I liked the Newton products, and used them for a while. I thought the MessagePad was an awkward size, though; too big to fit in a pocket, but too small to have

I liked the Newton products, and used them for a while. I thought the MessagePad was an awkward size, though; too big to fit in a pocket, but too small to have a good-sized screen. It would have been better if it were either smaller, like the Palm Pilot, or larger, like the unreleased Senior and Cadillac prototypes (I had a couple of those and liked them quite a bit). Hardware limitations did have an important effect on them. Pretty much everything you see on the shipping Newton was a compromise between trying to give the device enough power and capacity to be interesting and trying to keep it small and cheap enough for people to buy. We didn't hit the sweet spot. Yeah, iOS gave up a lot of flexibility and capability as compared to Newton, but Steve was never going to reuse a failed product conceived under someone else's leadership, and anyway, he chose to abandon the whole idea of a device for creating stuff and went with a device for consuming.