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In January, Jonathan Wise's Handspring Visor organizer died, so he decided to get a different handheld.
After shopping around, he found a machine that did it all: Web, e-mail, calendar and address book, but it could also recognize ordinary, cursive handwriting that wasn't as awkward as graffiti.
Wise, a Web developer from Ontario, Canada, was impressed by the handheld's hardware: a big, clear screen; two PC card slots; external memory support; and long battery life.
It can connect to Macs, PCs and Unix machines, as well as all kinds of networks, from wireless Wi-Fi networks to the new, always-on GPRS cell-phone nets.
It streams MP3s off the Net and can read headlines aloud that have been automatically fetched from online news sites.
What is this amazing machine? The latest sleek Clié from Sony, or a skunkworks Pocket PC yet to hit the market?
No, it's the granddaddy of them all: Apple's Newton, which is still going strong despite being discontinued by Apple in 1998.
The Newton should have gone away, but amazingly, it has kept current, in both hardware and software, thanks to the efforts of Newton enthusiasts. The Newton community is holding steady and may even be growing.
"The handwriting recognition is unbelievable," Wise said. "But the best thing about owning a Newton has to be the community. In the time it takes to get put on hold by a Handspring tech support agent, you can have 15 different solutions for your problem from Newton users worldwide.... I'd much rather have an out-of-warranty product with this community behind me than a brand-new product backed by Hewlett-Packard or Palm."
Released in 1993, the Newton was one of the first PDAs (personal digital assistants) on the market.
Early models were bulky, expensive and bug-ridden. Apple marketed the Newton poorly, and it was widely ridiculed; a memorable Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau effectively doomed the device.
Later models were vastly improved, but the Newton never took off. Palm stepped in and quickly dominated the handheld market with the wildly popular Palm Pilots, which were smaller, cheaper and easier to use.
In 1997, Palm had a 66 percent market share, Windows CE had 20 percent, and Newton just 6 percent, according to market research firm Dataquest. At the height of its popularity, only an estimated 200,000 Newtons were in use.
Apple finally killed the Newton in February 1998 after Steve Jobs returned to the company, even though fans demonstrated in the parking lot of Apple's Cupertino campus. Apple officials gave them coffee and cookies but refused to resurrect the device.
Fans still take their Newtons to Jobs' keynote speeches at Macworld and wave them in the air in silent protest.
It doesn't seem to matter. Without any help from Apple, Newton users have kept the platform current with technological changes through a series of software hacks and hardware fixes, most of which are freely available.
"There's a lot of sentimentality for the hardware," said aficionado Victor Rehorst, a grad student and programmer from Toronto who maintains the popular NewtonTalk mailing list. "People try to keep it going as long as they can."
Wireless networks like Wi-Fi (802.11b), GSM and GPRS all emerged after the Newton was killed, but Newton hackers have released software to support them all.
There's also an MP3 player for the Newton called Mad Max, adapted for the Newton by Eckhart Köppen. Eric Schneck wrote an iTunes plug-in that syncs a Newton with Apple's digital jukebox.
Sure, the Newton's limited processing power (160-MHz processor) and memory (average 4 MB) limits storage to a handful of songs at a fairly low bit rate, but it saves Newton users $300 on an iPod.
The Newton also has no headphone jack, although one can be fashioned with an inexpensive homemade dongle.
The biggest problem with a Newton is its size: It's as big as a brick.
"People make fun of your Newt," Wise said. "My boss once asked me if it was actually a flatbed scanner."
Despite drawbacks of the aging hardware, fans will argue the Newton's merits over newer devices. The handwriting recognition -- arguably the best ever, big screen and superb networking capabilities are still better than newer, competing devices, they argue.
"The Newton was always the Ferrari to the Palm's Yugo," said Peter Markel, Ideacast's producer for PlanetNewton.com. "Hardware-wise, Newton could, and mostly still does, run rings around the Palm platform."
The hardware has allure, but most users are attracted to the community. Plus, the Newton is no longer Apple's device. It belongs to the users.
"It's the open-source spirit," Schneck said. "I write for the Newton because it's a community to which I can make a visible contribution."
Markel estimated that 20,000 day-to-day Newton users remain. And the community may even be growing; Rehorst's NewtonTalk mailing list has grown by 300 subscribers in the past year alone.
Three new user groups were launched last year, in Los Angeles, Washington and Toronto. There are about 20 active user groups worldwide, concentrated in the United States, Japan, Korea, France and Denmark.
"The Newton community is great, friendly and very competent," said Marco Polenta, an Italian Newton fan. "Newton developers are still continuing to work on Newton projects, and most of their software is shareware or freeware. I think this is very cool."
Rehorst maintains a comprehensive archive of Newton software. He's collected about 1,400 titles, and new ones are added every week, he said. There's all kinds of software, from Telnet clients to biorhythm calculators.
Albert Muniz, a consumer behaviorist at DePaul University in Chicago, is studying the Newton community. He said Newton users provide each other invaluable technical and social support. Without it, many would abandon the platform.
"People stick with the Newton because the community is so strong," Muniz said. "If they have a problem, they turn to the collective genius of the group to get an answer."
As well as software and help, the community maintains many good Newton websites, such as Newton Reference, which has hundreds of Newton-related links.
The Newton Hall of Fame provides interesting background, and This Old Newt, a Newton weblog, tracks new software and other items of interest.
Maintenance can be a problem, but there's a steady trade of Newtons on eBay. Top-of-the-line models that originally cost more than $1,000 can be picked up for about $150. Most users own two or more models, cannibalizing the spares for parts.
Sun Remarketing has lots of spares; there's even a 220-MHz upgrade for later models.
But as users continue to develop the Newton, Apple is leaving it further and further behind.
For example, there's no way to sync with Apple's new operating system, Mac OS X, except through the clunky Classic compatibility environment. Ironically, the Windows version still works with Microsoft's latest operating systems, 2000 or XP.
Newton's Return: A Hit and a Myth
