Apple Newton in the House, Unboxing Video

If it were 1997, I would have just paid $1,000 to buy the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100. That's more than an HTC Touch Pro sells for today, a device that is possibly the most feature-packed phone ever of any platform, let alone Windows Mobile. The Newton's prohibitively high price is one of the reasons why it didn't gain wide market acceptance.

Let's talk specs. The Newton MessagePad 2100 uses an Intel StrongARM processer running at 162MHz, a large 6.1" 16-scale 480x320 monochrome touchscreen display (which comes out to 95PPI), 8MB ROM, 4MB RAM, and 4MB extra storage via the expansion slot. It has two PCMCIA card slots and infrared IrDA for wireless file transfer. To interface with your computer, it uses the trusty serial interface which is now just about extinct.

Why are we covering an 11 year old vintage handheld device? Shouldn't this be in a museum somewhere? As mentioned in the video, I thought it would be interesting - and possibly fascinating - to understand the user experience that Apple wanted to create with their first attempt at a handheld device. We are looking at the MessagePad 2100 in particular because it was the last of the MessagePad series of devices before the line was axed by Apple, so presumably, this model is the most refined and evolved of the previous MessagePad devices.

In this series, we're going to cover the history, hardware, software, and experience that the MessagePad 2100 brings us. It'll be fun.

See also:
Detailed specs on the Newton MessagePad 2100