Before the iPhone there was… Apple Newton!

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The iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry and put one in nearly everyone’s pocket. But the iPhone didn’t appear from nowhere - it owes much of its inspiration to the ill-fated Apple Newton.
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MUSIC CREDIT
---------------------------------------------------
Intro: Laszlo - Supernova
Video Link: • [Electro] - Laszlo - S...
iTunes Download Link: itunes.apple.com/us/album/sup...
Artist Link: / laszlomusic
Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High
Video Link: • Sugar High - Approachi...
Listen on Spotify: spoti.fi/UxWkUw
Artist Link: / approachingnirvana
Intro animation by MBarek Abdelwassaa / mbarek_abdel
Monitor And Keyboard by vadimmihalkevich / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/PgGWp
Mechanical RGB Keyboard by BigBrotherECE / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/mj6pHk4
Mouse Gamer free Model By Oscar Creativo / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/Ps3XfE
CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:04 What IS a Newton?
2:10 Meet the MessagePad 2000
3:44 Surprisingly robust I/O
6:52 Linus learns how to Newton
9:47 Linus gets distracted by games
11:15 Recording a voice memo
11:54 Managing notes and doodling
13:11 It had a real keyboard
15:45 It was never meant for WiFi, but...
18:03 Linus crashes it
18:43 Adding events to the calendar
21:15 There's a NES emulator...
22:29 It was amazing for the time!
23:51 Why did it fail then?
24:21 Newton's legacy lives on in the iPhone

[@KyudoKun]

*Petition for Linus to use this as a daily driver for a week*

[@lina4469]

nah, one month challenge

[@chestnu1]

I don’t know how many drops can this thing take?

[@johnsparozich6839]

I don't think he would last an hour let alone a whole week!!

[@danmar007]

It's not a car. Stop calling things that are not vehicles "daily drivers". It makes you seem silly.

[@greggmacdonald9644]

@@danmar007 Yeah, that linguistic battle was lost years ago, trying to push back here just makes you seem silly. Languages change. I don't like some of how English has evolved, but one either adapts or the rest of the world moves on without you.

[@greenboots5823]

Props to Kane for letting Linus literally man handle a piece of history.

[@PauIieWalnuts]

​@@jcfawerdOOOOHH GOT EM. doof

[@jefferyG499]

@@jcfawerd You can just say "their". It's both a singular and plural pronoun.

[@Lagonas_]

@@jefferyG499 You're both a singular and plural pronoun.

[@card_craft]

I hope he doesn't drop it off camera

[@DonaldHendleyBklynvexRecords]

@@jefferyG499 Im mot even slow and I never could remember when to use theyre , their etc lmaooo I hate It

[@PaulRadaker]

I actually have 2 Newtons, a keyboard, and even a developer manual that’s still sealed in plastic. It was owned by someone who was a developer back in the 90s. One of my favorite pieces of Apple history I own.

[@toboekey]

Save that shiet u kno how much u can sell those for like holy fuck 😵‍💫

[@andymorin9163]

love owning Apple history! I own countless MacBooks, 3 new in box sealed iMacs, many more iMacs (a few boxed, a Cinema Display 30” with box, an Italian NeXT keyboard (I know, weird), a few iPhone/accessories boxes and a sealed 2018 MacBook Pro. also one of the MacBooks is the gold gold one :)

[@alexmedak9808]

I have 2 also, one is the limited clear shell version, goes well with an iMac G3

[@WhiteTree97]

who asked

[@psions555]

I have an MP120, one of the less desirable in terms of collecting I believe but it works well. Backlight makes a bit of a humming noise but that's it! Solid build

[@TheRetroRoadshow]

I have a Newton 2100 (with an aftermarket internal serial port I had installed) and the same keyboard and a few cards and accessories. I actually used it extensively for note taking when I was working for Apple in the pre-iPhone days, starting back in 2004. It was 6-7 years old then and already considered a totally dead product, but my customers always got a huge kick out of it, and it worked quite well. I still have it and love bringing it to tech conferences now - it's an amazing device, and a powerful conversation starter!

[@lukewilliams3334]

That is pretty cool

[@JasonBunston]

I had the same configuration, and was an original MP2K owner. I travelled across Europe, using dialup and wireless modems from the device to access Internet. I would telnet back to my university for email! The best use was wardriving with two wifi cards...these devices were wonderfully complete.

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

I remember a restaurant that replaced their paper menus with Newtons. The waiter handed you a newton when you were seated and you scrolled through the menu on the device and made your choices. Press the order button and it got sent to the kitchen. Now this was in Stockholm, Sweden, and I think they got rid of them in a year or two. But it was a fun little experiement.

[@jasonblalock4429]

And nowadays a lot of restaurants use tablets for tableside menus. So they were about 25 years ahead of the curve. 🙂

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

@@jasonblalock4429 It's pretty common that they just have a QR code for you to scan with your phone, and that sends you to the menu in html form. I don't really like it, but I can see how convenient it is for the restaurant.

[@Jezee213]

omg really! thats crazy. Was it when they were still relatively new? If it was, they spent a mint!

