11 Facts About Newton MessagePad

Development of the Newton MessagePad first began with Apple's former senior vice president of research and development, Jean-Louis Gassee; his team included Steve Capps, co-writer of macOS Finder, and an employed engineer named Steve Sakoman.

The development of the Newton MessagePad operated in secret until it was eventually revealed to the Apple Board of Directors in late 1990.

Later releases of the Newton MessagePad operating system retained the original recognizer for compatibility, but added a hand-printed-text-only recognizer, called "Rosetta", which was developed by Apple, included in version 2.

Handwriting recognition and parts of the user interface for the Newton MessagePad are best understood in the context of the broad history of pen computing, which is quite extensive.

The most reliable application of the Newton MessagePad was collecting and organizing address and phone numbers.

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Unlike the Palm Pilot, all Newton MessagePad devices are equipped with a standard PC Card expansion slot .

This, together with the flash memory used as internal storage starting with the Apple MessagePad 120, gave birth to the slogan "Newton never dies, it only gets new batteries".

Later versions of Newton MessagePad OS offered improved handwriting recognition, quite possibly a leading reason for the continued popularity of the devices among Newton MessagePad users.

In 2009, CNET compared an Apple MessagePad 2000 to an iPhone 3GS, and the Newton was declared more innovative at its time of release.

Newton MessagePad OS was licensed to a number of third party developers including Sharp and Motorola who developed additional PDA devices based on the Newton MessagePad platform.

Newton MessagePad was used in healthcare applications, for example in collecting data directly from patients.