What did you think about Newton Technology?

I always thought that computing devices should be smart and do things for us. The Newton has the smarts to read normal handwriting and to figure out handwritten commands like “Sara dentist tomorrow 11 AM”. It’s also more like a computer in a small package. Maybe PDA’s aren’t worth enough in people’s lives to need a mini-computer. The pocketable Palm Pilot is more a modern Sharp Wizard, but it came at the right time, when everyone who’d want it had a computer. It’s big step was easy synchronization. Too bad the Newton didn’t have this. The eMate did have easy file transfer over IR.

I loved taking notes for hours on my Newton. I’ll miss that the most. It’s screen was large enough for this. It will probably be a long time before I have that good a notetaking tool based on handwriting.

There are probably many more things to say. I tried the Newton 3 times througout it’s life and it only stuck at the end, with the MessagePad 2100. It was finally good enough in some ways that had bothered me before.