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Return of the Newton?
Word around town is that the Newton may be heading for a comeback of sorts.
For those of you too young to remember, the Newton was Apple's ill-fated early 90's attempt at a PDA. It had no buttons,featured a touch-screen (stylus) interface and sported handwriting recognition. It was a device ahead of its time and would have revolutionized the industry, had it not been for one small flaw.
It totally sucked.
The notoriously bad handwriting recognition on the Newton made the device more or less inoperable to most people and put it at number one on most people's list of Apple flops (though I'd personally bestow that honor on the 20th anniversary Mac.)
Anyways, yet another bout of rumors has a distant descendant of the Newton on the way from Apple. According to the super-secret source for MacDailyNews, the device is sort of like a full-screen iPhone (or maybe half a MacBook Air?) with tactile feedback and a Superdrive (though I find that one hard to buy, as Apple is moving to get rid of optical media devices in its portables.) Apple Insider has been claiming something like this is in the pipeline for a while now as well.
Certainly this device would be better than the Newton, build would it also have better luck in the marketplace? Tablets are not a huge market as it is, and Apple would have to fend with an established PC market as well. Even if it's better than any PC tablet, will it be able to get enough traction to be viable?
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