Apple Newton

Once upon a time, Apple needed a big idea, and it came in the form of a portable computer that could fit in your pocket. No, not the iPhone–that would come later. First, there was Newton. Though it wasn’t the earliest compact digital organizer, the Newton MessagePad was the first to be dubbed a “personal digital assistant,” or PDA. It was a pocketable rectangular device with a small touch-screen that you could interact with using an included plastic stylus.

As is often the case, the development of the Newton is even more interesting than the product itself. One of the biggest hurdles to creating such a device was finding a chip that didn’t need much power and didn’t produce much heat. It turns out a British company called Acorn had cracked that nut with a new CPU design.

Apple invested $3 million dollars into Acorn to help revise its chip, the Acorn RISC Machine, or ARM. With this injection of resources, Apple, Acorn, and Acorn’s chip partner VLSI spun off the chip division into a new company called Advanced RISC Machines and created the ARM610 CPU that would power the Apple Newton. ARM-based chips now power more than 160 billion devices, including Apple’s latest Macs.

Eventually, these elements came together to form the Apple Newton platform, which was first revealed to the public at CES in 1992 to much fanfare. The original Newton MessagePad (H1000) would go on sale in 1993 with basic features like a calculator, calendar, and notoriously poor handwriting recognition. Though some of its components would later be adopted by the iPhone, the Newton was a commercial failure until it was killed off in 1998 by a returning Steve Jobs who famously hated the device.

What to learn more about the history of Apple Newton? Read the full story here.