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Karel Jansens's Avatar
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#19
Originally Posted by dandrewk
Sorry, I disagree.

The Newton was a complete disaster. It had a great concept, but was poorly designed and totally unreliable. The critical reviews were dead-on accurate. The Newton was the worst chapter in Apple's history and set back the PDA industry back years. Kudos to Palm/USR/3Com for overcoming the bad example that the Newton was.

It is still VERY true that, by and large, tech reviews are not to be trusted. Too many of these writers fancy themselves as king-makers. I don't understand why they just don't all become sports writers, where this type of attitude is accepted and to be expected.

Case in point - the 770. Go to the various websites (Cnet included) where you can read user reports. Seems to me that users are singing a different tune from most reviews.

This, of course, is just my opinion.

This, of course, is just my opinion.

This is a joke, right? The Newton MessagePad was a disaster, I grant you that. But it was a marketing disaster and not a technical one. I have two Newton 2100 MPs; they are the most reliable handheld computers ever made. People report "finding" their old Newtons in a closet after years, charging up the batteries and, save updating the date and recalibrating the screen, can just pick up where they left off years ago. Newtons don't lose anything. Ever.

On top of that, the Newton has, as far as I can see, the only operating system that is truly taylored for stylus input, a really amazing handwriting recognition (or do you know any other HWR system that can recognize cursive Dutch with over 99% accuracy) and a bunch of ridiculously intuitive applications, as anyone who has ever used the Newton Notes program will acknowledge.

The only thing the Newton had working against it, was Steve Jobs.