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If Apple had not been in financial trouble... If Dylan had been completed in time for the NewtonOS... If the Newton had taken off... I mused on some some alt

• lispm 4y ago
  Also if the first Newton MessagePad didn't have less than 1 MB RAM. ;-) The first Newton had 640kbyte of RAM and a 20 Mhz ARM Processor. It was the result of bringing down the cost. It wasn't well received, since the handwriting recognition was bad and the machine was underpowered. The 130 model fixed the latter. In later OS versions the handwriting became useful, eventually. I had later the wonderful Newton MessagePad 2100 with 8 MB RAM and a much improved ARM processor - I used Common Lisp on a Mac with that amount of RAM.. The 2000/2100 series would have been a perfect platform for Dylan, it even would be good enough to run a nice garbage collector. When they discontinued the platform, we knew that it would take a lot of time, years!, for Apple to come up with a new similar mobile platform, but it eventually happened with the iPod touch and the iPhone. But those were then programmed in an object-oriented C dialect and the operating system wasn't as cool as the Newton OS.
  • mark_l_watson 4y ago
    I agree. I bought a Newton after having lunch with Larry Tesler (John Kona also dined with us, a fun lunch!). Larry was pitching me on converting my first Common Lisp book to Dylan. I ended up just tossing my Newton in the trash. Sad.
    • mark_l_watson 4y ago
      EDIT: “John Kona” —> “John Koza”