Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon minimun from pocketnow.com and today we're unboxing the Apple Newton message pad 2100 and no it's not 1997 but if it was I would have just paid $1,000 for a device that doesn't have a color display so why is pocketnow.com covering a device that has been extinct for 11 years well I'll tell you why the Apple Newton was Apple's first attempt at a handheld device it wasn't terribly successful there were many iterations this was the last iteration of the message pad form factor so you could consider this to be the most refined of the Apple Newton devices the Apple Newton did a lot of interesting things it had a virtual QWERTY keypad it had word suggest suggestions via a pop-up menu it did shape recognition it had handwriting technology that's actually been integrated into OS X version 10.2 and this really started the wave of handheld devices the Palm Pilot came out during the year that this became that this was on sale for its last year so the Palm Pilot was kind of the answer to the the Apple Newton and of course Windows Mobile or Windows CE II came a little bit a little bit later so let's talk specs this thing has 162 megahertz processor it's a strong arm processor it has eight megabytes of ROM four megabytes of RAM and four megabytes of flash memory so you're not gonna be able to store too much music on this thing the screen is surprising the kind of high resolution it's 480 by 320 that's the same resolution as the iPhone but of course it can only display 16 shades of grey so you won't be able to see your pictures very well on there it's got two PCMCIA slots which is pretty amazing so you can use laptop expansion cards with this if you have the right drivers for it which may be difficult to find today for me and it's powered with four double A batteries which is good because getting a device that this old would mean that the battery doesn't work at all but I can just pop in for double-a batteries okay let's get to the unboxing and obviously this is a use device I do not have a time machine but it should be in good condition so let's unbox it now okay I've got something here it looks like a charging cable and I'm sure this isn't the original packaging I can't wait to see this thing Wow it is it is huge it's a nothing else in there here is the device I can tell you that it feels about as heavy as a brick and what do we have here is this a stylus or is it yes it's a stylus that's in the shape of a pen let's see it's a non collapsible stylus just kidding obviously it's not going to be collapsible so let's let's actually open the the packaging here without scratching the screen hopefully it feels it feels high-quality maybe that's because it's actually quite heavy so this is the Apple Newton message pad 2100 and it looks like there is some sort of pop open screen protector this thing is absolutely massive up here it says Newton technology apples spun off a there division of that was making the Newton into its own division so that's why it says Newton technology up there but let's take a look at this thing it's huge I can't wait to turn it on and actually see what the software looks like here are the PCMCIA slots along the side I guess this is where you put in the battery I don't think an instruction manual came with this so I have to figure this out and let's take a look at how it looks next to the HTC Touch bro and of course I'm doing this as a joke but it's just it's really amazing how far we've come in handheld technology the Apple Newton doesn't have phone functionality or a color screen or HSDPA or a radio or Wi-Fi or even enough to hold two pieces of music and so the reason that pocketnow.com is covering a device that is 11 years old is because it's going to be an interesting and fascinating comparison on how far we've come in handheld devices and where we kind of all started back in the 90s with this idea of a personal mobile computer that you could take anywhere with you and I think this is just going to be a really interesting experiment so a lot more to come that's it for now