Cellular connectivity does carry a bit more of a premium second time around - the original 3G Nexus 7 was only £40 more than than the Wi-Fi version - £199 vs £239 - but this time the difference will be £60: £239 vs £299. You can get one from O2, which comes with a SIM and 2GB of monthly data allowance, for £320. At least for the extra you get a LTE-capable device rather than one with a simple 3G radio.I’ve not had a fiddle with a 4G Nexus 7 II but I understand it doesn’t have a phone dialler (allowing it to be used as a traditional mobile) as per the Asus FonePad which is a bit of shame. I was rather looking forward to trading in my old Nexus 7 and Motorola Razr and using the new cellular Nexus 7 in place of both. Bugger.As it was Apple stuck with the larger form-factor established by the original MessagePad. That device was replaced by the $499 MessagePad 100 in March 1994. The 100 was identical to its predecessor but for the more up-to-date Rom it contained. Alongside it debuted the $599 MessagePad 110, an even larger device – to accommodate longer-running AA batteries – with more 1MB of memory rather than 640KB and a 240 x 320 screen, slightly larger than the original one.
The following October, Apple introduced the MessagePad 120, which upped the memory to 2MB – a cheaper version had 1MB – but, more importantly, featured Newton OS 2.0 with its better character recognition. March 1996 saw the arrival of the MessagePad 130, a 120 with a backlit screen, 8MB of ROM and 2.5MB of RAM.A year later, Apple introduced the MessagePad 2000, which featured a bigger, 320 x 480 greyscale display, 5MB of memory – 1MB of RAM and 4MB of Flash – a second PCMCIA slot and a new peripheral connector, the InterConnect port. It was bigger even than the 110, and was the most expensive MessagePad yet: it retailed for $799. It was “what the Newton should have been in the first place”, CEO Gil Amelio would say after his ousting from Apple, but it wasn’t the star of the launch.The eMate 300 outshone the 2000. This was a Newton laptop, a 2.2kg clamshell unit with the same screen as 2000 but arranged in landscape orientation above a physical keyboard. The 2000 ran on a 162MHz StrongARM 110 chip, but the education-oriented eMate had to make do with a 25MHz ARM 710a.It was “the first of a new class of affordable mobile computer”, as Apple put it, and it’s arguably the first true netbook – particularly if equipped with the optional PCMCIA modem Apple offered. Never a serious productivity machine, it was nonetheless a great writer’s portable, able to upload work to a desktop Mac or PC.
The 300 shipped early in 1997, but its arrival was overshadowed by Steve Jobs’ triumphant return to Apple as “advisor” to then CEO Gil Amelio. The following July, Amelio was out and soon Jobs was back in control, albeit as “interim CEO”. He would eventually drop the "interim" but from July 1997 he ran the company right up until January 2011, the start of his final leave of absence on medical grounds. He died the following October.Newton died – as an Apple product, at least – on 27 February 1998, the result of Jobs’ aggressive pruning following his return to Apple’s helm. Apple released the MessagePad 2100 in November 1997, but everyone expected Jobs to axe Newton sooner or later. Unlike the Mac, they said, Newton had not been developed under Jobs’ watch.
That may well have reinforced Jobs’ thinking, but killing Newton was first a pragmatic decision. Apple had failed to license the platform far and wide as Sculley wanted to, though he’d been ousted before such an effort could really begin.His successor, Michael Spindler, didn’t pursue it aggressively - he was keener to license the Mac OS instead - and considered shutting the Newton operation down on the recommendation of McKinsey, a consultancy.After Spindler, Gil Amelio, who initially considered ditching Newton - which was costing the company $15 million a quarter, he later said - too but rejected the notion, attempted to make more of the platform, sensing its value as "not Mac", and that led to both the eMate and a plan to spin off Newton as a separate company, Newton, Inc. It almost happened, but Jobs pulled it back, perhaps feeling that a company in need of major revivification didn’t need the distraction of a spin-off process.
