Some saw it as a gamechanger, others dismissed it as just another attempt to cash in on the voice recognition trend. Siri arrived as a standalone app in 2010, and was acquired by Apple that same year. And just like the Newton MessagePad, it divided opinions. Where Newton relied on text-based input, Siri made the leap to voice recognition. It was a smart assistant by definition, something that is now synonymous with Siri on the iPhone. Scribbling "Lunch with Sophia on Sunday" pulled up the calendar and made an automatic entry after the user's consent.
Writing a statement such as "Fax to Allen" at the end of a note would evoke a prompt for sending it to a person named Allen in the contacts directory.
#Apple newton messagepad software#
Walt Mossberg wrote for The Wall Street Journal that the iPhone was "a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer."Īnother pioneering aspect of the Newton software was what Apple called "intelligence assistance." It essentially tried to understand what users wrote on the screen and turned said writings into actionable commands.
It was a pocketable computer, in all essence. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone over a decade later, it was seen as more than just a phone with cool tricks up its sleeve. When Apple chief John Sculley was first pitched the idea of a handheld computing device, he wanted it to be small enough for the pocket and could be held comfortably in one hand, per a WIRED report. It's worth starting with the form factor. And yet, its influence on the iPhone is undeniable. What it promised was revolutionary, but what it delivered was a potpourri of half-baked features and misfiring tech. The Newton MessagePad catalyzed a new category of computers called PDAs, short for Personal Digital Assistants. And to some extent, in the world's favorite tablet - the iPad.
It was deemed a colossal failure, but part of it lives on in the iPhone. The oft-maligned Apple Newton MessagePad was an innovation ahead of its time when it first arrived in 1993.
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