Twenty years ago, Apple released its first experiment in tablet computing, the Apple Newton MessagePad. While it proved to be a financial disappointment for the company, Apple’s first touchscreen ...

Back in the late 1980s, Apple’s CEO, John Sculley, had a vision he described as the Knowledge Navigator, a 21st century digital assistant that would, through magical feats of artificial intelligence ...

Those waxing nostalgic for Apple's Newton can take comfort in a new unofficial third-party application for the iPhone that can recognize handwriting (fingerwriting?) and turn it into typed text.

Today the iPhone is the alpha gizmo, the one item of consumer electronics that dominates all the others. But in 1993, the hot new gizmo was Apple's Newton, and it was a whole different thing. Not very ...

August 2, 1993: Apple launches the Newton MessagePad, the first product in its line of handheld personal digital assistants. While it will become the most unfairly maligned product in Apple history, ...

The Newton MessagePad did not become the immediate hit Apple desired. April 19, 1994: Gaston Bastiaens, the executive in charge of Apple’s revolutionary new Newton MessagePad product line, parts ways ...

In the grand scheme of things, 1992 is such recent history that it barely qualifies as history. When it comes to portable gadgets, however, it’s an era that’s nearly unrecognizable to us 21st-century ...