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Newton (platform)
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This article is about the Apple Newton platform. For the Apple MessagePad series of hardware devices, see MessagePad.

The Newton platform was an early personal digital assistant hardware/software platform developed by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.). Development was started in 1989 and officially ended on February 27, 1998. Some electronic engineering and the manufacture of Apple's Newton devices was done in Japan by the Sharp Corporation. Most Newton devices were based on the ARM 610 RISC processor and all featured handwriting recognition software. Most Newton devices were developed and marketed by Apple (this includes the whole MessagePad line and the eMate 300), however other companies, notably Sharp, Motorola, and Digital Ocean, also released their own devices that ran the Newton OS. None were as successful as Apple's devices.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Development
* 2 Product details
o 2.1 Application software
+ 2.1.1 Notes
+ 2.1.2 Names
+ 2.1.3 Dates
o 2.2 Operating system and programming environment
o 2.3 Data storage
o 2.4 Package installation, capacity planning, and disaster recovery
* 3 Newton technology after cancellation
o 3.1 Newton emulation
o 3.2 Future
* 4 References
* 5 External links
o 5.1 Newton technical documents for programmers

[edit] Development

The Newton project was not originally intended to produce a PDA platform. The PDA category did not exist for most of Newton's genesis, and the "personal digital assistant" term itself was coined relatively late in the development cycle by Apple's then-CEO John Sculley[1], the driving force behind the project. Newton was intended to be a complete reinvention of personal computing. For most of its design lifecycle Newton had a large-format screen, more internal memory, and an object-oriented graphics kernel. One of the original motivating use cases for the design was known as the "Architect Scenario", in which Newton's designers imagined a residential architect working quickly with a client to sketch, clean up, and interactively modify a simple two-dimensional home plan[citation needed].

For a portion of the Newton's development cycle (roughly the middle third), the project's intended programming language was Dylan though in fact the language and environment never matured enough for any applications to be successfully written[citation needed]. Dylan was a small, efficient object-oriented Lisp variant that still retains some interest[citation needed]. Although it was efficient (for its day, and considering its substantial run-time dynamism)[citation needed], Dylan never lived up to its developers' performance expectations and was a tough sell for a development team unaccustomed to Lisp programming[citation needed]. When the move was made to a smaller form factor (designed by Jonathan Ive), [2] [3] Dylan was relegated to experimental status in the "Bauhaus Project" and eventually canceled outright. Its replacement, NewtonScript, which had garbage collection, tight integration with the "soup" storage and user-interface toolkit, and was specifically designed to run in small RAM/large ROM environments. It was mostly developed by Walter Smith from 1992 to 1993.

The project missed its original goals to reinvent personal computing[citation needed], and then to rewrite contemporary application programming[citation needed]. The Newton project fell victim to project slippage, scope creep, and a growing fear that it would interfere with Macintosh sales. It was reinvented as a PDA platform which would be a complementary Macintosh peripheral instead of a stand-alone computer which might compete with the Macintosh.

[edit] Product details

[edit] Application software

Most Newton devices were pre-loaded with a variety of 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/2.x 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, as well as the inclusion of bundled 3rd party applications, such as the QuickFigure Works spreadsheet (a "lite" version of Pelicanware's QuickFigure Pro), Pocket Quicken, the NetHopper web browser, and the EnRoute email client. Various Newton applications had full import/export capabilities with popular desktop office suite and PIM (Personal Information Manager) application file formats, primarily by making use of Apple's bundled Newton Connection Utilities and also the Newton Connection Kit, which was sold separately and only worked for Newton devices that used the 1.x versions of the Newton OS.

[edit] Notes

The Notes application allowed users to create small documents that could contain text that had been typed, or that had been recognized from handwriting, as well as free-hand sketches, "Shapes", and "ink text".
Photograph of screen displaying Checklist, some bullet points checked and/or "collapsed"

In version 2.0 of the Newton OS, the Notes application (as well as Names) could accept what Apple termed "stationery", 3rd-party created plug-in modules that could extend the functionality of the basic applications.

