this may have come before this I would
argue that the iPhone's true ancestor was actually this while the iPhone
eventually made everything that came before it look obsolete the Apple Newton
didn't quite catch on in the same way and when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in
1997 he immediately killed it but what
you might not realize this thing has way
more in common with your smartphone than you probably think all touch screen all
the time it runs on an rmsoc and it can
even access the internet in this video I'll be getting my first Hands-On with
one of Apple's biggest Titanics and
we'll be seeing how much of its DNA we can recognize in its far future
successor we're also going to see who sponsored this video build Redux they
build fully customizable gaming PCs suitable for any budget yes even off the
beaten path budget pick your favorite games and see how they perform I'm using
their online pc Builder head to link below and create your new rig today if
you've heard of the Apple Newton chances are you are at least as old as I am very
geeky an Apple fan or most likely some
combination of the three it's one of the first pdas or personal digital
assistants ever and possibly even the First with a stylus it's also the one to
coin the term PDA Newton was a weird product it was one of those ones that
launched in the era when Steve Jobs was in Exile at next computer and the idea
was kind of actually pretty smart to take a powerful but efficient ARM SOC
put it in a small aesthetically pleasing package okay
parts arguable and then use it to make a sort of digital notepad address book and
planner all-in-one compact little box why not a mobile phone you ask these
things take time and text messaging didn't even exist yet if you look at the
original Newton message pad though it does kind of look an awful lot like the
iPhone later did doesn't it it's all screen it's driven by touch input and
it's got that bar shape that we're all familiar with today this message pad
you're looking at right here is among the last that Apple released in 1997 and
while the screen is off right now it
does actually work I just don't know how
to turn it on because this is my first time ever touching it but I'm assuming it's the slider right oh ah okay it was
actually that easy wow that screen is not very bright it is not backlit there
is a light though if you hold down the slider in the glow no way
of it I mean it's not going to do anything for the glare I think I have the solution to that do we have any of
those little rubber pucks get poked and
I can almost read it all the viewing angles aren't that bad that's actually
true what display technology is this
this is actually an LCD it is 16 color grayscale 480 by 320. ha that is really
good for the time yeah it was really expensive for the time A lot of it was
Advanced for the time it used a strong ARM 110 processor it had one megabyte of
RAM and a whopping four megabytes of flash RAM with battery backing that's
right friends we didn't have persistent storage at least affordably for
consumers back then so if your battery died and then your other more different
secondary battery died your PDA would completely wipe yeah so don't open the
battery Bay unless we have it plugged into the wall unfortunately that's just
how it goes the internal battery if there ever was one I'm not sure is dead
so it says four Double A's in a carrier
yes that's how this was powered hilarious I won't be opening this door
then but we can look at the rest of the i o we've got not one but two PC mcia
slots you can see we populated one of them with eight megabytes of flash
storage we've got a second one that will be using for a Wi-Fi card we did find an
old enough wireless router that we could connect this thing to it got a speaker
on the front infrared love that got a transfer some files over the uh over the
air and of course Apple's got a proprietary serial port a dcn jack wow
so you plug it in at the top integrated style of storage though that's nice to
see it's so funny to me how Apple was the first with a stylus and now they
hate the idea of them so much that they
won't even call their stylus a stylus it's a pencil you want to see something
really cool okay there's a hub there's a hole is
that to hold that oh shut up that's to hold my stylus while it's sitting on my
desk like this yes that is absolutely
hilarious it's actually pretty useful if
you're using it on the desk like when I was using it to try and set it up for
this shoot instead of having it rolling around on my desk I just put in that and
it's fine brilliant yeah it has a mic in it does have a mic yes you can make
voice recordings and in fact with a modem you could make calls but you'd
need a pcmcia modem and you'd need to be plugged into the wall well yes you would
oh my gosh the cruise card by U.S robotics
that would have been actually a pretty good modem back in the day now that's a
name I've not heard in a very long time we won't be using this though we're
going to be using right we don't have anything to plug into that this Orinoco
Wi-Fi card 11 megabit 802.11 B let's go
it supports WEP 128 bit Lucent Waveland
IEEE as modern as some aspects of it are though I gotta say I'm glad that we've
moved on from these soft touch Coatings have we though they're still around
sometimes they do not last
I tried to clean it that's clean I've hit it with Windex it won't come off
it's just pushing around it's not a cleaning issue it's just that it just
turns into schmoo yeah it's actually reduced like reverting back into the the
sap from the rubber tree of course it's proprietary you need an adapter for this
if you want to use a peripheral or sync to a PC or Mac my script says it's
unobtaining but you appear to have one yes a viewer actually allowed us to loan
one we can't buy one to save our lives they're not on eBay they're not on
Facebook Marketplace they only existed for this generation in 1997 until they
were discontinued in 1997. the funny thing is it's not just cereal it was
