The Apple Newton was officially discontinued on February 27, 1998. If you know about the device, you're probably aware it had a rocky existence in its relatively brief time on Earth.

So why bother commemorating the Newton, and particularly its end? If the Newton hadn't ended, we might not have gotten the iPhone or smartphones in general. So, read on to see how the Apple Newton started us on the path to the world of computers in our pockets.

What Was the Apple Newton and Why Did It Fail?

Apple Newton on a desk
Image Credit: Shou-Hui Wang/Flickr

The Newton was the world's first "personal digital assistant," or PDA. Then Apple CEO John Sculley actually coined the term PDA in his announcement of the product in 1992.

As a PDA, the Apple Newton could take notes, act as a digital calendar, store contact information, be a calculator, and send faxes. It could also send messages to pagers if you got an optional accessory card for it.

It did all that while fulfilling Sculley's major requirement for the device—that it fits in his pocket. The Newton was really the first highly mobile computer, though being released in August 1993 meant it didn't have many wireless features.

To operate the Newton, you would use its stylus to tap icons and different parts of the screen. To write on it, you could use the stylus to tap individual keys on the screen's collapsible keyboard or use the Newton's handwriting recognition feature, which was a major selling point.

Users could turn the recognition feature on and write out words on the Newton's screen with the stylus. The Newton would then interpret these scribblings and type the words out on its screen. It could also interpret drawn shapes and would refine them with straighter lines or more exact curves once they were drawn.

Apple Newton with its stylus
Image Credit: Felix Winkelnkemper/Wikimedia Commons

Unfortunately, the handwriting recognition feature of the Newton was a big contributor to its downfall, as it did not work well in the early units. Words would get odd spacing between letters or would be misinterpreted entirely. The results were very mockable—The Simpsons made fun of the Newton's interpretation difficulties—but they were also very frustrating for early users.

So, despite being an intense innovation in size and portability for computers, the Newton was a device with some very public failures. As a result, it only got five years on the market before Apple ceased production on it entirely.

Why Apple Discontinued the Newton

The ultimate discontinuation of the Newton PDA was the result of a lot of factors. But the final call was made by one person: Steve Jobs.

Jobs founded Apple in 1976 but resigned as CEO in 1985 after a power struggle with John Sculley. After Sculley was ousted by Apple's board in 1993, Jobs was brought back to Apple in 1997, where he remained CEO until his death in 2011.

All versions of the Apple Newton together on a table
Image Credit: moparx/Flickr

Steve Jobs returned to Apple with many different projects being worked on, and the company was in $200 million of debt. He discontinued several projects to turn Apple back towards profitability; in February 1998, the Newton was one of them.

Why end the Newton, though? Despite fixing a lot of its handwriting recognition issues with Newton OS 2.0 and offering external keyboards for the device, sales weren't improving. The high price of the Newton ($800 back then, which is equivalent to $1470 in 2023) also contributed to low sales overall.

The Newton was also doing quite poorly compared to the emerging Palm Pilot PDA. And Jobs wasn't enamored with the management of the Newton team, nor with the Newton's stylus. As a result, Apple stopped producing the Newton and redistributed the Newton team elsewhere.

The Legacy of Apple's Newton

Though the Newton is no longer produced by Apple, it has lived on in various ways at the company—namely, in what it inspired after its demise.

Many people who had worked on the Newton at Apple ended up on the team that made the first iPhone. The launch of the original iPhone is an important moment in the history of cell phones, but it being a portable computer is very traceable to the Apple Newton.

Several iPhones facedown beside an Apple Newton on a glass shelf
Image Credit: raneko/Flickr

The iPad can also thank the Newton for its eventual existence for similar reasons. And though Steve Jobs got his wish for human fingers to be the styluses of Apple's touchscreen devices, we eventually saw the stylus idea return via the Apple Pencil.

But all smartphones and tablets can be traced back to the Apple Newton via the ARM (formerly Advanced RISC Machines) processors that power each of them.

Apple invested in ARM specifically to get chips that were small enough and low-power enough to work in the dimensions of the Newton. Without that investment, ARM processors might look very different, as would smartphones, tablets, and laptops!

There were also functions within the Newton that carried over to future Apple products. A user could search their entire Newton for something with its search feature, which exists today as Spotlight on the Mac.

iPhones and iPads carry on the handwriting recognition function that started with the Newton. Thankfully, it has improved significantly since then and is now pretty fun to use.

The Apple Newton: A Failure That Led to Many Successes

Apple's Newton is not a device to remember as a great PDA. Its handwriting recognition issues were numerous, and it barely made a dent in its own market despite creating it in the first place.

But it's a device that got many people working on pocket-sized computers, and for that, we have to thank it for the existence of smartphones, tablets, and even many laptops.

So, on the 25th anniversary of its demise, we'd like to thank the Newton and everyone at Apple who worked on it. Without its failure, we might not have so many modern successes!