January 29, 1998 - New Newton OS Planned
January 29, 1998
New Newton OS Planned
Amid unconfirmed news reports that Apple Computer plans major shifts in its Newton development and marketing, Planet Newton has learned from sources at Apple that it intends to revamp the Newton Operating System (Newton OS) and release an entirely new version based on Macintosh/Rhapsody technology later this year.
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What this means is that Newton devices will likely not be based on StrongARM processors (at least not future ones; its possible an initial generation running the new OS will be because of the lead times in designing hardware platforms)
..snip..
It also appears clear from statements by senior Apple officials that the "Newton" marketing identity will either be entirely discontinued, or be subsumed into that of a "MacOS/Rhapsody Lite" campaign. Apple has already begun this effort on the plain brown Apple-only packaging for Newton MessagePad 2100s, and this process will accelerate with the next generation of Newton devices.
The whole story:
http://www.planetnewton.com/dailyplanet/PN012919982.html
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It sort of makes sense, explains the unexpected disco of the Newton only a month after this was written.. Imagine the iPad, the rebranded Newton. Newton was originally to be a legal pad sized thing. But costs for such a beast in the early 90s were prohibitive. But today, who knows? It could have TFT, 16 bit color, 802.11, good battery life and more.
Just speculating..