One of the new types of Notes stationery added to Newton OS 2.0 was a hierarchical, bullet-ed, collapsible, multi-line "Checklist", an implementation of outliner software. This could be used for organizing thoughts, priorities, "to do" lists, planning steps and sub-tasks, etc. Each bullet point could contain as many lines of text as desired. A bullet point could be dragged and placed underneath another bullet point, thus forming a hierarchical outline/tree. When a bullet point was dragged, the entire sub-tree of child bullet points underneath it (if any) would be dragged along as well. If a bullet point had child bullet points, tapping the hollow parent bullet point once would "roll up" or collapse all the children ("windowshade" effect). The parent bullet point would become a solid black circle and all the children would disappear. Tapping the parent bullet point again would make the children re-appear. Because this functionality arrived in Newton OS 2.0, several third parties made similar software before for OS 1.x Newton machines, the most notable of which was Dyno Notepad, released in 1993.

[edit] Names

The Names application was used for storing contacts. Contacts created either on the Newton device or on a Windows or Macintosh desktop PIM could be synchronized to each other. [4] [5] Entering a date in Names for fields such as birthday or anniversary automatically created corresponding repeating events in the Dates application. Each contact had an attached free-form notes field available to it, that could contain any mix of interleaved text, ink text, Shapes, or Sketches. Like Notes, Names could be extended by developers, to create special new categories of contacts with specialized pre-defined fields. Names shipped with 3 types of contacts, "people", "companies", and "groups", but a developer could define new types, for instance "client", "patient", etc. Alone Software, Inc. also created a Newton software package called the Stationery Construction Kit, which allowed users to make stationery themselves without aid of any other tools.

[edit] Dates

Dates supplied calendar, events, meeting, and alarms functions, including an integrated "to do" list manager. It offered many different display and navigation styles, including a list view, graphical day "time blocking" view, or a week, month, or year grid. As with Names and Notes, Dates items created either on the Newton or on a Windows or Macintosh desktop PIM could be synchronized to each other.

[edit] Operating system and programming environment

The Newton OS consists of three layers. At the lowest level, a microkernel handles resources like tasks and memory. On top of the microkernel, the bulk of the operating system is implemented in C++, including the communications layer, handwriting recognition, and the NewtonScript environment. The top layer consists of built-in and user installed applications written in NewtonScript.

NewtonScript is an advanced object-oriented programming language, developed by Apple employee Walter Smith [6]. Some programmers complained at the $1000 cost of the Toolbox programming environment (although later, it was made available free of charge).[citation needed] Additionally, it required learning a new way of programming. Despite this, many third party and shareware applications are available for Newton.[citation needed]

The Newton Toolkit (NTK), an integrated environment tailored to the graphical nature of the Newton platform, was developed specifically for developing applications for the Newton platform and included a graphical view editor, a template browser, and an interactive inspector window for debugging. Initially, it was only available for [Macintosh] computers, and later a [Microsoft Windows] version was developed. The Technical Lead for the Newton Toolkit was Norberto Menendez; other engineers on the team were Ben Sharpe and Peter Potrebic.

[edit] Data storage

Data in Newton is stored in object-oriented databases known as soups. One of the innovative aspects of Newton is that soups are available to all programs; and programs can operate cross-soup; meaning that the calendar can refer to names in the address book; a note in the notepad can be converted to an appointment, and so forth; and the soups can be programmer-extended—a new address book enhancement can be built on the data from the existing address book. The soup system also made it easy to synchronize data, and the Newton Connection tools could be used for importing and exporting data. Among many file formats are the Rich Text Format, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Works, and many more.

