While it may simply be speculation, one columnist claims "there's good reason to believe that a jazzy new Newton II will be forthcoming, perhaps in January" from Apple.
The original Newton was created by Apple in the early 90's and represented the first Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The early Newtons were met with substantial criticism for their handwriting recognition. This technology was significantly improved in later revisions and finally became integrated into Mac OS X as "Inkwell".
Quicktime movies of a Newton 2000 (released in 1997) in action:
Rumors of an Apple-branded tablet resurfaced last year from traditionally accurate sources. (eWeek, ThinkSecret) However, Jobs has been publicly skeptical (Sept 2002) of the concept of tablets:
- We're not sure the tablet PC will be successful. It's turned into a notebook that you can write on. Do you want to handwrite all your e-mail? We have all the technology ourselves to do that - we just don't know whether it will be successful.
