On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 10:48:19PM -0500, SuerthP_at_andersonnews.com wrote:
>
> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2003/tc20030114_8995.htm
My response to the author:
By now, I'm sure you've already received no small number of
disagreements with your article "Why Palm Is Deleting Graffiti" (January
14, 2003). Graffiti, though available as add-on software for the Newton,
was never well-accepted by the Newton user community for the simple
reason that it didn't really need it. By the end of 1995, prior to the
release of the Palm, the Newton was on version 2.0 of its operating
system, with not only an improved script recognition based on the one
from Newton OS 1.x, but an additional printed writing recognition engine
developed in-house by Apple. The two engines work together to provide
very good level of recognition of normal handwriting. You can find an
excellent summary of both the drawbacks of Newton OS 1.x and the
improvements made in Newton OS 2.0 at
http://www.pencomputing.com/developer/newton_20.html .
Additionally, the claims of the demise of the Newton are greatly
exaggerated. Apple continued making them well into 1998, and the last of
the line (MessagePad 2100) featured hardware that (with the exception of
a color screen and technology that didn't exist at all in 1998) compares
as roughly equal to the Palm Tungsten T. Voice memos are in there, came
with wordprocessing and spreadsheet software compatable with what was
available on the contemporary desktop, both have ARM processors at about
150MHz (144 for Palm, 160 for Newton with an available upgrade to
220MHz), both support networking (Bluetooth on Palm, ethernet on Newton,
and the Newton now supports 802.11b wireless also), and with about equal
battery life. The major differences are a color screen on the Palm, that
the Newton is slightly larger than an average paperback book
(pocket-sized only if you have very large pockets) and the Newton has
had this for *four years* already. The Newton is still actively being
developed for and supported by the user community, with improvements
like the 802.11b support mentioned before and support for ATA interfaced
PCMCIA cards, new software to enable synching Newtons with Apple's new
iCal calendaring software. It's continually finding new users too:
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,54690,00.html .
--
2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
--Peter Anspach's list of things to do as an Evil Overlord
--
This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries
List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html
Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sun Jan 26 2003 - 04:03:27 EST