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

@@Jezee213I don't think they had all that many in total. Probably no more than thirty or so. Quite possibly less than that. They only handed out one or two per table, and once you had made your order they collected them. But yea, it wasn't because they were cheap that they used them. It was a novelty thing. A bit like the Ice Bars that became popular some time in the late 90's or early 2K. You know the ones where everything was made of ice, including the shoot glasses. It was a bit strange walking in from the summer heat straight into freezing cold. They handed you a winter coat on the way in and everything. I think we had two of those in the city center, both in high end hotels, and within walking distance from each other. Don't know if any of them are still there. They must have been very expensive to run.

[@macjonte]

Hah, do you remember the name or location of that restaurant? I guess it wasn’t the state owned burger chain? :D

[@tedbeav]

I think Linus should do more old tech overviews like this, love it.

[@realphilswift9182]

Bet

[@miskaknapek]

agreed!

[@justinpakarno4346]

He should review more GPU coolers.

[@davidhastoomanyinterests6361]

Agreed.

[@RTMonitor]

I want to see someone in LTT to use an Apple EMate 300 because it's very similar to an AlphaSmart 3000, but with more advanced apps.

[@thexshattered]

Honestly I'm really impressed with the Newton. I remember my dad giving me and my sister Palm Pilots in the early 2000s. We both had to learn that special shorthand type handwriting to type one letter at a time (I still remember A to E lol). I never imagined a device from 1997 having decent handwriting recognition.

[@donaldendsley6199]

I friend of mine in middle school had one (or his dad did and he regularly stole it and brought it to school), and I was super impressed with it at the time. I totally realized it wasn't a practical device yet, but the potential was there.

[@EVPaddy]

Even earlier, I worked on that thing in 1994.

[@me2olive]

Bear in mind that in 1997 you could also have bought a Psion Series 5 with a GSM adapter, and have had actually usable (if slow) mobile Internet, even on a cell network. And probably saved money too. The Newton died for very good reason.

[@fvizeus]

I was not expecting it to have so many of its "advanced" functionalities. The character recognition worked really well for block letters, but I am really impressed by the machine learning stuff. For reference, the famous LeNet paper was published in 1 year after this Newton was released. Also, I thought transforming your drawings into vectorized shapes was cool when I first used it a few years ago on a Galaxy Note. In 1997 it would have blown my mind.

[@lucasrem]

linus is not understanding, Newton was a good concept, not needing your Laptop, Newton was enough. I developed many solutions on them, Best PDA in the Area !

[@efdbjon2114]

who?@@lucasrem

[@alexanderpowell9767]

The original Newton is one of my prized possessions... might have missed some marks, but pushed forward in so many ways. Ahead of its time!

[@lucasrem]

all PDA's were crab apple did a real good job here !

[@wheniztheend]

Way ahead of its time. I'm impressed by it's handwriting recognition.

[@datachu]

​@@lucasremI had an amazing Palm PDA as a kid that was also quite ahead of its time and had an early browser and even built in WiFi at a time that was barely a thing yet. So no, all PDAs were not, in fact, crabs.

[@xmetal280]

A fun romp through history, thanks for showing what your Newton could do. I recently rebuilt my original Messagepad and got it working again and it's a tough user experience, TBH. At the time it was magical though, I remember downloading free books and using it in a Kindle-esque fashion, and keeping my notes and calendar on it. I suppose I'll pull it off the shelf in honor of your video and try to write "hello" on it a few times.

[@TheDefaultgameer]

Honestly a video on the General Magic line up would be great. The real predecessor products to the iPhone, considering one of the lead engineers designed the iPhone, and iPod before.

[@TheRetroRoadshow]

I have several General Magic devices in my collection, along with various books, accessories and supporting assets. They're amazing devices and you can really feel the first hints of the future we all live in now in them!

[@papasalvo]

As someone who mostly listens to LTT videos as background noise whilst cooking/cleaning I appreciate the interjection made to correct the error in the script Also this was an interesting piece of history I'd likely have never known of since I'm neither an apple fan nor old enough to been able to even talk when this thing was discontinued

[@artcasual99]

They have to do that ever since the controversy a few weeks ago about how they say incorrect information and then silently put the correct info on screen.

[@jacobbailey2950]

​@@artcasual99they dont have to do anything

[@davekelloway3337]

Good example of a lesson learned here

[@its_dey_mate]

@@jacobbailey2950...Unless they want to keep their fanbase... They can of course go back to lower qc and pumping out videos left and right, but they seem to actually be very smart about it and try to do better, so looking at it from that angle, yes they have to do that.

[@artcasual99]

@@jacobbailey2950 They did, because if they didn't it would have ruined their image and they would be the new Illuminate. A big KZbinr whose image was destroyed by a mountain of controversies.

[@alles_klar]

This brought up fond memories of using a 802.11b PCMCIA card in a laptop. It's hard to explain how magical (and unstable) Wi-Fi was at the time

[@pkaulf]

My first wireless setup about 20 years back was a Netgear 54g router and PCMCIA card in an old Acer laptop. The range on it was garbage, but it was so cool at the time

[@wobblysauce]

Wait what… I still am running compatible hardware.

[@KenS1267]

@@pkaulf Back then the company I worked for opted for cellular modems over wifi because of how trash those wifi adapters were.

