[NTLK] Update on Love Letter to Newton (film)

Jon Glass jonglass at usa.net
Sat Feb 4 09:18:53 EST 2017


A number of years ago now, I read an article online that was an interview
with one of the chief engineers of the Newton software. In it, he mentioned
something I've not seen elsewhere, namely that the NewtonOS by the time
that it was discontinued, was a disaster. It had so many patches and other
hacks in it just to make it work that in order to move forward, it would
have been necessary to totally re-write most everything. In other words, it
was a Miracle that the OS survived as well as it had, and that it was on a
dead-end street. I'm grossly paraphrasing here, but this guy was pretty
clear that from a coding perspective of the OS, it was such a mess that
killing the Newton was probably an act of mercy. Unfortunately, I lost the
link to that article, and considering how much things have changed since
then (it was on some site devoted to Newtons or handhelds--forget the name,
even), I doubt the interview is even findable today.

My point is this, the Newton was a dead man walking when Jobs returned. It
was rather inevitable. I was as mad as anybody else back then, and I
persisted until 2005 before I finally had to admit defeat, and switched to
a Palm, first a Tungsten, then a Treo, and finally iPhone, and now Android
and (ack!) Windows 10 on a Surface Pro. But I still long for that Newton
OS, the paper roll, the datebook, the integration, the simple beauty of a
system that literally just got out of my way and let me concentrate on what
I was doing, rather than how to do it. Sigh...

On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 2:04 PM Noah Leon <moosefuel at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree, Forrest, Steve is not really to blame for lots of reasons, it
> still hurts, though, even after all these years!
>
-- 
 --
Jon Glass
jonglass at usa.net
jonglass at mac.com



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