Remembering the Apple Newton’s Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact
The result of all that work was a completely new category of device running an entirely new architecture housed in a form factor that represented a completely new and bold design language. There was just one problem: handwriting. “We were just way ahead of the technology,” laments Capps. “We barely got it functioning by ’93 when we started shipping it.” Handwriting recognition was supposed to be Newton’s killer feature, and yet it was the feature that probably ultimately killed the product.