[@permacultureecuador2925]

Please get rid of Antrany. You have kids linus. You should know better.

[@lorddwar]

I have a matched PCMCIA card and router from the late 90s early 00s if they need it for testing/reference/comparison. It was pretty magical.

[@Deja117]

Great video! I was happy to see a short explanation instead of just text on the screen to explain something, especially since I often have your videos playing in the background while doing other tasks.

[@EVPaddy]

Programming an app for the Newton was my first full time job… In 1994. I was actually impressed by the handwriting recognition(apparently the first generation). My cursive is terrible and it did pretty well. PS: Digital cellular phones were perfectly capable of displaying text quite early on. I remember, I have the same phone number since ~1992.

[@dinkmeeker4241]

I had a Newton back in the day. They were actually useful, way ahead of their time.

[@ded12.03]

dammnnn u olddd😭 but thats so cool mannn!!! lived such a cool part of the history n stuff thats hella cool.

[@unholydonuts]

Back when Steve Jobs was at the helm.

[@Tornado1994]

@@unholydonuts Jobs and Woznaik didn't come back to Apple until 1996. The Newton and Pippin NEARLY KILLED Apple. The Company was hit with a $4 Billion Dollar Deficit by 1996.

[@Afrotechmods]

I had an uncle who had one of these when they first came out. Very few people had laptops back then and people were still playing the original Game Boy. For this thing to come out of nowhere was mindblowingly ahead of its time. It had a lot of cool ideas in the UI that no one else was doing. But as you said, the handwriting recognition wasn't that great so it quickly became more of a cool gimmick product than essential tech.

[@ricenova8]

VERIFRIED

[@digitanalog]

Missing those uploads 😢

[@AnoNym-zi5ty]

Dude why no uploads anymore? You had a good thing going. I was wondering what happened to you.

[@stevenng8773]

I had one in the 90s. The handwriting recognition sucked, but a third party app called Graffiti (I think that was the name of it) came out, and it was a game changer. It actually made the Newton usable, although not in the way Apple conceived it to be. The company that made Graffiti eventually came out with the Palm Pilot, which basically took over the market at the time.

[@tgvinfinite2607]

why haven't you uploaded in years?

[@enfieldjohn101]

I remember those. I had to use one in a job I had back then. It was okay. I didn't find myself wanting to run out and get one myself though. It was like a Gameboy for trying to get work done rather than playing video games. The stylus features were fantastic. I wish that todays gadgets still all had the stylus holster and the pop out stand. Very useful. I love that it used to play games. I never played games on the one I used as my boss wouldn't have gone along with that. Looks like from this video, I wouldn't have missed anything trying to play games on this thing. I don't understand Jobs' disdain for the stylus. They are a wonderful thing because they keep your screen clean compared to our oily fingers and if you hold them right, they keep your hand out of the way. I hate using a touch screen without a stylus. You get the screen all oily even if you wash your hands frequently and your hand keeps getting in the way of what you are trying to see. I won't even play a touch screen game that requires me to use more than one touching object in order to play them. I also hate having to 'pinch' or 'spread' two fingers apart in order to zoom in or out on a game or other touch screen program. Just give me a pair of plus and minus zooming 'buttons' so I can use my stylus to operate them. I love the stylus using touch screen on the DS line of consoles and wish that my phone had one like it. Good thing someone figured out how to make a capacitive touch screen recognize a stylus by putting a little rubber thing on the end of it. Now, if affordable phones and tablets only came with built in stylus holders like the Newton and the DS consoles did.

[@skiwildcat7]

That's really cool. Totally forgot about the Palm Pilot special characters to write in, and was also wondering if the cursive recognition on the Newton was an early form of machine learning, and indeed it was!

[@matthewjalovick]

What a unique video! As someone who was born in ‘90 I experienced all my youth group leaders having their PDAs back then. I remember being blown away that they could access the internet with something in their hand! It really has been amazing to watch technology the last 30 years. It’s magic.

[@ytQrash]

I love how common these early tablet/PDA devices are in the series "For All Mankind". DAT audio is another technology that appears to be commonplace in the alternate history of the series.

[@BTTRSWYT]

Actually a goated series

[@codykleoppel6919]

Love the show. I'm almost finished with season 2.

[@Mister-Tea]

That's where I've discovered this one, great series too can't wait for next season. Also it does help that For All Mankind is a series from Apple TV, otherwise I don't think they could get those old hardware to play with (or it would be very complicated and expensive for such a small thing in the series).

[@goldminorguy]

It also seems that the Newtons in the show also progressed further with the inclusion of better backlit LCD displays, as well as a detachable webcam that the Newtons in the show used for their version of FaceTime

[@alexis0a]

And they make it better than real life, so, that give us an idea of how could it be if we had that tech back in the day :)

[@chrisroberts324]

Ah the Apple Newton. I remember those digital planners. It is interesting to see some of the origins of how technology evolved over time. The IPHONE and Later Smartphone in general was such a revolution in how we used all of these digital devices. It brought together the Digital Camera, MP3 player, Video Player, GPS navigator, Digital Assistant, and of course Cell Phone into one device. Not even Star Trek thought of that. The Tri Corder was only meant for medical diagnosis, but the smartphone could probably be a base tech for even that.

