Imagesource: https://apple.com/

Remember the Apple Newton? Well, this device - which actually coined the term PDA - was announced nearly exactly 30 years ago. Time to celebrate! 🎉

On the one hand, the Newton was ahead of its time as a mobile device. But the problems with its main feature - handwriting recognition - brought it a lot of ridicule, and after his return to Apple, Steve Jobs immediately discontinued this project. This was probably not least because the Newton was a project of John Sculley, who had previously forced Jobs out of the company.

However, the Newton is alive! And its place in history is not only that of an early forerunner of the first iPhones. No, the Newton came with an ARM 610 RISC chip, and was at least one of the founders of the success story of the underlying architecture.

This chip and the other innards of the Newton can be emulated very well thanks to the wonders of modern technology in 2022. And Paul Guyot has published exactly that with his project Einstein. Neither the first nor the only, but a very good emulator.

With the right ROMs you can run the Newton's OS on Linux, Mac and Windows. 30 years later neither comparable nor massively impressive. But for sure, there are use cases. 🤓