maemo.org - Talk - The road not taken?

Quote:

Originally Posted by frethop

For me, the 770 can be the next Newton -- only if the HWR works. Right now, it's terrible. We are still talking about HWR on the Newton years after it was discontinued. The only way we will talk about the 770's years from now is how the HWR pulled the unit down.

Even if the 770's HWR was perfect, it's still line-based on the bottom of the screen. There are no applications that resemble the Newton's Notes program.

The 770's UI is decent, but isn't anywhere near as optimized for the pen as the Newton. Newton apps were much more tightly integrated with each other. Any program could send data through any communications channel - you could install an FTP transport, and send files via FTP from any Newton app.

Data on the Newton was not stored in files, but rather as an object database. When you create a file, it's automatically immediately persistent. You can sort and name your documents, but you don't have to do that before you save them, you can do it any time you want, from within the program rather than needing some external file manager.

I like my 770, and find it very useful, but the bottom line is that making it into a device comparable to a Newton is something that would require starting from scratch with that in mind.