Because I’m just that much of a total nerd, I decided the other day that I needed another Newton OS-powered device in the household. But not just any device…

To paraphrase Voltaire: if there were no eBay, it would have to be invented.

The eMate 300 was Apple’s last Newton product, sold to the education market. Unlike the other models, the eMate included a built-in keyboard and had a case of translucent plastic, similar to the original Apple Studio Display 15″ flat-panel screen (and over a year before the original iMac made that same translucent design all the rage). It was markedly slower than the MessagePad 2000 and MessagePad 2100 models and had less memory, but it did have NewtonWorks built-in, and offered microphone/line-out ports and shipped with the same version of Newton OS as the MP2000 and MP2100. All three models featured Apple’s Rosetta handwriting-recognition engine, which offered far superior results to the engine included with older models. (That same technology lives on in Mac OS X as Inkwell.)

The eMate was born at a time when Apple was finally starting to turn the corner with the Newton; Palm had not yet established itself as firmly as it eventually would, and with the MP2x00 models and their improved HWR helping to erase the Newton’s reputation for, shall we say, imperfect results, Apple made plans to spin off the platform into a separate company. Around this time, however, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as interim (later permanent) CEO, and one of his first decisions was to kill the Newton entirely. Officially, it was due to poor sales and a desire to focus on the core Mac line, but seven years later speculation remains that Steve axed the program because it was a pet project of John Sculley (the man who forced Jobs out of Apple in 1985) and Newton, Inc. was the brainchild of Dr. Gil Amelio (the then-CEO of Apple, who Jobs himself replaced).

Despite all the politics, the eMate remains a desirable computer. With the same ease-of-use as the other Newtons, along with a virtually silent keyboard and integrated handle, it’s a near-perfect totable. I may end up taking it to work to use as a note-taker and network tester, plus it’d be easier to carry over to El Tiempo Latino than a PowerBook.

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