[@Tornado1994]

This underwhelming PDA nearly KILLED Apple Computer, Inc.

[@Luc_Skywalker]

I had that problem with some units, I used "Goof Off" and it does work really wheel. I used a scraper with goof off, and then just a clean rag with goof off to finish the small stuff. You would swear that it never had this gunk before.

[@TheMsLourdes]

See now this is the kind of quality we should expect from a video. And correcting the erroneous error in line with an audio correction, that's a boon to anyone listening but not watching the screen. Keep up the good work since recalibrating guys. ANd I hope the other fixes (which I won't mention directly but involve HR) are being properly addressed too.

[@axel_is_gaming]

I am sure this video was filmed weeks ago, before everything happened. But i agree about the new correction style. Hopefully they will keep doing it this way.

[@Eric-oi5yj]

@@axel_is_gaming it was probably filmed on the “ week off “ they just took the time deal, play catch-up, and get more videos to put out

[@tompov227]

I really like these type of videos where Linus looks at a really weird/old thing and learns about it in real time. Similar to the ReactOS and TempleOS videos

[@borabulan435]

Agreed

[@TylerFurrison]

And guess who was behind Linus helping throught the whole thing: Emily!

[@kaaroo]

@@tompov227why anger, please do not the angry

[@vitofromearth4098]

Who’s Emily?

[@U1TR4F0RCE]

Well Emily referenced in this video something that could definitely make an interesting video. GNU/Herd was supposed to be the big open source/free OS. Though it took too long and linux came about and won instead. It technically still exists but has extremely limited usage.

[@krisrobitzsch]

This was awesome. Loved this video. Nice blast from the past.

[@danburycollins]

Really enjoyed this - I remember these coming out but never saw one in the wild.

[@azblueauthor8081]

The eMate 300, essentially a laptop form factor Newton, is one of my favorite pieces of 90's tech. It had a similar aesthetic to the Mac G3 series, with transparent green or transparent orange plastic for the shell.

[@kevinfransen1255]

We had eMates in school that we were allowed to take home to type our projects on. And it connected to a printer via the old port that looks like PS/2 or S Video.

[@app0the]

@@kevinfransen1255 it's the same serial port that the dongle on this one lets you get

That would be Apple Desktop Bus, their own proprietary serial connection sort of before USB.

[@app0the]

@ no, ADB is the one that looks like the Svideo port, and only handles HID. The Geoport looked like a DIN9 plug in the modem/printer port of early macs and was standard RS422 iirc

[@eDoc2020]

Fun fact: it's also Apple's most recent touchscreen laptop.

[@StevenPociengel]

My dad's Newton was his old password manager for our home network that us kids were only allowed to use when he as out of town and needed access to something. Great to see it covered here!

[@veryboringname.]

Hmm, why wouldn't he bring it with him when he went out of town?

[@StevenPociengel]

@@veryboringname. because at that time it was just for the home network and personal accounts so he didn't have any reason to bring it with.

[@dahboup]

That AirPort modem brought back some deep memories for me. My uncle and aunt were part of the first 100 or so employees at apple and received many gifts from apple over the years. One they passed onto me when they received an upgraded newer model was an iBook G3 (the blueberry laptop). It had a airport network card under the removable keyboard and I used whatever money I had saved to buy an old model, used, AirPort. That laptop was awesome, I used to play StarWars: Droidworks on it and fell in love with PC gaming from then on. A few years later I got a cheap asus prebuilt desktop OC and a graphics card that was so big for the case I couldn’t put the side panel back on. It wasn’t pretty but it was mine and I loved every minute of those days.

[@Redbikemaster]

I still have an airport Express card somewhere

[@ben.harnwell]

Great review I remember being really interested in the Newton back in the day. I’m kinda glad I waited until iPhone/iPad which raised the full potential.

[@garynagle3093]

Love these old tech videos. As someone who actually owned a palm pilot, this brings make loads of “memories”

[@lucasrem]

palm was crab, Newton was way way way better in the days ! Best PDA it was !

[@POVwithRC]

​@@lucasremwow that's crazy bro but nobody asked

[@OliB150]

A surprisingly great video! Actually impressive how much this was able to do so long ago and how there are still so many similarities in the modern versions!

[@confuded]

"Its like trying to herd a cat." - that is a great summary of managing Linus when he is playing with tech.

[@StarFireG3]

I still own 2 of these bricks. They were used by the medical first responders in my city for years. They had a whole workflow from first assessing the patient, put the diagnosis in and send it to the ER before the patient arrives by ambulance to have everything ready for treatment.

[@Smammus]

The record scratch amendment was awesome, this is how it’s done. Keep it up

[@jayplay8140]

exactly right, glad to see them put their promises into action

[@thomasb1521]

My parents used to use one of these. If i remember correctly that's why they bought their first ipad, the newtons notes could be transferred and they still have some of the notes they made on the newton accessible today.

[@richboy455]

Fun fact, that Airport Express audio jack not only supports 3.5mm cables but 3.5mm Optical cables as well.

