Thanks for paying attention to the Newton and other so-called PDAs ("Toy Story," April '96, page 68). I don't really like the PDA moniker, since I view my new Newton as more of a small computer with a pen input system than as some sort of "assistant." Two things about the article surprised me: The "What's Missing" section fails to mention the single most antagonizing thing about the Newton: lack of backlighting. The Newton display is very hard to see, so the device is often difficult to use. Since I'm not familiar with the other Pads, I don't know if they share this problem. If you can't see the display, what good is the Newton?
Second, the article mentions "two ways to get application software into the Newton," along with the idea that there isn't very much software out there. Neither of those approaches is the most common in my experience, and I've found quite a bit of software. The real way most applications get onto people's Newtons is not directly by card or indirectly by disk but instead by a download to a desktop machine and then a transfer onto the Newton.
Terry Schmitt
via the Internet
Nice to see a review of the Mac's little brothers. I'm happy to see there's hope yet for the Newton. But you missed what I've found to be the best PDA on the market, the Psion series of palmtops. This little thing is a Mac user's delight, with multitasking, excellent user interface, and easy programming. I see them being used on planes and trains all the time.