originally meant to break out into multiple different protocols including
cereal but also audio out this kind of looks like looks like it would do PS2
close it would do Apple desktop bus so
the old keyboard standard that they had you can actually plug in a keyboard
to the Newton the older Newtons just had that they didn't have the the Newton
interconnect Port it's called that's a view button so basically it changes the
current view in this case it goes from the node itself to I think a list of
notes and that will show you the notes that have been saved up there if you
click on that oh that what a cute little clocks
keyboard oh now you're it sounds like a
delays you're using the on-screen keyboard but
there's another way to input text okay this I know but only because I've been
watching old Simpsons reruns lately actually last night I watched the
infamous episode where I think Jimbo tries to write something on the screen
of his Newton and then ends up hucking it at Martin because it works so poorly
so let's see let's see if it can recognize my writing Newton
um okay
truly kind of usable I'm speeding up a
little bit now oh okay we're starting to run into trouble
and it doesn't do cursive it does oh you have to switch the mode ah okay now if
you want to delete something you can just draw a almost like a w like a
zigzag just a sharp zigzag of at least four segments yeah so cute and if you
need to adjust one character you can just write over it it needs to be at
least four four times
oh yeah okay that worked I was just in a different text input mode I was in ink
text hello yeah that's sort of garbage I wrote
cursive and then it just takes an image of what you wrote and then it just
plunks it all next to each other so that way you could just write in the same spot and it'll
um if you okay so if you open up the um the text modes then hit the I I think
down at the bottom left are you saying this didn't catch on no it didn't count
I mean I don't know so then you can change it from yeah so you need to change the mode
directly to cursive hello
oh my goodness my cursive is terrible it's supposed to learn your writing over
the course of several weeks or months I will try this will try
um let's try two okay
do this
this would not be a Time Saver well yeah
there's a reason why on-screen keyboards took off how do I get to a home screen
or something that is the home screen so it's just a note thing what do you mean
by home screen you want like apps or something like that yeah are there apps
yeah if you go to extras oh extras
all sorts of stuff you can look at right there is the unfiled icons unfiled icons
is basically whatever you haven't categorized if you touch the tab title
you'll get a little pop-up menu
and you can see other things okay I mean it was inevitable wasn't it
yeah no way it is full of games why when
did Apple start hating Gamers well to be
fair they weren't pre-loaded I had to load them in myself they existed though
they did exist rocks in space that has to be asteroid that's kind of part of
the problem with all this software is that it is very old registering it is
not straightforward anymore so all of this is pretty much demos
I've noticed that some of them have decided that the trial is over after I
launched them once
the first time I've ever played it you hold to rotate and then hold the go
forward and then you can like hold the rotate this is terrible
well there's only so much you can do with a stylus I mean it's not like touch
screens would ever catch on right frogs versus cars who will win
dad oh man these are really really really
picky tiny controls
what the crap oh I've not played a lot of Frogger this is
not Frogger it is legally distinct from
Frogger it is frogs versus cars
yeah I don't think they get as far as taking on the cars I would like to make
a voice recording that's another very modern functionality that this thing had
so you would go um I think it might actually be in the
main Notes app there should be a way to change the stationary new you're
recording hey after our conversation at
the golf course I
yeah it sounds like poo poo yep cool that's like uh what is it like probably
uh eight kilohertz or 11 kilohertz something maybe yeah I definitely an 8
000 in pain right now so it could be eight kilohertz
you can doodle on it though you can if you go to the top right I think it
should be under unfiled or something like that wow you could fax it you could
beam it via IR yes wow you could beam it
to other Newtons with ir or to a printer to print it or I could just delete it or
you could delete it because that's under send for some reason that would never
cause a problem having the delete button right next to the copy button
hey lttstore.com let's go I had to get it in
there somehow yeah don't go to that address I don't know what
you can actually uh enable a drawing mode that does like vector shapes that
actually lets you adjust to the points of the vector shapes so if you can't get
it quite right with just the stylus which is a little fiddly it's not super
accurate all the time in every corner of the Newton oh yeah I see it yeah and you
can resize stuff in fact if you hold on anything just like touch and hold after
that okay so when it squeaks what that's doing is highlighting so anything you
highlight will be selected and this is system wide including text so with this selection
you can now move it scale it let's make
a stubby screwdriver oh the stubby that's more like the Precision
screwdriver well uh undo undo
I think the next thing for us to do is to connect this bad boy to the internet
no I think the next thing to do is to try the keyboard shut up we got the
keyboard yeah the same person who lent us this also lent us this no way I'm not
even you know a huge Apple history geek
or anything like that I didn't even really know about this thing other than
that I saw a picture of it a couple times this is pretty cool I'm a little
confused as to what exactly no way
no way this is what holds it up it has