[@isaacpc1736]

nice catch with the edits guys! keep up the good work!

[@rvoisey]

I was working at an Apple dealer when the Newton came out. We got a package of 10 Newtons and a demo unit with a point of sale display. I think we sold two. I liked them though!

[@patrickpopp9197]

My father got a first gen one and i used it for sometime in 2012 for fun. The sylus was surprisingly good

[@MorganTN]

Thanks Kane for helping!!! Excellent video LTT!!! I like the video/voice over for updates that were discovered after the initial video! It's nice to see your process improvements are working. Awesome Job!!!

[@MrKelaher]

My daily driver portable computing for about 3 years, 2 models. Also a dev. Had ethernet, dialup and wifi cards (you could use 2 at a time). Also had the keyboard. Loved them, still have last one I bought (2000), was replaced with Windows CE, mostly because I was a dev for that too ;) IPhone was my 6th "smart device", the one before it being a high end Nokia Symbian I really, really liked that I kept in parallel until the iPhone 3g - the original iphone was less good than many claim, total Mandela effect, like the original apple watch, which was also shiz

[@joelg705]

I have one of these and it still runs! We used them in a pilot program in medical school (1997-2001) to see if they would work to take patient notes to make this process easier and more readable....since doctors have notoriously bad hand writing. (as in first attempts at EMRs in your hand) It was a bit too clunky to really catch on but we got to keep the newtons when the project was completed. My flash card is only 2MB and somewhere I have the modem card.... Was really cool at the time for those of us who loved new tech but couldn't afford it. Beaming notes to another newton actually worked well in our eyes, We could send notes to people across the room and no one would be the wiser!

[@TheMemessiah]

"There has never been a time when networking was good" is honestly the truest statement of all time.

[@4amLaundry]

It did get better but yeah lol

[@alexrobles7744]

Wow, that was a good look at the newton 2000. It caused me to take out my newton 120 (still works from 1995) with the wireless pagers and fax modem and mac 3.5 floppy discs. I was not a mac fan boy, I was in college at the time. And loved all technology, really wanted the apple QuickTake

[@farab4391]

My first PDA was the Dell Axim x50v. I loved it, because it had VPN and Remote Desktop, so small changes for work I could do on the x50v from the comfort of my couch or anywhere where was WiFi

[@reenigneesrevereht]

Axim gang!! I think Linus had a Pocket PC of some variant when he was younger, too. Mine was an X5 Advanced, with a CF WLAN card added. Vastly more usable to a 13ish year old vs an iPod Mini. Found so many music blogs on that little thing.

[@rollingtroll]

The Newton is kinda hard to miss if you watch tech channels so you don't even have to be an Apple Fanboy. It did have some qualities, but man... That dongle life, ALREADY!? Also hi again Emily, the LTT video I rewatched most is, by far, the TempleOS one because of your in-depth explanations of the 'oddware' we're looking at. This is what you're best at, and it's awesome to see you back on the y'tube! :D. Ant then; hi team! Still a little bit of tidying up to do in the comments but you're all doing a great job! They are mostly full of love and appreciation :).

[@user-zd6wc1el4r]

You mean Anthony.

[@DirkStrange]

@@user-zd6wc1el4r Emily recently came out as a transwoman. Her chosen name is Emily. She has her own channel where she discusses this if you'd like to know more.

[@MarkM_]

​@@Theo-yy3hs You cannot change your gender. Anthony is now and will always be a biological male. He has XY chromosomes. He was presumably born with male genitalia. He is a man with gender dysphoria. I am not sure what is worse. A man with a mental illness, or other people calling him a her.

[@FP_cool]

I was waiting for someone to make video about this for sooo long. Thank you Linus.

[@mikeporet5655]

Wow! Love the new format for post shoot corrections! 👏

[@NineteenEightyFive]

actually getting it online is flat out amazing. fun video!

[@SpicerJack]

In progress to the iPhone apple actually met with one of the palm clones (which all kind of came after this thing) that had cellular connectivity. The iPhone isn’t that different than a palm pilot, especially in its early iterations. I remember not being that blown away by the iPhone because I’d already played around with a bunch of these kind of handhelds and windows ce things, including a couple with cellular service. It wasn’t until they really became like another whole ass computer in your pocket with a decent camera and video that I really started to care (iPhone 4/5 era)

[@FrostyDeagz]

Remember when apple tried to pretend they invented the phone camera?

[@bradhaines3142]

@@FrostyDeagz i mean thats every feature they put out. FIRST TIME EVER ..in an iphone

[@SpicerJack]

@@FrostyDeagz to be fair there were like a chunk of years there where most android phones was taking like serial killer level photos unless you were in direct sunlight. There were statistical studies on dating app profiles just based on phone type and it had everything to do with photo quality.

[@graybandit1140]

Handspring!

[@nr-dx4zz]

3gs

[@joshua7539]

So happy they are now making correction edits after the original shoot day. Looks like this channel is getting back on track! Great work guys!

[@ThyRetroNerd]

Was looking for someone mentioning this. Glad we basically have proof of them really taking their time

[@johnhowarth7216]

I don’t think you can congratulate them after 1 video plus there is a lot more serious issues to be addressed plus it’s just abit convenient that this video had to have the employee that’s a man with issues to show how caring they are pure bs

[@TheCostantinus]

​@@johnhowarth7216who is the man with issues?

