I hope someone takes that $99 developer’s fee, makes a iApp that mimics the Newton’s OS, and gives it away for free on the iPhone App Store.
Shucks, as easy as Steve Jobs made it sound, developing a Cocoa Touch Newton program should be a piece of cake.
Here’s hoping.
While watching the SDK announcement/Roadmap event, I too was struck by the thought “Here it is, we finally will have a successor to the Newton.”
I’ll agree with you that the thing that made the Newton so great was infact it’s OS and the “soups” method of storing data, but I would rather see developers who were Newton fans take those great ideas and make them work while taking advantage of the superior hardware of the iPod Touch/iPhone.
Simply porting/mimicking the Newton OS would be a waste. Taking the things that made the Newton great and making them better on this new hardware… I can’t wait.
Posted by jah on March 9th, 2008.
Well said. And you’re right: the iPhone is “growing up” right before our eyes into the “knowledge navigator” of lore. It has the potential to be so much more than the Newton ever was.
BUT it would still be cool to get a $0.99 Newton app to play around with, just for fun.
Posted by davelawrence8 on March 10th, 2008.
Silly as it sounds, I really miss the newton… It was such a good tool for mobile people dealing with lots of activities, people and details- the reminders (ease of setting them up, and reliability) saved my butt and business many times! Nothing seems as complete, simple or easy.
SilverWare’s MoreInfo and At A Glance packages made all the difference for me, but it wouldn’t have worked without the soup concept, I think.
Even so, I’m hoping with the amounts of apps soon to be coming for the iphone, it may finally make sense for me to finally get one.
Posted by btd on March 18th, 2008.
Me too, btd. I’ve been putting it off and putting it off, and I think – come June – I’ll cross over the hump and get one. Thanks!
Posted by davelawrence8 on March 19th, 2008.
[…] took my suggestion from the iPhone SDK announcement and posed an offer to the Newtontalk mailing list: So who wants to […]
Posted by Why a Newton emulator would be fun on iPhone « Newton Poetry on March 20th, 2008.