“While it still surely has its niche uses, I personally don’t miss handwriting recognition. Not even a little. And I can’t help wondering if voice recognition will go the same way.”
– Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, on how tough voice recognition (and handwriting recognition) is, despite today’s super-powered PCs.
Is this the new, rumored Apple tablet? Or an old patent filing from the MessagePad days of yore?
The Next Web’s Boris says it’s an old Newton patent resurfacing, and that the rumored Apple tablet will not have stylus-based input. Little clues, like how the patent isn’t about a tablet but the stylus recognition system itself, and how weirdly familiar that bottom row of buttons looks, seem to say Boris is right.
These new patent pictures were released into an online hornets nest, with everyone waiting for news on this long-rumored iSlate thingy. Any clues, no matter how old or mundane, turn into a tea-leaves-reading session. Thing is, Apple applies for wacky patents all the time.
We’ve seen other patent pictures floating around the Web for years now. None of us know if this new, still-unseen Super Newton is anything like what we’ve seen before.
What do you think? Is this a new tablet, or an old MessagePad?
[Via Tai Shimizu and NewtonTalk.]