Newton Poetry

Check this out:

The Handwriting Recognition team is seeking an engineer who will be responsible for advancing Apple’s handwriting recognition technology for Mac OS X. The ideal candidate will be an expert in the area of pattern recognition, with an excellent understanding of handwriting recognition issues. The person will also assume primary responsibility for maintaining and enhancing existing code and tools. The recognition technology you create may extend beyond Mac OS X to other applications and the iPhone.

This is from Apple’s job site. Someone shared the post from Macrumors.com, who reminds us that “Rosetta technology has found its way into Mac OS X under the name ‘Inkwell,’ but requires a tablet to be installed for use.”

So what do you say? Got what it takes to invent the next Newton?

Steve Jobs introduced new iPod Touch features that are bringing it closer and closer to a modern-day Newton. “Now there’s even more to touch” touts the new Apple.com page, and it’s true: Mail, Notes, Maps, etc. It all adds up to a more Newton-like device than the previous iPod Touches.

The iPod Touch is now a true iPhone-clone, without the phone and subscription model.

It makes me wonder what the GTD crowd thinks of this updated Touch (Macrumors has a forum dedicated to just this subject). The Newtonlist has been buzzing with Newton software packages that make the MessagePad a handy tool for GTDers.

And I suppose that, after the SDK comes out for the iPhone and iPod Touch, developers will be builder 43folders-ish software all over the place. Jailbroken iTouches already have these kind of capabilities.

But does all this spell the end of those Newton 2.0 rumors that were flying pre-Macworld? John Gruber thinks, perhaps, not:

I am nearly convinced that this product exists, at least as a project in development. My hunch is that AppleInsider has it spot-on: it’s in development, but not yet ready to launch, and, perhaps, never will if Apple can’t get it right…A successful tablet-like device from Apple, I think, would clearly be designed as a secondary computing device — a satellite attached and synched to a Mac or PC (probably, of course, through iTunes).

What’s missing, says Gruber, is the “why should I buy this?” factor that accompanies most new Apple products. Tablets have failed to catch on, he argues, so why release one if it doesn’t blow people away?

(Gruber’s predictions of Macworld were, by the way, spot-on, except for his plea for new Cinema Displays. Everything else he got right. Kudos.)

So here we Newton fans still sit, stuck between a maybe-it’ll-happen Newton 2.0 and an iPod Touch that, as it adds features, becomes more and more like Apple’s long-abandoned PDA.

A new Apple “Newton 2” rumor has popped up, this time with “evidence” from a SeekingAlpha.com author, David Sieger.

Says Sieger:

This new Apple device, which could be an Ultra Mobile Computer, has not been sighted out and about the Apple campus or even in the area normally designated for testing new Apple products, suggesting that it’s still in the software and hardware design period. Once it’s physically spotted outside Apple’s secretive labs, we may see an actual product release of 6-8 months, closely following other new Apple product introductions.

Sieger’s evidence is based on Apple buying up 5.2″ touchscreens, tons of flash memory, and lack of QWERTY keyboard.

Sieger, however, leaves out room for chance, or Apple’s ability to surprise people with something totally new and unexpected.

He says it can’t be a new Newton, because of the lack of PDA demand from the American public, “although various PDA functionalities may in fact be included in the final version of the device.”

It’s all shot-in-the-dark stuff, and the evidence he sites is flimsy at best. This could all belong to that nebulous cloud of Applet tablet rumors we’ve heard so much about.

[Read previous “RumorPad Watch” entry]

The look and feel of the thing has been published, the guts, and even the producer, but is this thing a possibility?

Previous patents have pointed more toward the iPhone, in retrospect. And the argument for a tablet says that doctors and do-gooders on the move can really use a portable Mac like what’s proposed. But the thing about Apple rumors is they’re rarely accurate. Or even true. This tablet Mac rumor has seen more than its share of screen space.

We’ve known that Steve Jobs holds no love for PDAs (or else Newtons would be alive and well, right?). My take (and I’m not alone on this one) is that if there is a Newton- or tablet-like device, it may just be a modified iPhone. Apple may decide to freshen things up in this product line like it did with the iPod: color, photo, video, games, etc.

But heck, is the rumor even true?

This will be the first edition of “RumorPad Watch.” I’ll keep you updated. Back to the poetry…