the sharp side of a hook and loop Fastener and the soft side so it could
be any angle you want as long as it's
this angle it's the precursor to the magic keyboard and the folio
a second can you switch it to landscape mode you sure can it should be noted by
the way everything is done with the stylus I cannot use my fingers resistive
not capacitive you can use your fingernail but I wouldn't recommend it
it's not very good where are you going I don't auto dock no okay sorry if you go
to the uh just close out of that
it's like hurting a cat why would you hurt a cat s are nice I wouldn't hurt a
cat you said no I said heard like gnu herd
um I heard you right there on the bottom there is
rotate okay because that's a perfectly reasonable place for that rebuilding
display the button bar couldn't hold all
the icons the overflow will show an
unfiled icons the button bar is what you are using to interact with like the
extras and stuff yeah that's basically like the dock when you change
orientations there's more or less space for that I have a keyboard now which
means I can okay so I what how do I
uh okay no no let me figure it out let me figure it out I can do it it's Apple
it's uh it just works text
no no I'm gonna figure it out you have to power this thing on or what let the
record show that I tried to say something okay I don't know how to do it
I don't either oh uh either it doesn't work it doesn't
work with this Newton or there's something I'm missing I looked at the
manual I didn't really see anything about it I presume it's supposed to yeah
it's just sorry I presume that it's supposed to just work this is just more
velcro are you kidding me the 90s was
the velcro era I would like to internet now
this is how you will internet that power oh this is an airport one of
the early models it actually has a three and a half millimeter Jack at the bottom
so you can stream media over it it was kind of forward-thinking in that way but
it's old enough that it can actually associate with this card because this
card is too old to connect to our new access points even if I turned off
authentication it just will not connect not at home not here it has to be
something old card sort of that's where you would go to set
it up I've already done that oh okay actually there's a couple different
places you need to set up the internet on this thing it's it's a little it's
it's not meant for this it was never built for Wi-Fi but if you go to Apple
talk Connect using Lucent sure wow that's
that that's a list yeah again this is more setup okay where you want to go I
want to go to Doc
go to the tab yes yes internet
yes no way now try using Courier welcome
to the old internet okay oh that probably remembered the same page that I
had loaded up previously what you're going to want to do is maybe refresh the
page try that whoop
it's in Wi-Fi card connect and we should
blink in lights no way checking his
watch yeah this this is gonna this is gonna take a second this is Wireless B
and this thing has one megabyte of RAM that's a million bytes It is Well a
million that's a million of them but it's just more than that actually yeah
it's a thousand twenty four of them times a thousand twenty four of them
there's thousands 1024 of the 1024. no
no no I gotta I'm gonna let you finish but this is actual text characters
streaming in onto this page can I move
this window yeah you can see you should yep well it's yeah it's currently like
kind of busy-ish enter chat room every
single time it has to reconnect and grab
a new IP address pretty much yeah loading a web page is basically like
loading a document to this thing everything's a document every time you
load a web page it's a new document and
so here we are well that's a pretty bad
experience how about my calendar maybe my um wow stop
there has never been a time when networking was good
okay okay I think it might be finished yeah um no
okay that's okay oh wow it's very
confused now now we get to troubleshoot
um it's it's not actually that bad open up the back door well I mean it's just
take the door off the back there's a reset button there hey we're back
yeah it's gonna do a bunch of stuff right now basically it's listing
everything that's on the flash card and also whatever else might be installed
what were we going to do next again right right right right right right I'm
gonna make an event um
oh yeah wow these are some very random sound
effects they're Pleasant yeah but why would you play a different sound effect
when I hit the same button look at this I'm going to press up a bunch of times
yeah well what it's doing is it's playing the same sound effect but
pitching it differently that way it doesn't get monotonous instead like beep beep beep beep
fun what what is this a uh that might be the
carrot oh yeah what's the carrot basically it's just where the text entry would be if you turned on the keyboard
if you can actually summon the keyboard by double tapping the screen
yes that was terrible uh okay well I
just want to create a calendar event new new meeting
oh new event oh title oh balls l t x yeah I set the date um
one fun thing about the date it doesn't like dates after 2010. there's actually
a community patch that is installed to let us run 2023 and and Beyond if you
try 2010 It'll like revert back to the 90s or something or earlier the like
days until will just like overflow and it's it's a whole thing so this is the
the enhanced experience that nobody ever got back in the day l t x here we go
here we go I think I got this oh uh uh
uh uh on enter alarm
one day I repeat every year cool this
feels very familiar yeah they've even got the little mini view of the month oh
yeah all day events just appear at the top so you can see the details okay what
if we have a new meeting oh
start time uh hello
oh okay definitely PM oh
oh wow you got a boy do you ever have to style this very precisely invitees I
could invite Emily Young hey look at that well how are you gonna get this
invitation well I mean when you sync it to your computer your computer will pull
