The Apple Newton MessagePad - Old-School Apple Innovation

by Peter Redmer March 30, 2008 03:15 PM

I absolutely LOVE the Apple Newton. As a PDA, it's basically completely useless. It's impossible to type or store anything of any value easily or quickly. The handwriting recognition is a train wreck. The screen is difficult to see. The battery life is atrocious. It's huge.

BUT IT'S SO COOL!

It just begs to be played with, and was really light years ahead of its time (in my opinion.) It was quite a technical accomplishment for 1991. I was lucky enough to get my hands on one about 13 years ago, at a radio show with my father. It was $100, a lot of money for me to spend at the time, but totally worth it.

Check out the pictures of the in-the-box goodies, and relive the experience of the original Newton MessagePad... and see a hidden treasure I didn't even knew was in the box...

Discussion:

pardizzone on April 3, 2008 7:25 PM

Wow... I actually have one of these puppies too. I used to use it at an old job to track service calls and do expense reports. I sent it to Apple to have it upgraded to the latest release of the logic board (improved handwriting recognition). This is one of the best products that Apple ever made, especially for when it first came out.

Peter Redmer on April 3, 2008 7:59 PM

I agree. For the time, it was really an amazing product. It's cool to hear that you used it for work at one time. The problem I have is that for everyday productivity, it was difficult to use then and virtually impossible to use today.

Now, that being said... some particularly inventive folks have upgraded some of the later Newton models to browse the web and have wireless internet, among other things... now that would be cool!

Which model do you have - I'm curious now! If you have one of the later ones with the upgraded OS, those are a lot cooler. I always wanted to upgrade the OS in this one, but it was impossible (as far as I know).

pardizzone on April 3, 2008 8:55 PM

I had the original and sent it in to get the updated board which came with the newer OS (that was the only way to get the new OS and Apple did it for free at the time). They improved the handwriting recognition so that it actually worked. And I used to have a network card in it and could print my reports to a printer at work to turn them in. It was a personal one, not work supplied. Me and another tech (I was on the pc side, he was on the Mac side) had them and he was the one that got me to buy it. It was/is one of the coolest toys I ever had.