Before the iPhone there was…

[Emily Young]

The iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry and put one in nearly everyone’s pocket. But the iPhone didn’t appear from nowhere - it owes much of its inspiration to the ill-fated Apple Newton.

 

 

[dilpickle]

A remnant of the Newton still exists in MacOS. The smoke puff animation when you remove an item from the dock was from the Newton.

 

(actually looks like they removed that recently but its supposedly still there in other areas)

[Guest]

I remember what  Windows Mobile was before the iPhone. Capacitive screens where the real point on the iPhone but it was when hackers starting developing for it using the raw power that was jailed by Apple when the real change was developing. In the end, it took Apple too much time to develop a complete product and Google prepared his own answer to it. Without Android, iPhone would be something very far from what we have know.

[Gat Pelsinger]

I still just refuse to believe that machine had a meg of ram. As far as I hate about modern computing and operating systems for taking way too many resources for lacking deep optimizations for modularity and ease of development, but they do this because modern hardware is getting better, and that is not how you take the advantage of more computation capabilities. But I am not the one making rules. BUT STILL, I had my mouth open the whole video when I saw the newton had so many capabilities, so many features, even recognizing your handwriting! You can technically say that they even implemented the basics of AI, ON A MEGABYTE OF RAM! And also, on such a weak and old processor (ok I take it back, it did run at 233 MHz and had 2.1m transistors which was actually really good at that time I think). I still just cannot believe how you can fit all of this level of computation on a meg of memory and also 4 mb of storage. It's absolutely mind blowing to me. Man, the 90s was the time when computer software just worked so well, but today, all people do is grab their Unreal Engine, put some high quality shaders and pre-made textures. Make a game in an hour, and publish a stuttery mess of game, and then try to add sneaky shortcuts like DLSS.

[AdiCarter]

I ran a 2100 and used it to take all my notes when I went back to Uni. To this day it remains one of my favourite pieces of technology. The hand writing recognition was often laughed at but if you gave it enough time then it did become adept at deciphering even some pretty bad scrawl. I could speed write and it would translate with accuracy most of the time. The synch software was pretty clunky but it did work and while it was never a mainstream product, I still love the idea. The community was devoted and supported it for a good while after it got the can. I don't know what the state of play is with them now though. I've still got a 2100 although it has succumbed to "jaggies" which was a kind of commonplace screen failure that used to knock them out. Its in a drawer though with all its PCMCIA cards etc. I had an eMate which I picked up for next to nothing but that was more of a curiosity. The build quality on that thing was incredible. 

 

Just a note on the RAM and I think I am remembering this correctly but apologies if I'm in error.  I think the 2000 had 1 MB but the 2100 had 4MB and if you were a 2000 user you could send your device back to Apple and they would perform an internal upgrade for you which would bring the machine up to spec. They would also do a ROM upgrade on the OS as well. 

[Middcore]

Obligatory:

 

 

[idmb]

Aww you didn't mention the old Airport Express also has an optical audio output in that 3.5mm jack and way predates Airplay!  AirTunes etc was really neat. 

[RunnerUp]

Newton was ahead of its time. Sure it is easy to look at it today and mock the sluggish behavior or the tedious steps to do things. But at the time, that was a revolutionary device. Unfortunately the price of it made it tough for it to gain much momentum.

[Needfuldoer]

How about the eMate 300, the netbook-ish Newton derivative?

 

 

[Uttamattamakin]

I say this as an avid user of pen enabled computers and handwriting rec since the late 00's.  Cursive recognition should have never been the point.  The selling point should have been that you could input your cursive into a computer into documents where it matters.  Market Newton as Blackberry was, an on the go email device, that could at least edit spreadsheets and documents, that allows you to sign your signature on a document.  That was the place for it.  

IMHO Apple is still missing the boat by not admitting that the foldable, pen enabled, android device is a superior super portable computing solution to the iPhone and i Pad.  But then what fundamentally new ideas have they had since Jobs died?  

 

Great to see Emily in a video again.

[Needfuldoer]

27 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Market Newton as Blackberry was, an on the go email device, that could at least edit spreadsheets and documents, that allows you to sign your signature on a document.  That was the place for it.  

Remember this was the mid-90s. There was no wireless networking, you had to sync it to a Mac with a serial cable. I don't remember if these could even do LocalTalk on their own.

[maplepants]

The Newton was extremely cool, and also not a great product.

[Uttamattamakin]

1 hour ago, Needfuldoer said:

Remember this was the mid-90s. There was no wireless networking, you had to sync it to a Mac with a serial cable. I don't remember if these could even do LocalTalk on their own.

I could swear there was a not very fast, but extant cellular data service in the 90's. Yeah there was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_digital_packet_data  It worked at a blazing fast 19.2 kbps.  Which to be fair was about the speed of an average modem.  It would've been for ballers in business and likely only worked in built up areas in and around major cities.  

It makes sense that such things existed since at the time Windows Mobile devices existed and PDA's existed and laptops that had access to mobile data existed.  They were just very expensive.  

Like you had to be these guys. 

Things like that existed in the 80's.  They were expensive and had a market for those in business.  Kinda like how right now we use GPU"s that make a Silicon Graphics workstation look like a calculator.  

