price-point and less ambitious technology. What a pity.