Architosh: News > Opinion: Newton X: Why Apple needs to go this way: "The memory of this computer reminds me of why Apple should have never gotten rid of it in the first place. Besides having some of the most passionate and intelligent PDA users and programmers in the world, the Newton itself had the absolute best handwriting recognition software to be found anywhere. Ironically, Mac OS X Jaguar now has that same handwriting recognition software. Moreover, Apple's OS X programmers have likely improved it a bit."

There's been a lot of Newton nostagia surfacing in the last few days. I pulled out my Messagepad 2100 (a 2000 that had been upgraded) and fired it up.

No problem, there was my life of 4 years ago frozen into the device. It took me a good half hour to get used to the interface. And about as long to remember why I switched over to the Palm.

The Newton is way too large and heavy for what it gives you. When viewing a calendar or a to do list, I don't see an immediate advantage to more screen space. Especially when the trade off would mean losing the pocket size of the Palm.

The handwriting on the Newton is annoying compared to Graffiti on the Palm. Of course, I do have four years of practice. Nevertheless, I was quickly reminded of the Newton's translation delay that slows down the process of writing. The instantaneous translation of the Palm is more natural. Writing on the Newton feels like typing to a remote terminal. And there are the notorious Newton errors. Yes the recognition got better, but the correction routine never was as quick and certain as on the Palm.

Having played with the Newton again, I feel no nostalgia for the tool.  10:28:35 PM    

Dehanced for Lynx: "Lynx users of the world, unite! Are you as tired as we are of Web sites that are impossible to use because their developers think people only use Netscape? We've decided to do our part to make the Web a more Lynx-friendly place by creating a hall of shame of sites that should carry a warning label: Dehanced for Lynx"

Lots of weblogs work well in Lynx. Google doesn't, although I recall a simpler Google that would work well.  9:45:10 PM