FWIW, I found the Newton quite workable and carried and used it constantly --- took all of my college notes on it, and in particular, art history, where the professor asked if I could share my notes with a learning-disabled student who had difficulty note-taking and reading handwriting, so I faxed them to the fax machine in the secretary's office.
- handwriting recognition ensured that the text was legible
- the stylus allowed me to include small thumbnail sketches of each slide
- since I had my own copies of the art history texts, one of which I kept in my locker for class (the other was at home for studying), I also included page references to the textbook
After I graduated, I learned that copies of my notes had been shared amongst everyone in the dorms taking that class and that the average grades since then were markedly higher, and the failure rate greatly diminished --- until the old professor retired (taking with her, her personal slides), and the new professor switched texts.
Using a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Kindle Scribe, and Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 these days, since there wasn't a replacement for my Samsung Galaxy Book 12, and I despair of how Microsoft has dumbed-down the stylus since Fall Creators Update: https://github.com/TheJoeFin/Windows10-Community/issues/17 --- in Windows 11 I have to keep the Settings app open so I can toggle the stylus behaviour depending on which application I'm using.
Fortunately, Firefox added a preference for using a stylus as a stylus, not an 11th touch input which actually works:
about:config change: dom.w3c_pointer_events.scroll_by_pen.enabled set it to False.
My parents saw the Newton while out at the mall. Mom heard the price and thought it was quite reasonable... at least until dad told her that "seven ninety-nine" meant $799, not $7.99. Guess her impression of its value was closer to how consumers valued it than what Apple was charging.
To be fair, many douchebags did make their use of the cell phone very conspicuous to show off and did so in places that traditionally had not been subject to telephone chatter. We went through a similar cycle when Bluetooth headsets were first introduced. Now we're accustomed to seeing people walking around, seemingly talking to themselves.
The NewtonOS in modern hardware would be awesome. I wonder if anyone has a plan to do that as well, now that the Mac Classic iPad has been manifest ...
- The Newton was panned, derided, even scorned
- Cell phones in the 90s were frowned upon as Rolex equivalents for douchebags