[@sntslilhlpr6601]

@@johnhowarth7216 Gimme a break, dude. It's not that hard to just ignore the gender thing if you don't like it. It's still just another human being up there. Don't you agree?

[@MrLatte27]

@@johnhowarth7216 did you really just try to say they used someone as a token to show how open they are, you cant preach when you referred to them as "a man with issues" that was just rude and uncalled for.

[@Avboden]

man showing off the Airport Express as an old piece of tech.....I wish Apple never abandoned the airport line. They were so good for the time! Took the "it just works" motto seriously when most other routers were a pain in the butt. Plus being able to hook up a printer to the USB port or any audio to the headphone jack was so good.

[@andymorin9163]

my PowerBook G3 can still access wifi from way across the house 😱

[@jamescollier7310]

That PCMCIA Orinoco wifi card just took me back. I remember vividly using one on my compaq armada e500 many many years back. Thank you for the trip down memory lane

[@ADTinman]

I didn't have the Newton, but I did have the Palm IIIxe later on. It is still sitting on my bookcase. I had to replace the rechargeable battery with regular ones years ago, but it still works.

[@mycosys]

You should do the first Symbian phone sometime - the Ericsson R380i - its quite a trip

[@headwerkn]

I had an MP2100 in the early 2000s and it was pretty darn cool. Had a modem, ethernet card, external storage and even the rare AF keyboard for it. Genuinely worked as a subportable - I even used it for updating websites over FTP. The ‘file system’ was a headf-ck though.

[@user-ed4fh8ht3g]

Steven Seagal used this device in his "Die hard on a train" movie (Under Siege 2). He used it to try and send information to the military about what the bad guys were up to. I think he hooked it up to a phone (without using a PCMCIA card).

[@andrewwilson8273]

I still have a Newton. I started with the OG Message Pad and upgraded and added to my collection as they came out. They were quite usable once you got the hang of it. I used them for insurance reports. I used a piece of software called, IIRC, Formworks. Once I'd written up the reports I'd fax them to the insurer and Mac LC2. Handwriting was not terrible after the Message Pad. Last time I looked, my last Newton was still working. But then I'm the old geezer who used this and later on a Windows CE laptop from Compaq for note taking at university. I swapped that for a Toshiba Libretto, a bad move, the Compaq was great. I've had quite a few of this type of device, I loved them but they were never as useable as I hoped they'd be. I guess I was ahead of the curve, but using the Internet on a train with an early pcmcia GSM data card was just the kind of thing to play with, no matter how slowly it worked.

[@GCD8]

I had an Apple Newton when I worked in Japan in 1996-1999, and have enjoyed all the frustrations that are included in this review. I eventually put it and all it's accessories in a box, where they remain to this day. Yes, I brought it home with me, it was worth a lot of money and I couldn't just dump it. I could never keep up with the scheduling speed that my team could achive working with a small paper based system! And I got so tired of them laughing at this bleeding edge tech was so bad. I stayed in paper systems (various) until the Blackberry entered the scene.

[@mathiasman]

I always found it interesting that the resolution was the exact same as the original iphone.

[@PORRFNK]

I love this video, how about a video on the early windows phones?

[@loudneon]

I chucked one of those wireless cards down the stairs at a metal door in absolute frustration. It didn't fair well, but worked just as good pre-toss lol. It was spotty at best to connect to wifi.

[@Meatloaf_TV]

Its crazy to think the newton was around so early apple was ahead of the curve and saw where tech was going a decade before the tech and world was ready for it.

[@matsv201]

There was actually plenty of portabla touch screen computers around ar that time. Like loads of them. The thing is that most of them run windows 2.0 that was auwfull, and windows 3.0 was typically a bit to heavy for those devices. The first i know of came in 1990 and used a 8086 cpu that by that time was very powet efficent.

[@ricenova8]

waffl

[@NeonVisual]

except the iphone was just a dumbed down clone of windows mobile. See the MDA Compact 2, touch 2 pro and similar. Way more functionality than an iphone, and several years earlier. iPhone was only popular because it dumbed down the interface and went for heavily skewmorphic iconography so even idiots could figure out how to slide an unlocking pin across the front of the screen.

[@ancientslav4863]

Its crazy to think that Anthony thinks he is a woman...

[@Alex-cw3rz]

It wasn't particularly ahead of the curve the same year and in fact I believe it released a few months before the Newton was a device exactly the same by Amstrad called the PenPad a cheap electronics company, obvious not as polished and refined as the Apple but this was not ahead of the curve it was at the same point in the curve.

[@jhosioja]

The Nokia 9000 Communicator launched in 1996, with WAP connectivity and 8MB memory. Went with a fold open physical qwerty though, so it looks less like a modern phone, but it was pretty powerful for the time.

[@farab4391]

Wow, I remember that beast. I was a Nokia fan at the time with my banana phone, like in the Matrix, so really wanted one of these. Was just too expensive for me, but glad I didn’t, because things started changing so quickly the following couple of years

[@ElectronicAdventurer]

Kind of expected this thing to be a one trick pony, but it’s functionality is actually impressive.

