Newton (platform)

The Apple Newton was a line of PDAs from Apple and other companies that launched in 1993 and ended production in 1998 with the restructuring of Apple computer Steve Jobs. Actually, Newton is the name of the operating system; the PDAs were largely marketed under the name MessagePad.

• 3.1 Newton MessagePad ( OMP also - Original MessagePad - called )
• 3.2 Newton MessagePad 100
• 3.3 Newton MessagePad 110
• 3.4 Newton MessagePad 120
• 3.5 Newton MessagePad 130
• 3.6 Newton MessagePad 2000
• 3.7 Newton MessagePad 2100
• 3.8 eMate 300
• 3.9 Other Newton products

Equipment

Handwriting recognition

The Newton was characterized by a trainable handwriting recognition. With a touch sensitive screen written directly to the screen characters and words could be recognized. The first version, Calligrapher, was largely developed by the Moscow International Development team paragraph. She was designed for the recognition of cursive. Due to insufficient processing power this had only limited in the first models. This improved with the new version 2.0 of the operating system. Here also came the second version of the handwriting recognition, Rosetta, are used. She served in addition to the detection of publication and was developed by Apple. The OS 2.0 was introduced in 1996 on the MessagePad 120.

Hardware

The first Newton, the original MessagePad, had an ARM 610 processor running at 20 MHz, 4 MB ROM, 640 KB of RAM and a monochrome liquid crystal display with a resolution of 336 × 320 points. The MessagePad was a little narrower than a DIN A5 sheet and weighed 400 g at the penultimate model, the MessagePad 2000, was greatly increased by the StrongARM 110 processor running at 162 MHz clock frequency performance. The screen of these models had an LCD with 480 × 320 dot resolution and 16 levels of gray color depth. The RAM has been extended to 4 MB, or the last model, the MessagePad 2100 to 8 MB. For expansion, two PCMCIA slots were available.

Operating system

The Newton used the Newton OS as the operating system, the first fully written in C operating system, which was optimized for low memory and CPU consumption. For programming of the Newton based on the programming language Self NewtonScript was used.

Design features

The Newton featured groundbreaking new features in the computer world, skipped slowly on the desktop:

• Program-independent data files which are used by multiple programs at the same time (calendar, contacts, notes, e- mails), Soups called. This concept is reintroduced in 2001 with Mac OS X and 2007 in a similar way in Windows Vista, see Information Retrieval
• Neuronal functioning handwriting recognition
• Implemented by thought system-wide functions, GUI
• Newton Books.

Models

These were the models of Newton:

Newton MessagePad ( OMP also - Original MessagePad - called )

The first Newton MessagePad, by the users short OMP (Original MessagePad ) called, was first presented in August 1993 at the MAC World in Boston. The OMP was only available with an English operating system and was delivered with the batch 1.02 of the NOS. The operating system still had significant weaknesses, some of the OMP did not work easily and denied the service. Apple introduced within a short time the versions 1.03 1.04 and 1.05 is available. As of November 1993, the OMP has already been delivered with versions 1.10 and 1.11.

The performance of the processor at 20 MHz could convince her and was not sufficient for the character recognition. As a power supply 4 AAA batteries were chosen for the OMP and despite the elaborate trim of the processor to save energy, the promised work was not reached.

The Newton MessagePad OMP did not have many connections and interfaces. It "only" had a power connection to charge the battery, a connector to connect the Newton MessagePad with a PC or Mac and a card slot into which one among others Memory card was stuck.

The model was the first of its kind and in some ways groundbreaking. However, it apparently was not yet ready for the market in the introduction; the price was too high, and Apple angered many customers with a poorly functioning device.

Newton MessagePad 100

The Newton MessagePad 100 was already delivered with the NOS version 1.3 and was identical to the OMP. When supplied with NOS German version it was original message pads, which were brought on by NOS 1.3 ROM swap.

Newton MessagePad 110

Apple had the MessagePad 110 made ​​leaner, the pin was now in the housing retractable. The width was reduced to 106 mm; by the Newton was not ergonomic in the hand. Even now the larger AA batteries were used. Delivered with the ROM version 1.2 and a software patch to 1.3 it was already equipped with a MB of RAM. The NOS was working fine with this release. The Newton MessagePad 110 was the first PDA that was delivered with a vertical damper for the touch screen.

Newton MessagePad 120

Was delivered in 1994 with the NOS 1.3 and already with NOS 2.0. In the version with NOS 2.0, the memory was increased to 2 MB of RAM.

Newton MessagePad 130

Was identical in construction delivered up to the memory and the additional background lighting of the display with the MessagePad 120 MessagePad 130 1996 2.4 MB RAM and version 2.1 of the NOS.

Newton MessagePad 2000

The Newton MessagePad 2000 was delivered with the STRONG ARM 110 processor running at 161.9 MHz. This meant an increase in the clock frequency by more than 700 %, which represented a significant advance over its predecessors dar. This ensured the Newton at the clock frequency, a level that was common until years after its end of production in other PDAs. The MessagePad 2000 was only available with English NOS 2.1.

The screen had a diagonal of 5.9 inches at a resolution of 480 x 320 points, 100 dpi and 16 levels of gray. Its dimensions were: height: 210.3 mm; Width: 118.7 mm Depth 27.5 mm and. He weighed 0.64 kg with batteries.

Newton MessagePad 2100

The last Newton series, which was delivered also with a NOS 2.1 with 8 MB RAM and 2 PCMCIA Type II slots.

EMate 300

The eMate differed from all other Newton models by the internal keyboard and corresponded from the construction form a very small laptop or netbook.

The processor is an ARM processor 710a was used with a clock speed of 25 MHz. The screen resolution was 320 points with 16 gray levels as in the 2000s Newton 480 ×. Equipped he was with 3 MB of RAM (1 MB DRAM and 2 MB Flash memory); the size of the ROM was 8 MB. As Another feature he had a PCMCIA slot type III. Its dimensions were 305 × 290 × 53 mm; he weighed 1.8 kilos.

Other Newton products

Besides the models of Apple, the technology was licensed to other manufacturers who own products onto the market, such as Sharp with the ExpertPad and Siemens with the touch Phone.

More

Following the appointment of Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple Newton was discontinued in 1998. Larger gained fame Apple Newton in 1995 by its use in the movie Under Siege 2 Steven Seagal. A few years after the setting was a fan base, the more powerful the later models used especially in everyday use. Even additional software and patches it was possible, along with latest mobile phones to use a Newton via IrDA or Bluetooth connections, or to synchronize with the calendar and contacts from Mac OS X via Wireless LAN. Per Outlook or Lotus Notes, the Newton can be synchronized with Windows. The use of newer ATA - memory interface, such as compact flash memory card is possible.

A revival at Apple learned the PDA concept by the presentation of the iPhone at the Macworld Conference & Expo 2007, and the iPad on a special keynote in 2010 with the differences that you will not use a pen, but only with your fingers on a touch screen are, and that there is no handwriting recognition, but a keyboard displayed there.