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Comment by abruzzi | Hacker News Reader

still have a 2000 upgraded to 2100 in a closet somewhere. At some level the iPhone was such a disappoinment after having owned a Newton, becuase the early iPhone, even after the introduction of the app store, felt like a bunch of siloed apps, where the Newton "soup" allowed fairly seamless extensibility and interoperability. (well, at least it felt like that in the 90's.)

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Of course the early iPhone apps were siloed, one could not even copy/paste between apps until three versions in. :-) But the iPhone did, indeed, feel like a step back in many ways. Though Microsoft would let it languish and later get stomped by iOS, the early WinCE/Windows Mobile devices had better inter-app communication and integration. I felt like I could get stuff done (and I did) on some of those devices. The early iPhone had a lot of innovation, but there was no last-minute editing of a Word doc on those devices.

I always wonder how a Newton would perform on modern hardware. Considering how well the handwriting recognition worked on 90s hardware it should be pretty great by now. I definitely miss it. The iPhone feels like a step backwards in terms of user and developer friendliness.

Part of the issue is the move from resistive screens to capacitive screens. The iPhone is just not accurate enough for handwriting.

The iPad with pencil is frustrating for handwriting. But the iPad pro with pencil 2 is likely better, but I've not had a chance to try it.

The tablet PC era computers were pretty good with handwriting but the os didn't make enough drastic changes in user interface to make them work well. Choices were using the on screen keyboard a lot or getting a clunky unit that included a keyboard.

Chromebooks with pen are quite frustrating, and I recommend against them. The pens also tend to use disposable AAAA batteries.

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