Sean Luke, a former Apple Newton developer, writes an essay about the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet Graphical User Interface (GUI) shortcomings.

I like the N800. That’s why I bought it. But as great as the N800 is, and as much of an advance it represents technologically over my 10-year-old MessagePad, I am surprised at how much more sophisticated the MessagePad is than the N800 in terms of user experience.

The point of this essay is to discuss (later) places where Nokia could actively, and generally easily, steal from the Newton, and some GUI bugs they could fix. But it might be useful first to mention four areas where the Newton really shines compared to the N800, but which the N800 will never (and in some cases should never) adopt simply because the change in technology would require too large a tradeoff in other areas. Unfortunate but probably necessary given the N800’s intended purpose.

The Apple Newton is an early line of personal digital assistants developed, manufactured and marketed by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) from 1993 to 1998. The original “MessagePad” Newtons featured handwriting recognition. The term “Newton” was Apple’s name for the operating system it used, but popular usage of the word Newton has grown to include the device and its software together.

Read Sean Luke’s full writeup.

via Internet Tablet Talk