What is a Newton?

Some people might stumble across web page related to Newton PDAs and have no idea what a Newton PDA is. This page will give a little bit of information on the Newton platform.

"Newton" is what most users affectionately refer to their Newton PDA as.

"PDA" stands for Personal Digital Assistant. The term was coined by John Sculley when he was the president of Apple Computers.

What is a Newton? Here are few people's definitions...

by Andrea Scozzaro
(first place winner in "Describe Newton Contest")
Newton is a personal digital assistant:
PERSONAL ASSISTANT: it follows you wherever you go (or wherever you carry it), it's like having a person always beside you, that helps you do all those things a secretary would do.
BUT, it's better than a real person: if you're traveling by plane, you don't have to buy two tickets; if you're in your car, it doesn't eat crumbling donuts on your seat and it doesn't ask you to stop to go to the toilet; you can be sure that it won't kill you with an onion-garlic flavored breath; besides, it doesn't sweat in summer, and doesn't get colds in winter; in your office, it doesn't use the phone for private calls and you can be sure to find it whenever you need it without having to call it at home and wait for it at work. Personal also means that it's your OWN assistant, it is just yours and nobody else's: you use it, you decide what to do with it and it won't leave you for another person! In addition, if you're married, your wife will be much happier, knowing that your secretary is a high-tech, purely artificial, electronic device, and that she doesn't risk anything!
DIGITAL: digital compact discs brought high-quality pure music to your ears; digital video discs brought high-definition images and videos to your eyes; digital connections brought high-speed communication to your computer and cheaper local and transoceanic phone-calls; digital microwave ovens know when your chicken is ready and cook it just as you like it; digital assistants never make you miss an appointment, they never forget a telephone number or address, they file every information you input and they keep everything in order so that you can find what you want when you want it. Unlike paper-based organizers, you don't have to buy new pages at the end of the year, or when your address-book is full, and you can put 10, 100, 1000 times more data in a digital organizer, even smaller than a paper one.
NEWTON is all this.
- It stores a huge amount of data: you can store thousands of names with addresses, cities, states, countries, different phone numbers, e-mail address and every kind of notes you want to remember.
- It reminds you of appointments and meetings, with the help of a well organized calendar, and takes note of everything you need to do in a specific "to-do" list.
- It stores and files all the notes you write on it, whatever you want: texts, drawings, schemes, "ink-texts" (what you write is what you get), and helps you find them when you need them.
- It has communication capabilities, you can send and receive faxes with a small wire-less modem, you can send and receive e-mail by your own service provider, you can receive pager messages even when your Newton is off , you can exchange data with other Newtons via infrared signals.
- It has built-in applications like a calculator, a time-table, a calendar, metric conversions, currency exchange etc. But what is very important is that you can add applications (freeware or shareware) downloading them from the Internet (you can find utilities, games, communication, financial and mathematics applications, and much more), or you can buy applications on PCMCIA (and also on floppy discs that you load on your computer and then transfer to the Newton). Also a wide range of Newton books is available (already existent or brand-new books transposed in a special Newton format so that you can carry and read them where you want), and you can create them with simple freeware Mac and PC programs.
- One of the main features is its handwriting recognition capability that transforms everything you write on the screen with the included pen in typed characters; if you like, you can write messages and leave them as they are and make drawings or schemes (the Newton will make your lines straight and your circles round!). You can also use three different on-screen keyboards for inserting data
- Another important thing is that the Newton is fully expandable: you can add storage capacity by using PCMCIA flashRAM card (even more than 4 megs); you can use a modem to communicate by fax or e-mail; you can use a pager receiver to add this function; you can use a connection kit to backup your data on a Mac or PC, and to transfer software applications to the Newton; a printer pack is also available to print data using your Apple-compatible printer; GPS receiver can be connected to the Newton; and many other devices will be available soon.
NEWTON: THE ANSWER
by Masen Yaffee
The Newton is a small hand-held device about the size of a paperback book which represents a totally new way of computing! Using a small stylus-pen, you can write on it (it can read handwriting and turn it into editable text), draw on it (it can turn crooked lines into straight ones) and tap buttons to activate programs.
Masen Yaffee With the built-in applications, you can keep track of contact information (such as names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.), keep a calendar of appointments (it can beep at you to remind you of appointments), make to-do lists, outlines and keep general notes.
When you need to send or receive information from the Newton, you can hook it up to a Mac or PC, connect it to virtually any type of printer, fax, email or even BEAM information via its built-in infrared port!
It's not limited to the built in applications, however. There are tons of incredibly useful programs which can be added such as PocketMoney, a personal finance program, Fodor's Guide to Cities, an excellent travel reference, and even a GPS card which can communicate with satellites to tell you your exact location on the planet! These are only a few of the thousands of applications, utilites, books and games that are available for the Newton.
This little device is so useful and fun that many people report that they don't know how they got along without it!
by Tyge Legier
Description Of A Newton
Before the existence of PC's, computers were centralized. Typically there was one computer (very expensive) with many access ports. These machines were called mainframes. Because of their price and size, they were fundamentally used for large business and governmental applications. These machines were built in a world in which the organization had one computer only, and therefore that one machine had to perform all of the computer applications for that organization. This was so obvious that at the time no one even thought about it.
Then with the advent of PC's, the stranglehold of centralization was broken. Thus started a movement away from the "one machine does it all" philosophy, and a previously unimaginable flourishing of high quality new applications sprang fourth.
Highly efficient word processing programs, for example, became the fundamental use for PC's. Graphical word processing of this sophistication had not existed on mainframes. And of course numerous other applications were also transferred or invented.
The mainframes were left mostly as transaction processors; i.e., a device that could easily keep track of three hundred thousand customers (say for an electric utility). Hence, the two types of machines started a march down separate paths, filling needs the other could not.
But over the last ten years, within their own world, PC's began to model their predecessor's behavior. There was much talk of creating LAN's connecting all of the PC's together. There was much talk of moving to one, and only one, operating system (i.e., Windows95); that all PC's should be the same. PC's began to be marketed as "one platform to do it all" for the home user.
Yet if history meant anything, with the continual advancement of technology is a movement away from centralization, and towards distributed processing; a world in which small processors perform specialized functions, and then are able to share much of their data on a network of common protocol.
One such device is the Newton. A sophisticated low cost handheld computer created for use by one user only. This computer is a general aid to that single individual. It performs the functions of an extremely smart dayplanner, address book, note keeper, emailer, fax machine, and much more. Because of its size and accessibility, it is able to do this far more conveniently than the best of laptops.
The Newton is another step in the march towards diversity in common technological society.
grant hamilton
Newton is an electronic swiss army knife. everything that the newton does can be done better by something else. but the newton fits in my pocket.
Scott Lewallen
Simple... the Newton is like having a second brain attached to the end of your arm.

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(last modified : June 24, 1996)