it into its calendar and then you can send off an email invite wow
so convenient oh damn it I hit the wrong Little X that was right there or you
could beam it via IR to another Newton
it's fine with my me and my friends all bought Tunes a nest emulator exists
uh-oh I forgot I put that in there oh no
way no way no way okay Ness Mario Brothers
sorry problem has occurred oh yeah the
problem has occurred I'm not playing my damn game right now no wait wait whoa
look at these controls this is my d-pad
what the flip is freaking happening it's
like pausing the whole thing whenever I press a thing
did this just crack oh
what is a and a hold and A Auto a hold
basically means you're holding down the a button a is just a quick a tab so like
a frame of a just because you can't really have those nuances so much with a
stylus I guess I I don't know why speaking of nuances the d-pad I think is
continuous once you touch it you can it keeps going in that direction uh that's
what the middle button is for is to stop your movement also there's a sound
button down in the bottom left this is quite possibly the single worst thing
I've ever seen could you legitimately say that if you had this back in the day
that you would not have appreciated that oh how to play games
not this one I wouldn't have played a platformer as limited as this thing
seems today though the specs on it were pretty monstrous for the time the Palm
Pilot which came out at around the same time ended up being much more successful
but had as little as half a megabyte of memory so it came at a lower price which
probably has something to do with its success even though it had other
limitations like even though both of them rely on the stylus for input Palm
Pilot only recognized a special graffiti
alphabet the Newton's claim to fame from Day Zero has been what apple called
calligraphy though actually as I dug deeper after the shoot it turns out that
the modern telling of this story online is shockingly inconsistent like the best
I can determine from sources of the time is that the Newton's first generation
used a licensed cursive recognition system called calligrapher from Dr
Stephan pachikobs paragraph International the second generation
system used in our message pad 2000 was based on an early machine learning
technology and called Rosetta later in named Mondello because that name was
already in use that was developed in-house by Apple's Advanced Technology
Group led by Larry Yeager and went on to become Inkwell in macOS the more you
know recognition software that would learn your handwriting over the course
of weeks or months with the Newton you could write anywhere on the screen and
this functionality would later make its way into macOS and iPad OS the only
problem and the problem that may have killed the whole product line Steve Jobs
being angry about anything that happened at Apple while he was gone aside is that
handwriting recognition was not very good on the first models an example of
over-promising and under delivering while an on-screen keyboard could be
used and the recognition would improve in Newton OS 2.0 physical keyboards were
such a common accessory that Apple launched the e-mate line with a keyboard
built in and the 2000 line like this one would ship with those in the box now
Steve Jobs who never forgave John Scully the CEO who ousted him in greenlit the
Newton did end up count sling the product line not long after he retook
the reins in 1997 but while he might not have liked the stylus famously quipping
that were born with 10 of them he was almost certainly inspired by the device
saying that there was really good technology that was picked up by
management and shutting it down was more about freeing up good Engineers to work
on a new mobile device as The Story Goes
the concept for the iPhone began in 1999 and grew out of the perception that pdas
and mobile phones would converge which turned out to be absolutely correct by
that time the first true Blackberry devices were on the horizon and mobile
phones had already taken on a more conventional candy bar shape with pixel
based LCD screens rather than the fixed segmented displays that came in the past
this meant that text messaging and basic functions like address books calendars
and note-taking were now widely available right on a phone albeit with
clutchy T9 dialing now while Wikipedia lists the Newton's success serve as the
first gen iPad and the department head is actually the same person who pitched
the Newton in the first place it's pretty clear that the concepts the
design know-how and a lot of the features that made the Newton unique
directly morphed into the iPhone first and a lot of that DNA is still in iOS
iPad OS macOS and yes whether we like
to admit it or not Android fans even Android just like I'm still present to
tell you about our sponsor red magic they care deeply for the poor souls
stuck on a long commute to work withering away from a lack of game time
that's why they make blisteringly fast gamer-centric phones like their latest
red magic 8s Pro featuring a top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip
a lightning quick 120 hertz refresh rate a 6.8 inch AMOLED screen with a 94
screen to body ratio and a pack to the brim six thousand milliamp hour battery
you can game more smoothly and for even longer than ever Gamers will also love
the upgraded ice 12.0 Cooling system and
a pair of 520hz shoulder triggers you know who won't love that stuff your
opponents
and with its five layer magnetic speakers your ears will be pulsating
with pleasure too the only sense is you won't be able to satisfy is smell and
taste I mean you can try to sniff the phone but please don't eat it take your
mobile gaming to the next level and check out the red magic 8s pro at the
link below if you enjoyed this video go check out our recent video on weird old
phones from the 90s and 2000s for a bit more context on uh I don't know how
grateful to Apple we should be for bringing us the iPhone
because things were headed in a pretty uh Direction at one point