Newton Technology and the iWalk

With the recent hype surrounding the iWalk videos... it's become apparent that a large number of Mac users have no idea what the Newton was really like. Many comments included describing the UI of the iWalk as a scaled down OS X... while it was clearly an updated Newton OS (with some aqua features).

The final straw, however, was this comment by a Go2Mac user which made it to the main Go2Mac page. This was part of his "evidence" that the iWalk is a fraud:

Lastly, the unit would not handle cursive handwriting (rather than printing) that well, especially having no time to 'learn' the handwriting of the user in the video. The dot written over the 'i' is also unlikely, as is the prototype's ability to recognize the end of each word (and written anywhere on the screen).

Sadly - this person is completely ignorant of the technology that existed about 9 years ago - which peaked around 5 years ago. The handwriting of the Newton worked exactly like that (could do cursive, didn't have to be trained). And to try to educate the Mac faithful, I generated a few of movies depicting an actual 1997 Newton in action. You can dissect these videos if you like - but I assure you - they are a real (5 year old) product (Newton 2000).

Say Hello to Newton

Newton Assistant

The Newton Clipboard

Newton Trashcan

(note: I 'printed' in this video - mostly because I stopped writing cursive in middle-school... but the Newton is very capable of recognizing cursive)