Thirty years ago, on May 29, 1992, Apple announced its most groundbreaking and revolutionary product yet, the Newton MessagePad. It was released to great fanfare a year later, but as a product, it could only be described as a flop. Widely mocked in popular culture at the time, the Newton became a poster child for expensive but useless high-tech gadgets. Even though the device improved dramatically over time, it failed to gain market share, and it was discontinued in 1997. Yet while the Newton was a failure, it galvanized Apple engineers to create something better—and in some ways led to the creation of the iPad and the iPhone.
I have one of the earlier Newtons and it really isn’t a very good product, even in context. It tried to do a lot of groundbreaking things, but it suffered from feature creep and the hardware just not being ready. I’ve read later, more powerful Newton devices are a lot more pleasant to use, so I might snap one up.
I was still in high school and really not in the market demographic for a Newton/PDA… but I played with one at a CompUSA! It had trouble with my handwriting as I recall. For posterity let’s not forget Newton’s mention on the Simpsons, where the bullies write “Beat up Martin” on a Newton and it turns into “Eat up Martha” Hah! Classic! https://youtu.be/u6qxixgQJ4M?t=12
AV Support at my university had one of the last ones. German fellow, heavy accent, was a die hard fan and carried it everywhere. His greatest challenge was trying to get all his data off the thing before it died. I don’t recall the challenges but for some reason getting his address book off it was not so easy.
I have to disagree with everyone. One rich kid had one in high school. He could take notes effortlessly and have them instantly searchable and archivable. If you were friends you could get class notes on a ( mac formatted) floppy for a day you missed. Assuming you had a mac, you were golden. Sure it was expensive, but before palms existed or laptops or chrome books were available in high schools it was without peer. It was instantly understood how powerful it was, even if it was expensive, and really needed an equally expensive mac to unlock its potential.
“Sure it was expensive, but before palms existed or laptops or chrome books were available”
Atari Portfolio: 1989
Psion MC 400: 1989
Psion Series 3: 1991
Zoomer: 1992 (developed by Palm)
Apple Newton: 1993
And there were many more released in 1993.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with multiple Newtons and have even personally owned two over the years (one back when they were new and one I picked up used more recently). Starting with the MP2000 (so the 2000, the 2100, and the eMate) they worked great and were extremely useful little machines. The older MP130 was borderline. I imagine using the older models than that would take quite a bit of dedication.
They were (barely) able to fit in my winter coat pocket, and usable on public transportation for reading Newton books (one of the original e-book formats, and a mostly open format at that) and working on papers. The handwriting recognition worked fine for me, but I’d plug in its external keyboard whenever I was sitting at a desk as my typing is quite a bit faster than my writing, and the built-in word processor & spreadsheet were decent. They had cards that enabled connecting via Ethernet and later even WiFi in addition to using modems for dial-in Internet access. They also had the ability to send (and even receive) stuff via FAX, and back in the ’90s that was occasionally useful. A lot of the stuff people take for granted in smartphones today the Newtons had back then, and its intelligent assistant knew about phone numbers and addresses and calendar events and could do basic stuff like set up reminders, schedule activities, make calls, and even track billable hours.
Obligatory “Eat up Martha”