Post #4347882

2026-08-02 04:30 UTC

Ok, so initial impressions: 1. There's so much whimsy in this. Deleting a note has a cute animation where the note is crumpled up and put into a trash can. Accompanied with a sound effect of crumpling paper. 2. I forgot how much resistive touchscreens suck. It takes an unreasonable amount of pressure for a touch to be recognized. Similar to when you're trying to use a ballpoint pen that's nearly out of ink. 3. The handwriting recognition is surprisingly good for the mid-90s. That said, it's still objectively bad. It's easy to forget that we didn't get good handwriting recognition until relatively recently. That said, Eat Up Martha is definitely still a thing, even though Simpsons was making fun of the original MessagePad. I'm going to keep trying, but it is frustrating. 4. The built in screen cover is so useful. Shame that the modern equivalent (an iPad) has the cover as a separate accessory. 5. The device itself is pleasantly chunky. They definitely did their best with then-current technology to make this as thin as possible, and I'm so glad the technology just wasn't there to make this thinner. 6. Turning on the backlight is non-obvious. You hold the power button for a bit until it turns off. Same deal to turn it off. Thanks NewtonFAQ for that (https://newtonfaq.com/newton-faq-hardware.html#IIC6c). 7. This thing is SO delightfully 90s. #AppleNewton

Replies (4)

@whophd@ioc.exchange 2026-08-03 07:17

@younata@hachyderm.io I appreciate the calibration against the modern day. It helps ground us. Comparing our modern times — really confronting it — with a dose of retro, helps us get better valid opinions. Well that’s how I justify my hobby anyway

Open ##4347881
@younata@hachyderm.io 2026-08-03 05:35

Only a day later, and I am finding myself significantly more impressed at the handwriting recognition on the MessagePad 2100. Yes, I’m slightly changing how I write to try to fit that, but if it’ll result in more readable chicken scratch, then this is only a good thing. But, like, this was all handwritten, with only a handful of corrections made, and only to change the capital M’s down to lowercase m’s. No ducking autocorrect! (I need to do the patch that’ll let me set the date to a current one, the Newton had its own y2k38 problem about a decade ago due to using 16? 24? bit Ints to represent date) #AppleNewton

Open ##4347936
@justkwin@toot.community 2026-08-02 07:04

@younata@hachyderm.io One of the many things to love about “For All Mankind” is that in it’s alternate universe the Newton is a dominant platform, so we get to see what could have been.

Open ##4347959
@GamesMissed@mastodon.social 2026-08-02 15:44

@younata@hachyderm.io I think that Nintendo is the only company to handle the limitations of resistive touchscreens well (in the DS/3DS/Wii U), by designing menus and games that recognize those limitations. Pretty much any time I've used a resistive touchscreen from smother manufacturer, it's been frustrating. I've never been able to spend more than few minutes with a Palm device, though. I gather they also did well?

Open ##4347973