Another consequence of the data-object soup is that objects can extend built-in applications such as the address book so seamlessly that Newton users can sometimes not distinguish which program or add-on object is responsible for the various features on their own system, because the advanced nature of Newton devices makes it easy to accept such add-ons. A user rebuilding their system after extended usage might find themselves unable to manually restore their system to the same functionality because some long-forgotten downloaded extension was missing. Data owned and used by applications and extensions themselves is tossed in the "Storage" area of the "Extras" drawer in 2.x Newton devices; on 1.x systems, they can only be found or removed in the Memory section of the built-in Prefs application, in the Card slip (also built-in), or with third-party tools such as NewtCase. There is no built-in distinction between types of data in that area. For example, an installed application's icon could be sitting right next to a database of addresses used by another installed extension further down the list.

Finally, the data soup concept works well for data like addresses, which benefit from being shared cross-functionally, but it works poorly for discrete data sets like files and documents. Later, the 2.0 release of the Newton OS introduced Virtual Binary Objects to alleviate the problem of handling large data objects.

[edit] Package installation, capacity planning, and disaster recovery

Several software utilities which accommodate data transfer to and from a host system exist for the following platforms:

* Mac OS
* Mac OS X
* Amiga OS
* UNIX
* Linux
* Microsoft Windows

See Apple Newton Software --> Backup for further details.

[edit] Newton technology after cancellation

Before the Newton project was canceled, it was "spun off" into an Apple wholly owned subsidiary company, Newton Inc., but was reabsorbed several months later when Steve Jobs ousted Apple CEO Gil Amelio and resumed control of Apple. Two ex-Apple Newton developers founded Pixo, the company that created the iPod's OS.

Speculation continued for several years that Apple might release a new PDA with some Newton technology or collaborate with Palm. Feeding a bit of speculation, Apple put the "Print Recognizer" part of the Newton 2.1 handwriting recognition system into Mac OS X version 10.2 (known as "Jaguar"). It can be used with graphics tablets to seamlessly input handwritten printed text anywhere there was an insertion point on the screen. This technology, known as "Inkwell", appears in the System Preferences whenever a tablet input device is plugged in. Whether Apple will ever extensively utilize such technology again in a handheld device remains to be seen. However, in the iPhone 2.0 software release, Apple has incorporated Chinese character recognition, when drawn with a finger. An Easter egg in Print Recognizer on the Newton (write "ROSETTA! ROSETTA! ROSETTA!", and the Newton will insert "ROSETTA! ROSETTA! Hey, that's me!" instead) was present in Inkwell in Mac OS 10.2 and 10.3, but seems to have been removed in 10.4. Larry Yaeger was the author of the original Rosetta recognizer on the Newton, and was also responsible for porting it to Mac OS X.[7] The Rosetta name was later used for Apple's PowerPC emulation layer for Intel-based Macs.

At an All Things Digital conference in 2004, Steve Jobs made reference to a new "Apple PDA" (likely kind of a successor to the Newton) which the company had developed but had decided not to bring to market.[8]

[edit] Newton emulation

Since 2004, the Einstein Project[9] has been working on emulating the Newton for use as an alternate OS on other platforms. It is currently available for the Sharp Zaurus, Apple's Mac OS X, Nokia 770 and N800, Microsoft Windows and the PepperPad 3. The emulator is an open source project, but requires an original Newton ROM to be installed in order to function.

[edit] Future

A possible Newton revival has been a common source of speculation among the Macintosh user base; when patents for a tablet based Macintosh were applied for [10], rumor sites jumped at the possibility of a new Tablet PC style Macintosh.

In an article posted by Tech Crunch in the final days of 2008, they stated that Apple is planning on releasing a large screen version of the iPod Touch with a screen 7 or 9 inches in size. They said a prototype of said device had been handled by one of their 3 independent sources and Apple is now talking to OEM's in Asia for the purpose of mass production. With the availability of the iTunes App store which features over 10,000 applications, Apple who has been experimenting for years with large form tablet devices believes now is the time to market such a device according to one source.

According to one source, Apple has been ordering netbook-class touchscreen panels. This is probably for the rumored iTablet or Macbook Touch. This is more likely for the iPhone revision that is rumored.[11]