Apple Newton

The handheld that was right, ten years early

Shut down
19902026

The Apple Newton MessagePad launched in August 1993 as the first widely sold personal digital assistant, coining the term PDA. Mocked for its early handwriting recognition and undercut by the cheaper Palm Pilot, it was killed by Steve Jobs on 27 February 1998, months after his return to Apple.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 1993
  2. 2 August 1993 Launch
    The Newton MessagePad ships

    The first mass-market PDA, at $699.

  3. 26 August 1993 Incident
    Doonesbury mocks the handwriting recognition

    "Eat up Martha" enters the culture via The Simpsons soon after.

  4. 1996
  5. 10 March 1996 Decline
    The Palm Pilot arrives

    Cheaper and simpler, it takes the market Newton created.

  6. 1997
  7. March 1997 Version
    MessagePad 2000 fixes recognition

    The best Newton arrives after the reputation is set.

  8. 1998
  9. 27 February 1998 Shutdown
    Steve Jobs cancels the Newton

    The MessagePad 2100 and eMate 300 are discontinued the same day.

The site through time

Browse apple.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Apple 1993–1998 Founded Platform cancelled by Steve Jobs in 1998

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Steve Jobs discontinued the Newton platform on 27 February 1998, saying the decision was "consistent with our strategy to focus all of our software development resources on extending the Macintosh operating system".

Our analysis: The Newton's handwriting recognition became a national joke via Doonesbury and The Simpsons before later versions fixed it, and by then the Palm Pilot had taken the market with something cheaper that only tried to do less. Jobs killed it on returning to Apple, and the engineering lived on: the team's ARM investment and touch ideas ran straight into the iPhone.

History [edit]

"Eat up Martha"

Apple's Newton MessagePad went on sale on 2 August 1993 after five years and reportedly over $100 million of development. John Sculley coined "personal digital assistant" for it. It could take handwritten notes, recognise them as text, manage contacts and calendars, beam data by infrared, and act on written commands, in 1993, on a battery-powered handheld.

The handwriting recognition on that first model was not good enough. Doonesbury ran a week of strips mocking it; The Simpsons turned it into a gag where "Beat up Martin" is transcribed as "Eat up Martha", a joke that outlived the product by decades. Later models, especially the MessagePad 2000 and 2100 with a rewritten recogniser, were genuinely excellent, but the reputation had set.

Killed on return

Meanwhile Palm shipped the Pilot in 1996: cheaper, smaller, faster to sync, and honest about being an accessory to a PC rather than a computer in itself. It took the market Newton had created.

Steve Jobs, back at Apple and cutting relentlessly, ended the Newton platform on 27 February 1998, including the MessagePad 2100 and the eMate 300, the education laptop that had briefly hinted at a very different Apple. Newton's fingerprints are everywhere in what followed: Apple's early investment in ARM, made for the Newton, became a shareholding worth billions, and ARM chips now run every iPhone. Several Newton engineers went on to build the iPhone's software, and the device Apple shipped in 2007 finally did what the Newton had promised.

Similar projects

Microsoft Kin Dead in 48 days 2010–2011 Zune Microsoft's answer to the iPod, five years late 2006–2015 iPod 1,000 songs in your pocket 2001–2022 Pebble The smartwatch Kickstarter built, and Fitbit buried 2013–2018 Google Glass The face computer the public rejected 2013–2023 HP TouchPad Killed 49 days after launch 2011–2011

Sources [edit]

  1. Apple Discontinued the Newton 25 Years Ago Today MacRumors 27 February 2023 [archived]
  2. Newton MessagePad, Newton OS canceled: Today in Apple history Cult of Mac 27 February 2023 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).