[iPAQ] PDA UI - Learning from Newton

As is their want, Apple put in a tremendous amount of work on UI design for
the Newton to ensure easy and consistent stylus-oriented operation. It is
worthwhile to learn from it. I do believe that had Apple kept their hand in
the game, benefiting from the advances that allow today's PDAs to be
smaller, faster and cheaper, today's Newton would be a leading PDA.

The UNNA maintains an excellent repository of Newton content.
http://www.unna.org/unna/development/documentation/ takes you directly to
the section contains the official programming documentation, including the
UI guide (UI_GUIDE.ZIP contains the 307 page Newton OS 2.0 UI Guidelines) in
PDF format.

We've talked about how stylus-based PDA UIs are different than
mouse-keyboard-large screen UIs, and it seems to be that it makes sense to
learn from all of Apple's research and effort. Not to blindly clone it, but
the tools are already in place upon which to apply Newtonesque ideas.

        --- Noel
Received on Sat Jan 5 12:48:42 2002