Remembering Apple’s Newton, 30 Years On

The Newton ran its own custom operating system, Newton OS, which was written in C++. It also had its own custom development language, NewtonScript, which allowed third-party developers to create their own applications. These apps didn’t need to be “installed” but could just be copied or beamed onto the Newton, and they would work instantly. (View Highlight)

“The whole architecture that we cooked up had no difference between data in the ‘file system’ and in memory (and for Newton, in the ROM that held the code),” he said in an interview with Ars. “Imagine a world today where JavaScript had MySQL as part of it, and there was no difference between storing data locally in a browser versus storing remotely and running code in either place. The data could span the browser and the server but be treated as one record. Conceptually, a developer just had to understand a few basics, and they were off.” (View Highlight)