[NTLK] I?m torn...

[Noah Leon]

> On Mar 20, 2019, at 12:00 PM, newtontalk-request at newtontalk.net wrote:
> 
>  I just wish Apple would
> allow the Newton OS to live on iPad!  That works be the perfect world!

I have been using an iPad for my business for years now. I use it to present to my clients, sign contracts, take notes, and work on documents. When they added the Pencil a couple years ago, I was super-excited, thinking it might be like my Newt. It wasn’t at first, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the pencil. But now that there are apps like Nebo and Procreate, and the OS makes nods towards being pencil-friendly, it really feels like I am doing some stuff on it which I could previously only do on my Newton. The rest of the interface is very distracting because of emails, social media and all kinds of notifications, but if you can turn those off and exercise a little self-control it’s a pretty good experience.

I still think the Newton UI is a much better concept than a grid of apps, but with a little imagination and willful blindness the iPad really works pretty well, and it can’t be beat as a graphics tablet. 

When I talked to Steve Capps for the documentary, he said they tried very hard to avoid a grid of apps and instead to make the Newton a really organic experience. They wanted it to be as easy to use as a piece of paper. I think that UI is not for everyone, but the people who do like it like it A LOT. I wish the iPad would be more like that.

However I think that there’s no shame in getting an iPad and using it for some of the things you would use a Newton for, if anything it encourages Apple to head further in that direction. They are still different enough that they can coexist on my desk, and I still get a thrill just from using my beat-up MP2000. 

In a perfect world, we would convince Apple to give up the rights to Newton OS and someone could finish the work started by Paul Guyot in the Einstein [Newton] emulator, making a Newton layer that would work with the underlying OS. Maybe one day a complete Newton OS for modern devices. 

Then again, would that be Newton? 

Now that I read this over, it’s a bit of a ramble. Sorry!