When Microsoft/Intel’s Ultramobile PC platform (aka Origami) debuted earlier in the year, there were certainly a number of people who thought “wait a second…didn’t Apple try this 10 years ago with the Newton?” CNet UK evidently decided so, so they whipped up an eight round bout between Samsung’s Q1 UMPC and the Newton MessagePad 2000. And despite the MessagePad’s age, and the number of hits it took from the younger Q1, it delivered a devastating knockout in the form of price and battery life.
There are, of course, plenty of Newton devotees still out there (our own Andy Ihnatko, for example) and the platform is alive and…well, it’s alive anyway. I like the idea of a mobile PC that’s smaller than my laptop, and after the CNet piece, I’m tempted to snag myself a MessagePad 2000 on eBay. Then again, might Apple revisit this concept? It was Steve Jobs who killed the Newton, but the recent patent filings of the touchless iPod interface still make me wonder.
[via digg]
