Newton OS

Newton OS

Screenshot of Newton OS 2.0
Developer Apple Inc.
Written in C++
Working state Historic
Source model Closed source
Initial release August 3, 1993 (1993-08-03)
Final release 2.1 / 21 March 1997 (1997-03-21)
Platforms Apple Newton
Kernel type Microkernel
Default user interface GUI
License Proprietary EULA

Newton OS is the discontinued operating system for the Apple Newton PDAs produced by Apple from 1993–1997. Newton OS was written entirely in C++ and trimmed to be low power consuming and use the available memory efficiently. Many applications were pre-installed in the ROM of the Newton (making for quick start-up) and to save on RAM and flash memory storage for user applications.

Its use of ParaGraph's handwriting recognition engine has been noted as a pioneering implementation.

Features

Newton OS featured many interface elements that even Mac OS didn't have at the time, such as drawers and the "poof" animation. An animation similar to this is found in Mac OS X, and parts of the Newton's handwriting recognition system have been implemented as Inkwell in Mac OS X.

Many features of the Newton are best appreciated in the context of the history of Pen computing.[1][2][3]

Software

Shortly after the Newton PDA's release in 1993, developers were not paying much attention to the new Newton OS API and were still more interested in developing for the Macintosh and Windows platforms. It was not until two years later that developers saw a potential market available to them in creating software for Newton OS. Several programs were made by third-party developers, including software to enhance the disappointing hand writing recognition technology of Newton OS 1.x.

The basic software that came with Newton OS:

Version history

Date released OS version
August 3, 1993 1.0
October 30, 1993 1.1
? ?,1994 1.2
March 4, 1994 1.3
March 14, 1996 2.0
March 21, 1997 2.1

Handwriting recognition

The Newton used the CalliGrapher word-based handwriting recognition engine developed by ParaGraph International Inc, led by former Soviet scientist Stepan Pachikov[4][5]

The earliest versions had weaknesses that resulted in bad publicity and reviews.[6][7][8][9] However, with the release of Newton PDAs based upon version 2.0 of the OS, the handwriting recognition had substantially improved, partially being a product of ParaGraph and an Apple-created recognizer pair: Apple's Rosetta and Mondello. Newton's handwriting recognition, particularly the print recognizer, has been considered by many reviewers, testers, and users to be the best in the industry, even 10 years after it was introduced.[10] It was developed by Apple's Advanced Technology Group, and was described in 2012 as "the world's first genuinely usable handwriting recognition system".[11]

The Newton could recognize hand-printed text, cursive, or a mix of the two, and could also accept free-hand "Sketches", "Shapes", and "ink text". Text could also be entered by tapping with the stylus on a small on-screen pop-up QWERTY keyboard. With "Shapes", Newton could recognize that the user was attempting to draw a circle, a line, a polygon, etc., and it would clean them up into "perfect" vector representations (with modifiable control points and defined vertices) of what the user was attempting to draw. "Shapes" and "Sketches" could be scaled or deformed once drawn. "Ink text" captured the user's free-hand writing but allowed it to be treated somewhat like recognized text when manipulating for later editing purposes ("ink text" supported word wrap, could be formatted to be bold, italic, etc.).[12] At any time a user could also direct the Newton to recognize selected "ink text" and turn it into recognized text (deferred recognition). A Newton Note document (or the notes attached to each contact in Names and each calendar event) could contain any mix of interleaved text, ink text, Shapes, and Sketches.[13]

NewtonScript

Main article: NewtonScript

Newton OS ran applications written in C++, along with an interpreted, user-friendly language called NewtonScript. These applications are stored in packages.

See also

Notes

References

  1. ↑ Notes on the (relatively unknown) History of Pen-based Computing
  2. ↑ Annotated Bibliography in Pen Computing
  3. ↑ Notes on the History of Pen-based Computing on YouTube
  4. ↑ Calore, Michael (January 23, 2007). "Stepan Pachikov Wants to Study Your Handwriting". WIRED. Archived from the original on December 22, 2008. Retrieved February 6, 2009.
  5. ↑ Luckie, Douglas. "Newton Hall of Fame". Retrieved February 6, 2009.
  6. ↑ "Classic Apple Moment: Newton Handwriting Recognition".
  7. ↑ "The Story Behind Apple's Newton".
  8. ↑ "Five Gadgets Ahead of Their Time Apple Newton". October 25, 2010.
  9. ↑ "Will the iPhone's Siri have its 'Egg freckles' moment?". CNN.
  10. ↑ HWR accuracy:
  11. ↑ Smykil, Jeff (June 2005). "In the Loop with Larry Yaeger: part I". Ars Technica. Retrieved February 27, 2012. Also at Apple, in the Advanced Technology Group, [Larry Yaeger] was Technical Lead in the development of the neural network-based handprint recognition system, the world's first genuinely usable handwriting recognition system, showcased in second generation Newton PDAs and Mac OS X's "Inkwell."
  12. ↑ Pen Computing's First Look at Newton OS 2.0
  13. ↑ Read about HWR, ink text, Sketches, & Shapes in Apple's MessagePad Handbook available in Apple's Newton Manuals collection

Additional resources & information

Reviews

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