[Needfuldoer]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It makes sense that such things existed since at the time Windows Mobile devices existed and PDA's existed and laptops that had access to mobile data existed.  They were just very expensive.  

Very, very expensive. I only remember seeing a few references to cellular modems in MacAddict articles about the PowerBook 3400c, one of the fastest and most expensive laptops on the market at the time.

 

Commoners had to sync their Palm Pilots, Handspring Visors, and assorted Windows CE palmtops to their desktops until WiFi was finally affordable around 1999.

[alexanderpas]

A minor error in this video.

 

According to modern standards, A MegaByte is actually stands for 1000 KiloByte, and a KiloByte actually stands for 1000 Byte.

 

The correct way of referring to multiples of 1024 would be kibibyte (KiB) and mebibyte (MiB).

 

An example of problems this has caused:

 

A "1.44 MB floppy" did not contain 1.44MB or 1.44 MiB of data.

 

It actually contained 1440 KiB, meaning both 1000 and 1024 got mixed together.

 

The actual amount on a floppy would be 1474560 bytes, which is equivalent to 1.47MB, or 1.40MiB

 

This matters, since the error becomes bigger and bigger as the magnitude increases.

 

• The difference between KiB and KB is 2.34%
• The difference between MiB and MB is 4.63%
• The difference between GiB and GB is 6.87%
• The difference between TiB and TB is 9.05%
• The difference between PiB and PB is 11.1%

 

More info:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#History_of_the_conflicting_definitions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Modern_standard_definitions

 

The reason I'm calling it out here is because you actually talked about the actual numbers. (1000 vs. 1024)

 

Linus even made a video about it 10 year ago.

 

 

[NullPointerError]

You can clean sticky plastic with baking soda and water, just prepare to sacrifice a few towels during the process.

 

BY THE WAY, for the Kane's adapter, remember not to auction it / sell it this time.

[Gokul_P]

Iam pretty sure linus was dying over and over again in game thats why it is resetting. Its still amazing how 1mb of ram could do machine learning. and iam pretty sure no one from that time will belive slapping Ai in product name and selling it 1000% markup would be profitable  

[Internet Username]

I started to watch todays video and when it showed the Psion Series 3 my heart stopped. I remember as a kid (born 1991) my dad having one  and oh boy did the memories come rushing back. 

 

I paused the video and went sprinting to the attic to find my dads things, He passed 13 years ago last week and man am I going to enjoy messing around with this thing again.

 

Thanks LTT for finding those lost memories.

 

 

[mMontana]

Apple Message Pad.

Or better.

Apple, meet ARM.

 

Apple liked it.

[RunnerUp]

9 hours ago, alexanderpas said:

The reason I'm calling it out here is because I'm watching videos now just to find any possible small error and mention it

Fixed that one for you.

[GodAtum]

Very surprised it didnt come with persistent flash. I wonder if Andy has an old man's PDA himself lol, maybe one of those Windows CE ones 

[djksm]

woah i found my dads old newton in a very old moving box. cannot charge it tho

[coius]

That's not ADB, that's a LocalTalk port.  Apple's DB-9 Serial connector.  ADB/Keyboard was a 4-pin S-Video style connector.  You need to correct that in the video. They are not compatible. I have a Newton MP 2100, with WiFi, and I grew up with Apple computers (Classics, LCs, II's, G3s, Performas, Quadras, Power Macintoshes, PowerBook xxx series, PowerBook Duos, etc... Even overclocked my Lombard/Pismo back in the day)

 

EDIT: Let me know if you want to know some super cool stuff you can do with it. Look up "Egg freckles" easter egg for one, second, you can use it as a mouse, using a special program between Classic OS (System 7.5 or 7.6) using Localtalk, where the stylus will move the cursor like a graphing tab. There is also a web server software out there, and someone did I think get a CF-Flash adapter working that allowed up t 16MB CF-Flash cards via PCMCIA slots to be used.  They did make rechargeable battery packs, and my newton would last about 2 weeks on a charge.  The AA battery holder was basically to swap in your own, but they make rechargeable battery backs which had AA NiMH built-in and you charged with power adapter on newton, or external charger.  Lastly, you can use it to dial calls by using it's speaker and the phonebook. Helpful on payphones or while out. I think my brother had a voicemail setup on his where it could answer with a small audio file to take voice messages. With Fax/Modem card, you could also send/receive simple faxes, as well as I think there was a Ethernet card out there. Might be Farallon.  If you wnat to use LocalTalk for network, Apple had a serial TCP/IP sharing software for 7.6 and below that could share ethernet to LocalTalk, which LocalTalk networks could allow multiple computers to connect via TCP/IP via that serial cable.

Edited September 5, 2023 by coius
Correction and updates.

[SansVarnic]

-= Cleaned =-

Please keep comments on topic.

[Bunjiman]

On 9/5/2023 at 2:59 AM, Emily Young said:

The iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry and put one in nearly everyone’s pocket. But the iPhone didn’t appear from nowhere - it owes much of its inspiration to the ill-fated Apple Newton.

 

 

@Needfuldoer i have a couple of eMate 300s. I used one in my first year of university to take lecture notes.

@Emily Young If you ever want to have a play the other last Newton that had a landscape display and an OK keyboard for the size and time then hit me up if you'd like them.