'This is the end / Beautiful friend'
A Newton 2.0–equipped MessagePad 120 was, as I mentioned above, far superior to the earlier 1.x-equipped MessagePads. Version 2.0 brought such niceties as printed-handwriting recognition, auto-expanding text macros, a new (and faster) Connection Kit for backup to Mac and PC, an Ink Text capability that added cut-and-paste and word-wrap to unconverted handwritten text, and a lot more.
But it was too late. The earlier iterations' foibles — especially their capricious-before-you-trained-it handwriting recognition that was lampooned by such notables as Doonesbury and The Simpsons — had made the Newton platform a laughing stock rather than a cool, forward-looking must-have.
On Friday, February 27, 1998 — not long after his return to power at Apple — Steve Jobs released the news that we Newton aficionados had already known for some time: the MessagePad series was dead.
(click to enlarge)
One final note. When I opened up my MessagePad 120, I discovered the above stamp on the inside of its metallic paint–sprayed case bottom. Note the date: November 4 1994. My 120 was a Newton OS 2.0 model — which wasn't released until the end of 1995.
Either Apple made a pile of MessagePad 120 case bottoms at the end of 1994 and expected another batch to be needed sometime in 1995, or the devices simply weren't selling up to projections and there was a warehouse somewhere in Taiwan that held a lot of unassembled cases for a lot longer than Cupertino had intended. ®
Bootnote1
A little help? On the top of the MessagePad 120's logic board is one prominent chip: a Zilog Z8503008VSC — and I'm at a loss as to what its function is. My guess is an I/O controller, but I assume that some experienced (and ... ahem ... "seasoned") Reg reader might be able to help me out. Here 'tis:
You gotta love the hand-drawn QA markings
Bootnote2
Care for a bit of Newtonian time travel? Check out the video that shipped with these li'l buggers. Much may have changed since August 1993, but marketing is forever:
Before the iPad, there was the Newton
COMMENTS
In a way this was _far_ more advanced than the iPhone/iPad
Back then, they actually thought about making a pen-based users interface. For example as far as I have seen, you could just write a name anywhere and select it to get the address of the person behind it. It actually tried to do more with the computer than just emulating physical devices.
That first false dawn
As it happens, I went to visit Apple on a fact-finding mission as the Newton team was being disbanded, and interviewed leading players. I was looking at different systems; the focus wasn't Newton but General Magic's "Magic Cap." We looked at a number of other systems too, focusing on PDA and mobile media technologies.
Magic Cap pioneered the approach that Apple used with iPhone - building a community of network operators. It showed promise, but it was seriously flawed, and the dead hand of operator control had the inevitable result.
At that time, Microsoft's abysmal WinCE was both confident and victorious. It was puny, unimaginative and annoying but it leveraged Windows and Office. But it always looked like the past, not the future. It wasn't good, it wasn't loveable, it was just there. Newton had the glimmers of loveability, but the tech was flawed and Apple just didn't _get_ networking.
I love the way that Apple has re-invigorated the smartphone world. To me, iPhone and Android look like today - they capture the best of what was already forming all those years back. But I'm still waiting for something that looks like tomorrow, and I have a suspicion that neither Apple nor Google has the vision for the jump from lean and useable touch OS to something truly new.
titular announcement
Oi!
As an Amiga user, I resent being called an Amigo. Some (most?) of us prefer being called Amigans. Stop trolling the commentards, please :)
June 1996
Just as the MP120 disappeared, we saw the launch of the US Robotics (Palm) Pilot - I knpw this date because the diary on my Palm phone starts in July 1996. Owing a massive debt to its chunky predecessor, it had three huge advantages:
[1] Form factor - it would slip into a shirt pocket. The real test of a PDA is: "have you got it with you, right now?" - the Newton was too bulky and heavy to pass this test, more like a modern netbook or iPad.
[2] Handwriting recognition - Newton's system was a great idea, but neither the software nor the processing power were up to the job. Effective handwriting recognition remains a significant challenge for today's PCs. Palm selected Graffiti, which isn't true handwriting recognition since it requires the use of stylised forms for letters, but minimised the processor requirements.
[3] Simple, out-of-the-box synchronisation with Windows - so that losing your PDA was no longer a world-ending event like losing your Filofax, and content changes made on your Pilot were reflected on your PC (and vice versa).
