SlashGear Japan
Do you remember that little PDA that might have been attractive back in the day, but now would be considered sin’s uglier cousin? Well it appears with the advent of the iPhone and iPod Touch, and their successes, Apple is considering having another go at the whole PDA thing.
In 2004 Steve hinted at a PDA project that Apple had scrapped just before it went to market. Now there have been reports of two teams working at infinite loop, with the two goals occasionally coming to an intersection. Those two teams would the the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch team and the Apple PDA team.
Apparently the PDA is about 1.5 times the size of the iPhone, and I don’t think they were referring to depth, and it even has the entire front surface covered in a larger, higher resolution, multi-touch touchscreen. Really it just looks like a much bigger iPod Touch. Obviously it would have more functionality, and apparently they are even working on more functions for the touchscreen including drag and drop and copy and paste. Word on the street is we could see it some time in the first half of next year, maybe even as soon as MacWorld.
Up next for Apple: the return of the Newton [via appleinsider]
5 Responses to “Rumor: Apple Newton making a comeback?”
Eric September 26, 2007
James,
I think Apple should be up to something bigger, as I wrote in my blog.
But the quick and dirty is that ideally wouldn’t they be trying to concentrate on developing something for their computer hardware (iMac/MacBook touch)
What could the Newton do to justify taking up more “pocket space” that the iPhone/Touch couldn’t? would a bigger screen make that much of a difference? I really think that a new Newton would suffer the same fate as the old.
+1technabob September 26, 2007
Maybe the new model will have cut-and-paste and the ability to print like the original Newton. Now that would be a breakthrough!
Here’s a mockup of the iNewton BTW:
Neutralhttp://www.technabob.com/images/inewton.jpg
Ewdison Then September 26, 2007
[quote comment="29249"]Maybe the new model will have cut-and-paste and the ability to print like the original Newton. Now that would be a breakthrough!
Here’s a mockup of the iNewton BTW:
http://www.technabob.com/images/inewton.jpg/quote
Lol, that is a funny mockup. Yeah i was hoping apple adds copy-paste on iPhone :(
NeutralWayne September 26, 2007
I had a Newton back in the day. It offered a mix of portability and functionality that I have not been able to duplicate since. The Newton served as my computer while I was away from the office. I could even send and receive faxes and the drawing function was slick.
NeutralThe world has moved on since then and I use my laptop when I’m traveling. It’s just that lugging it around gets old after the first 10 minutes. I could use something larger than a phone, but MUCH smaller than a laptop. There’s room in Apple’s product line-up for a product like this, expecially if they are leveraging R&D from previous devices.
James Allan Brady September 26, 2007
the newton could be a great addition to Apple’s hardware line. and what would make it worth it would the the extension of more of their desktop based apps onto the Newton, for example, iLife, iWork, those kinds of things. plus apple is smart enough to know that if they want to sell a device like that, they are going to have give it extraordinary features, i dont know what those features would be, but thats probably part of the reason i dont work for Apple
Neutral