Newton reincarnate!


Apple plans to revive the Newton.

Apple Inc, which helped spawn the PDA market with its Newton MessagePad line in the early ’90s, plans to give the concept another go with a modern day reincarnation of the old fan favorite based on the company’s new mutli-touch technology.

It appears that Jobs and Co. never gave up hope, and instead returned to the drawing board. For the past 18 months, well-respected sources tell AppleInsider, a small team of Apple engineers have been at it again, this time tapping the company’s revolutionary multi-touch technology as a foundation.

Externally, the mutil-touch PDA has been described by sources as an ultra-thin “slate” akin to the iPhone, about 1.5 times the size and sporting an approximate 720×480 high-resolution display that comprises almost the entire surface of the unit. The device is further believed to leverage multi-touch concepts which have yet to gain widespread adoption in Apple’s existing multi-touch products — the iPhone and iPod touch — like drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste.

Makes sense - if the UPC market actually exists beyond folks switching from PDA’s.

Posted: Thu - September 27, 2007 at 09:08 AM