G'day,

After reading this:

News, News and More News - Thursday May 15

regarding the "cat out of bag" comment possibly alluding to an "iTablet"... I was thinking on my long ride on the train home the other day... How would Newton software go running on modern processors?

The MP2100 had a processor speed of 162 MHz... Well, that old old handwriting software's main drawback in my opinion was just that it was so slow. You'd write a line, and then almost have to wait for it to convert it before proceeding - if for no other reason than having more room to keep writing. (slight exaggeration).

But what if you could take the software... find a modern processor, plus a touch sensative input device, and try it out... How would it fare then?

Maybe it was just that LONG train ride... Seemed like the type of crazy-ass idea that someone on here would jump at trying... (Surely not as bad as running OS X on, what was it? A Mac IIfx?)

Here's hoping there is an iTablet coming, and that Steve gives credit where due regarding its ancestry...


cheers

cosmic

Newton's handwriting technology was included in the early versions of OSX under the banner of "inkwell" - I assume it's still there. Anyone??

The more interesting part of the Newton software was the intelligent handing of notes - ie write in have lunch with Peter and the Newton looked in your contacts for a Peter (or the one you had lunch with most), looked at what time you normally took lunch (or guessed for you) and placed an entry in your calendar waiting for you to confirm.

Now all we need is for that to work with speech to text and we would have our Apple Knowledge Navigator!

That was the nice thing about the Newton OS - it was written specifically to assist you in taking and managing notes, instead of trying to be a desktop computer.

I hope we get to see a Newton 2 (or is that 3?) some day.....

Regards,

JMD

Looks like you own every Mac I do... kinda freaky

(Not that I own that many, compared to yourself! )

I didn't know the Newton could handle things that intuitively! Guess I never really had any important meetings to keep track of... Still don't.

That Navigator, which I'd not heard of til the other day when I saw (your?) post about it, looks like it would have been a grand idea at the time... though I think today we just don't look at computers the same way...

I think we (finally) realised that George Jetson was in fact just a cartoon, for a start.

Steve won't mention the Newton at all, as it was the brainchild of John Scully. Scully and the board at the time ousted Steve from Apple.

The Newton's real power was the fact that the OS was essentially a database. The "soups" contained data such as names, which were available to other programs in the OS. OS X has this to some degree, but it was seamless on the Newton. The MoreInfo program on the Newton excelled with these features, to the point that this program would have been the next logical step if the Newton had continued.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't Steve hate stylus'? I used to have a Nokia N800, and 95% of the time I used my finger rather than digging out the stylus. On the Newton it was logical to use a Stylus that was the size of a pen, but the piddly stylus on the Nokia N800 and most Palm's makes writing painful. I hope he continues on with the touchscreen keyboard.

I've got to admit that I have also grown to hate the stylus. I'm currently using an iMate (Win CE device) and while it does what I need, trying to navigate around it while walking, parked in traffic etc. is a real pain.

I can't wait for the iPhone to be released here - I'll be switching as soon as I know the new model has no serious bugs.

As for a new tablet Mac/Newton, I would like to see it able to do both finger and stylus work. Clearly using a stylus for on screen graphic editing etc. would be wonderful, but for navigation and manipulation the finger(s) is(are) probably now the go.

It is disappointing that voice recognition hasn't come as far - my ideal device would be similar to Newton in terms of command/note management but based on voice input (like the Knowledge Navigator concept).

Regards,

JMD

I was calling Suncorp yesterday, and wondered just how their (and others) phone system dealt with voice recognition... I guess it's a lot easier when you give the user only a limited range of responses.

I don't get why voice recog died... I really expected it to take off after sitting in that conference room at AppleCentre Darwin in 1993, seeing an upgraded Quadra 800(?) handling voice recognition...

Maybe we're idiots for thinking that voice or hand control over computers is an expedient and practical approach at all... :}

I think voice recognition failed because people feel goofy talking to a computer.

Why did OSX lose voice passwords? :P btw i agree on stylus... i lost mine for my o2 after having it for a week :P

Talking to a trained computer is easy. I have a quadriplegic friend who manages to do it all day with no problems.

Getting a computer to recognise a random voice in another thing entirely...plus people enunciate differently if at all and mash allthewordstogetherintoonelongword which makes it hard for a computer to separate.

It's the hit-and-miss aspect of generic voice recognition that killed it for the mainstream. Software like Dragon Naturally Speaking is still popular though for people that either can't type for one reason or another or need to type a lot (like researchers writing up papers and whatnot)....so it's far from dead....just in a niche .