This post was published 3 years 11 months 17 days ago. This info might have changed or might have become outdated.

All faithful users of handheld devices, please bow your heads for a collective moment of silence. The Newton Museum – actually a website once dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the Apple Newton – has decided to close for good. Their extensive collection of Newton devices is for sale in an Ebay auction and the site will close after the sale is completed.  The Newton Museum is located online at http://www.newtonmuseum.com/.

As of midnight on Friday, December 23, 2005, the bidding was just over $2,100. The collection consists of several boxed Newtons, software, and loads of accessories.

Many readers of this site probably do not remember the Newton, which was one of the first PDAs to hit the market. It was first sold in 1993 and production was stopped in 1998. In its original design, the Newton was not supposed to be a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Actually, that class of microcomputers did not yet exist. The Newton’s OS was unique and based on object-oriented databases called "soups". What made the soups unique was that developers could develop "cross-soup" functionality, meaning that you could easily convert a note to an appointment, or task. The biggest barrier was synchronization – the Newton’s OS was so unique that it could not easily be made to sync with any other OS, including Apple’s. (Almost reminds me of another sync application….)  When the original Palm Pilot was released it was vastly inferior to the Newton in its operation, but it could reliably synchronize with other operating systems.

While many of you may claim to not remember the Newton, there is a very good chance that you have seen one in the movies or on television. Steven Seagal used a Newton to fax a message to the Pentagon in the movie "Under Siege 2"; Gary Sinise, as the heartless kidnapper, used a Newton in the movie "Ransom"; and those two way out FBI agents – Mulder and Scully – used Newtons in the early years of "The X Files"; and the character Kate Libby, played by Angolina Jolie in the movie "Hackers" also used a Newton MessagePad.

So even if you never saw one in person, bow your head in a brief moment of silence for one of the devices that blazed the path for whichever handheld device you are using today.