[@AdrianCartersheffield]

I ran a 2100 and used it to take all my notes when I went back to Uni. To this day it remains one of my favourite pieces of technology. The hand writing recognition was often laughed at but if you gave it enough time then it did become adept at deciphering even some pretty bad scrawl. I could speed write and it would translate with accuracy most of the time. The synch software was pretty clunky but it did work and while it was never a mainstream product, I still love the idea. The community was devoted and supported it for a good while after it got the can. I don't know what the state of play is with them now though. I've still got a 2100 although it has succumbed to "jaggies" which was a kind of commonplace screen failure that used to knock them out. Its in a drawer though with all its PCMCIA cards etc.

[@smithleon]

I had a Palm M130 in 2002 when others were paying a lot more for the Compaq iPaq. Had a pretty strong user community and a genuinely useful device. I remember being the only one at meetings who had access to my emails on the go!

[@lucasrem]

Why you all cry palm here, why you needed crap PDA's ? Newton was the best PDA, but you keep crying i bought crab in 1997 ????

[@JenrikkuAlt]

The sound effects with different pitches from this reminds me of what happens when you touch in the Nintendo Switch Home Menu.

[@Redbikemaster]

I don't know if it's still in there, but in early Mac OS X days and you connected a writing tablet to the computer, you could write "Newton Newton Newton" and the Mac will print "Hey that's me!" instead. It's because the Newton tech was also the predecessor to the character recognition for writing tablets built in to OS X.

[@BunkerSquirrel]

Unironically this is incredible for the time. Almost jaw dropping.

[@probablyyourneighbororsome8412]

Where has Anthony been!?!?

[@samthehacker93]

she goes by Emily now but she released a video about where she has been explaining it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/mF7SqHWegayUfpY

[@TheAlexanka]

watching this on my steam deck makes me feel how far tech has come

[@Redbikemaster]

I'm watching on my Samsung phone at 1080p on cell data with a Bluetooth headset that's not even on my ears, it vibrates on my head near my ears without blocking surrounding noise. How times have changed.

[@jasonsturek6510]

I believe I read somewhere that some of the software developed for the Newton did make its way into OS X (Mac OS) and there might even be some remnants of it still around today. I suppose we area always standing on the shoulders of what came before.

[@Redbikemaster]

In early OS X if you connected a writing tablet to the computer then wrote "Newton newton newton" it would say "That's me!" Don't know if that's still in there, but it's a cool homage. I haven't been a Mac guy since right after the switch to Intel, so no clue if it's still there.

[@retrotv1tech]

Love seeing Linus doing Retro Tech stuff!

[@gleebeevonkordke2068]

And good to see Anthony back!

[@retrotv1tech]

@@gleebeevonkordke2068 absolutely!

[@birdrocket]

@@gleebeevonkordke2068she goes by emily now btw

[@ShadowCompany01]

@@gleebeevonkordke2068 Erm did you just deadname her?!? Bigot!1!1!1!1!1!1

[@_ohmz_electric]

Love seeing Linus discover old technology

[@SirWill99]

Palm Pilot came out in 1996, by 1998 30 million + devices. My wife worked for USRobotics and actually has a patent on one small part of the USR 56k PCMCIA cards. We had a business that replaced glass in palm piolots, and we offered memory upgrades for the Palm V to a Vx. Handspring, dang we took those to 16mb.

[@mullanef1]

This thing gave rise to a whole segment of PDA s. I still remember using the HP / Compaq version for Radiology reporting workflows because you could talk to the network for Patient Info / worklists and could scan (via a plug in bit of hardware) a barcode so they were reporting on the right patient ( recorded by the PDA, sent to the transcriptionists, sent back to the PDA when typed for approval, signed by the stylus).

[@russrh]

Ipaq and aero forever!

[@JamesOKeefe-US]

It's insane how advanced this was. Wow.

[@teg24601]

Fun facts, the Orinoco Card, is the same card that Apple rebranded "Airport" when they launched there WiFi compatible products, around 1999. There were cellular modems for the Newton and eMate that worked with the technologies at the time; but with the demise of RTT1x and EDGE/GPRS, no longer function in most of the world. The serial port adapter is actually a GeoPort (Apple's Modem and Printer ports), not ADB. There were ADB adapters, but this one, and the ones on the older devices were GeoPorts. This did mean they supported AppleTalk, and with the right adapters can connect to a LocalTalk network or Ethernet; and can connect to a serial or networked printer. Awesome to see Emily on screen!

[@lucasrem]

they did not use EDGE or GPRS ! 802 only !

[@teg24601]

@@lucasrem Literally they had cellular cards, which are not 802.11.

[@zephrizi9034]

Still have my dads message pad 110 and 120, they still work too. They're always fun to bring to the apple store, the employees generally love seeing them.

[@Okand2]

I loved how they had colour screen newtons in the third season of for all mankind.

[@ninjawriter]

Actually, turn the stylus around, It's to prop up the pad. You know, before we had those triangle stands/covers. (I had a portable screen from work that had the same thing. it had a pen hole that you could put a pen into to hold it up.) Also, it's hilarious that this thing kinda has the y2k bug in it since it can't go past a certain date.

