Apple Inc, which helped spawn the PDA market with its Newton MessagePad line in the early ’90s, plans to give the concept another go with a modern day reincarnation of the old fan favorite based on the company’s new mutli-touch technology.
It appears that Jobs and Co. never gave up hope, and instead returned to the drawing board. For the past 18 months, well-respected sources tell AppleInsider, a small team of Apple engineers have been at it again, this time tapping the company’s revolutionary multi-touch technology as a foundation.
Externally, the mutil-touch PDA has been described by sources as an ultra-thin “slate” akin to the iPhone, about 1.5 times the size and sporting an approximate 720×480 high-resolution display that comprises almost the entire surface of the unit. The device is further believed to leverage multi-touch concepts which have yet to gain widespread adoption in Apple’s existing multi-touch products — the iPhone and iPod touch — like drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste.
Makes sense – if the UPC market actually exists beyond folks switching from PDA’s.
1995 was famous for one huge breaktrhough in software developement, that changed the world; Newton OS 2.0. Apple got an award to prove it too. I had (have) the Newt 130 that looks like a dog chewed on it, it just got a lot of use on construction sites (installing A/V equipment). I still use the Newt 2100 mainly because it records speech that can later be transcribed to Chinese and faxed over.
The new iNewt would be awsome but it probably wont be a PDA
but more like iBook= big enough screen to read e-books on it that could be purchased from iTunes. (Now the naming plot is exposed too, all the flat portable products are named with i and the computers are Macs. Can’t chance the iMac though, which is a mix of both).
Then there would be the small MacBook Mini with pen input. Ah, who knows where the Leopard is taking us…
#21 where were you when the Newton came out? mac needed you then. You don’t deserve any new mac things. You’re banned for life and now that your e-mails are on record, they’ve been sent to mac and added to the blacklist.
No mac for you!
#23,
Notice the silence in the web today following the bricking of hacked iPhones?
#23,,, I was working for Apple… I have Mac’s all over the place. I still want one. I’m so hacked off that the iPod Touch has had the mail program and all of the internet goodies removed. WTF? I already have a phone (and it’s with Cingular) I don’t want an iPhone.
As I remember back, I think I couldn;t afford a Newton at the time.
If it has the following, I’ll jump on it:
1: At least 40GB of space
2: Full iPod functionality
3: Wifi access
4: Fix the recess problem the headphone jack on the iPhone has
I’d easily rather pull this out to surf the net than drain down my batteries and patience on my laptop.
#24 did it happen already?
#21
“Imagine a Mac in your pocket with handwriting & voice recognition that really works”
It’s called a Nintendo DS.
They did it!!! they bricked the oy!Phones, AAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wow, pedro is right. They did brick the hacked iPhones. One ZDNet article I just read said that it can affect both locked and unlocked iPhones.
Amazing. I expect this type of thing from MS but not so much Apple. I guess their contract with AT&T was in jeopardy.
Lame. The puppetmasters are at work.
from the article -
“More broadly characterized as Apple’s answer to the ultra-mobile PC, ”
an answer to a question nobody asked. I call BS, as have many others.
#30. they are bricked only if you run the firmware update. And yes, I have no doubt that there is a provision in Apple’s contract with AT&T that requires Apple to battle iPhone unlocking.