He soon realised that without major endeavour Newton wasn’t going to become the widely supported platform Sculley had dreamed of, and in its current state Apple couldn’t afford to do that – not if it wanted to revamp the Mac OS as Mac OS X. The Mac was the reason why Jobs’ company NeXT and its NeXTStep OS had been acquired by Apple in December 1996.And even with more money: could Newton had cut it in the face of competition from Microsoft’s Windows CE, the precursor to Windows Mobile; the Palm OS; and the emerging Symbian platform? Probably not.Had Jobs kept Newton, perhaps the OS would have matured and, when the CEO eventually turned to the mobile market, found a home in the iPhone, as many Newton fans hoped when rumours of Apple tablets and such began to leak out in the mid-2000s. I think basing the iPhone on Newton OS (as it was) would have prevented Apple enjoying the success it did. Newton was too firmly rooted in the old world of pen computing, as were Windows Mobile and even Symbian, which is one reason why iOS was able to leap ahead.
iOS is based on Mac OS X, and thus came with a toolchain familiar to all Mac developers, not just the small number who’d also embraced the Newton OS.But Newton has its place as one of the great "might-have-beens" of Apple and, indeed, mobile technology history. It still has its adherents, and for the early 1990s – despite the many, many gags – was impressive technology.But it was too early. Even had Apple integrated cellular communications – as Motorola did with with Newton hardware, and as IBM showed in November 1993 with the BellSouth Simon, though that wasn’t based on Newton – it would have raised the price beyond the point where most businesses, let alone individuals, could justify the expenditure.
This is the third time I’ve had a fiddle with a Huawei device packing the ambitious Chinese OEM’s in-house ARM Cortex-A9-compatible 1.5GHz quad-core K3V2 chipset. Other than that there is little remarkable about this 3G/LTE slate. The 10.1-inch screen is a traditional 1280 x 800 IPS LCD affair, while for storage you get 16GB built-in and a micro SD card slot good for cards up to 32GB. At 620g, it’s reasonably light, and the 6600mAh battery gives a decent runtime between visits to the wall socket. The 10mm thick metal unibody design is pretty slick too. It’s another example of the improvements taking place in Huawei’s design and manufacturing processes.
The MediaPad Link’s main claim to your attention though is that it will soon - mid-October - cost just £29.99 upfront from Three if you commit to a £19.99-a-month two-year contract offering 5GB of monthly mobile data transfer. Or you can buy it for £229 with a rolling one-month data plan of either 1GB or 10GB at £7.50 and £15, respectively. Since Three has - in my experience at least - the fastest and most reliable 3G service in the UK that seems like a decent offer. And if what I hear is right, Three will offer access to its LTE (4G) service for no extra cost when it launches later in the year. A potential downside is that the Link ships with Huawei’s rather idiosyncratic Emotion UI - sitting on top of Android 4.2.1 - but you can snag a free third-party launcher from the Play Store and fix that in a trice.
Since I reviewed the Wi-Fi Galaxy Note 8.0 I’ve grown more fond of it. The size, performance, shape - all are starting to feel close to a tablet ideal. Stick a 4G SIM in it and you have a very handy device that is great for gaming, reading and sucking down data while on the go. I’d still prefer it without the trademark physical buttons below the eight-inch 1280 x 800 TFT screen but I’m even starting to get use to them, as I am the various bonus features crammed into Samsung’s TouchWiz launcher.The aces in the 3G/LTE Note 8’s hand are the S-Pen stylus and the phone dialler, which massively extend the tablet’s functionality: you can use it as a mobile phone and a digital notepad. Thanks to a decent brace of cameras, a quad-core 1.6GHz chip and a 4600mAh battery the Note 8 is versatile, powerful and able to go a full two days between trips to the charger. If I had to pick a hole, it’s that the battery is fixed in place, but that’s hardly a rare feature for a tablet. Is this the best medium-sized tablet money can buy? You know, it just may be.
There is a flaw with this though and it’s not exactly unique to this product. Trying to make small speakers sound better by adding a bass driver doesn’t eliminate the inherent harshness of typical laptop speakers. So there’s a touch of rough-with-the-smooth to the listening experience, as the internal speakers just don’t have the fidelity to seamlessly blend with the bass output, and this becomes increasingly evident at louder volumes.I fiddled with Waves Maxx for some time to see how good it could get, but never quite achieved the evenness I was aiming for. There are some helpful functions in there, though, to enhance dialogue, contain dynamics and boost output. It’s not just for movies, as these functions can be applied for gaming and music, too. Indeed, the 10-band EQ could come in handy if you do want to create a custom EQ curve to get the best out of this audio setup - good luck with that.