Right, it was a Personal Digital Assistant -- the emphasis was on handwriting recognition; much of the Newton's pop-culture legacy is how ceaseless the lampooni

Right, it was a Personal Digital Assistant -- the emphasis was on handwriting recognition; much of the Newton's pop-culture legacy is how ceaseless the lampooning of this features' flaws were at the time (regarding which, I had a MessagePad 130 and it was all more or less true). But so while it wasn't called a tablet and differed a bit from the near-Platonic contemporary tablet form, it's pretty close to a tablet in terms of UX, use-case, obvious apps...