Apple still owns all rights to Newton OS and the MessagePad. Newton OS 2.x's handwriting recognition called "Rosetta" is the foundation of Inkwell in OS X.
Larry Yaeger, the father of the Rosetta recognizer,
was a presenter at the WWNC.
As a current Newton MessagePad 2100 and Tapwave Zodiac 2 (my primary PDA) owner, I was pleasantly surprised to see the Zodiac featured in one of Roman Pixell's
slides at the WWNC. With Einstein, hopefully one day soon my avatar will become a reality
, and several people on the NewtonTalk list have mentioned the Zodiac as a possible candidate for Einstein due to the Zodiac's striking similarities in form, dual expansion slots, and comfort in landscape or portrait orientation.
I was always interested in the Newton since they were announced back in 1993, but they were too expensive to fit within my college grad budget at the time. As a result, I was immediately drawn to the USR Palm Pilot when it was released in 1996, it was my first PDA.
After buying my Sony Clie NX70V, I still felt something was missing and read about the dedicated Newton community that still exists, and I started lurking the
NewtonTalk mailing list. I purchased a mint MP2100 and immediately found the Newton OS had what I felt was missing from current PDAs. The
HWR and Intelligent Assistance Architecture are still unmatched today.