Newton
From MobileRead
The Apple Newton, or simply Newton, was an early line of personal digital assistants developed and marketed by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) from 1993 to 1998. Some electronic engineering and the manufacture of the Newton was done in Japan by Sharp. The original Newtons were based on the ARM 610 RISC processor and featured handwriting recognition software. Apple's official name for the device was "MessagePad"; the term "Newton" was Apple's name for the operating system it used (Newton OS), but popular usage of the word Newton has grown to include the device and its software together.
Newton OS featured many interface elements that even the Macintosh OS didn't have at the time, such as drawers and the "poof" animation. These features were used in Mac OS X, along with Newton's Hand Writing Recognition (which is implemented as Inkwell in MacOS X).
The Newton had an eBook program called Newtonbook-reader that used files with a PKG extension. The Newton was pre-loaded with a variety of other software to aid in personal data organization and management. This included such applications as Notes, Names, and Dates, as well as a variety of productivity tools such as a calculator, conversion calculators (metric conversions, currency conversions, etc), time-zone maps, etc. In later versions of the Newton OS these applications were refined, and new ones were added, such as the Works word processor and the Newton Internet Enabler. Third party applications were also added.
[edit] Specifications
This list is based on the MessagePad 110 except where noted.
- Processor: ARM 610 (20 MHz), MP 2000 and later StrongARM SA-110 (162 MHz)
- Memory: 4MB ROM, 1-2.5 MB RAM. MP2000 and later 8MB ROM and 3-8 MB of RAM.
- backlight: on the 130 and later
- screen: 320 x 240 (B&W) MessagePAD 2000 and later increased resolution to 320 x 480 with 16 level grayscale
- I/O: RS422 & SHARP ASK Infrared, 1 PCMCIA-slot II
- power: 4 AA or NiCd rechargeable or external power supply
- size: 0.45kg, 20.32cm H x 10.16cm W x 3cm D