[@proCaylak]

apple lisa was even worse in that date/time regard. released in 1983, it stored years in 4 bits. its RTC only accepted years between 1981 and 1995.

[@Redbikemaster]

Y2k+10 bug lol

[@johnhogg9756]

It was that device line that caused acorn to spin ARM (acorn risc machines) out into seperate company called Advanced Risc Machines with apple taking a share. Don’t think intel had anything to do with Strongarm at time. It was an ARM610 for most of them and Strongarm in later ones like this

[@NeverlandSystemZor]

The Newton was VERY far ahead of its time. It's amazing for it's era.

[@Tornado1994]

It NEARLY killed Apple. They started bleeding money because of it.

[@sebastianstripe1259]

I'm shocked nobody mentioned the film "Under Siege 2" where this device plays a rather prominent role in saving everyone.

[@Dr0neshuffler]

I'm niether Linus's age nor am I an apple fan. I am a geek. So I only check one of the three boxes, but I did know about the Newton. This specific model came out the year I was born and someone in my family had bought one and it would find itself moving around different family members' houses. It ended up in houses across state lines and oceans even - as it ended up in my home in Florida, one uncle's home in Washington, another's in New Jersey, and got pushed around a couple of family members' homes in Puerto Rico. The cycle of re-gifting the thing around the family ended when I somehow ended up acquiring it in 2005 and instantly sold it in a garage sale to use the proceeds to buy a GameCube game - I don't remember which though. Lol.

[@pqk.]

i aint readin al that

[@djsmeguk]

Friend of mine worked with the newton as part of his master's at Cambridge in 1995. He was using the infrared port and sone sort of vrry early precursor to a vr lighthouse to track the pda and by extension, the person eho owned it, around the Cambridge computer science lab. He got the resolution sufficiently good that it would automatically unlock your linux computer when you sat down at it. Crazy cool stuff in 1995/6.

[@TehButterflyEffect]

I find that hard to believe. My dad was an early infrared developer (a hardware engineer to be exact) and the ports had to line up just right in order for it to work at all. He dealt with much higher-end infrared systems than that, and they had massive shortcomings.

[@djsmeguk]

​@@TehButterflyEffectfair enough, but I remember using it with my friend. It required a LOT of lighthouse sensor thingies and I think it used a server that would use the sensor data to do triangulation.

[@BaronOfDaker]

Linus' Thurston Howell III impression coming along nicely, lovey

[@TiagoCheregati]

+Linus Tech Tips I've got pretty good results using isopropyl alcohol - and some persistence - to revert the sticky state of this rubbery material you mentioned on the video.

[@anumeon]

Fairly sure (if i remember my ADB correctly) that you need to have it inserted and then reset the Newton to initialize the drivers for the keyboard. (Same as old PS/2) But my memory may be a bit fuzzy on that part to be honest.

[@thezaz]

Oh that’s right! ADB was not hot swappable, which was one of the key benefits of switching to USB on the original iMac.

[@TheRealInscrutable]

I saw one of the earlier models. It did handwriting recognition and if you typed a note that said something like "Lunch Thursday with Bob" it would offer to create a calendar event at noon on the next Thursday and would find all the Bob/Robert in your contact list as a connection. The closest I ever saw to that was in the Palm OS, but you had to learn their handwriting and it would not make the connections for you. In those early gadget days it was all about features for the user, these days it's all about trapping you in a tech silo to have your personal data exploited.

[@platinumsun4632]

Greal 😞

[@app0the]

This one has the same assistant thing, they just decided not to demo it for some reason. The "data soup" concept is very addictive, which is I think why iPhones were struggling with adding a "Files" layer to the OS for so much. Even these days on Android I hate it when stuff I put into my audio player app as album art shows up in my photos app, because why not, it's all on the same "disk"! (And adding a nomedia file into the audio folder fixes that but also makes the audio player lose it, because it relies on the same media indexing engine for some reason)

[@victorvillacis6764]

this need way more vies, such a beautiful piece of content put together, they need another channel called fast and furious tech, where they just throw anything at you, since that is what we liked before we got documentary styled videos....

[@HexerPsy]

23:00 Oh! Innovation spotted! Much appreciate the effort here!

[@jaymo9919]

I love 90s tech. Used to have a psion 5mx growing up and would use the IR port to go online. Was good for emails but I did attempt to browse the web when on road trips.

[@BluroStacks]

The modem cards were very handy for printing out notes after a client meeting. Instead of searching for a compatible printer, you could send the text to the customer's fax. My Newton 2100 fit in the 13:11 keyboard case, making it lighter, smaller and more shock resistant than a 90's laptop. It replaced the Sinclair Cambridge Z88 for me.

[@th232r6]

Orinoco card takes me back, used one with a Omni directional magnet mount antenna and went wardriving with friends checking out open networks all over town. Good memories.

[@TheCerealHobbyist]

I LOVED my Newton. I worked with the guy who wrote Eudora for Newton, and we figured out how to do circuit switched wireless on it from a StarTac....then I got a Palm and it was all over for me, Palm from then until my first Blackberry!