Newton

(via <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/reticulating/5288349613/sizes/o/in/photolist-94jb6B-9nWwdZ-8qTS3t-7Z3gDW-8fY1Y8-bYQcKs-bZ7ptY-dcQLrg-bV5PJy-8d4XB3-8BybHw-8d4Xtj-8d4Xvw-8du5Lt-ayPrTq-bfbQpz-7DhbKd-8jpUeE-8jmEZV-aZEXQn-8jc6xf-b1etjT-8dtWHM-fksCDu-9gYEuB-9gYEpz-bkcgEK-8e7rMS-aXAC9c-8eizhZ-b1esWg-9gYEi8-eM9JYi-dgrzR7-dcZSLg-b43Pqk-bkHPjB-8TQyba-aXjZ46-fbBvLu-fbBvJ5-fbBvS3-8zwgH8-8tGQkE-8tGYj9-8dDVby-aXdMxH-cS3t2L-fbDbKr-82ENDG-fbTt1L/" target="_blank">Flickr</a>)

Following a lawsuit filed three and a half years ago by NetAirus Technologies LLC, Apple is preparing for a legal battle in Los Angeles federal court over a patent regarding the iPhone and smartphone technologies, Bloomberg reports.

California man Richard L. Ditzik filed for a patent in 1997 that describes smartphone technologies and behavior, but Apple believes his claim should be invalidated based alone on capabilities of its Newton message pad three years prior.

“The technology at issue was so well known at the time NetAirus filed its patent, that independent patent watchdogs have made NetAirus’s patent a poster child in the movement to limit the proliferation of facially invalid patents,” Apple said in its July 2011 request to throw out the case.
Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBCUzydKSng&start=3514]

Former Apple CEO John Sculley recently attended a South Florida Technology Alliance event to discuss Apple and the genesis of tablet computing, specifically: the Newton MessagePad and ARM Processor.

The MessagePad is the first series of ARM 610 RISC processor-based mobile devices developed by Apple for the Newton OS platform in 1993. Since then, it has become the dominant platform for mobile computing.

“Handwriting was never intended to be a very important aspect of it. […] It was really much more about the fact that you could hold this thing in your hand and it would do a lot of the graphics that you would see on the Macintosh,” explained Sculley at SFTA.

The tablet-like digital assistant spurred a flurry of models with various ARM processor. The series is generally remembered as a market flop now, of course, but Apple’s ARM initiative essentially paved the way for greatness. As The Next Web first noted, the iPhone today uses a by-product of the Newton MessagePad’s specifically designed ARM core.

“No microprocessor existed that would allow you to do mobile graphics-based software,” Sculley revealed, while discussing the birth of ARM.

Expand
Expanding
Close