MessagePad

The MessagePad was a series of touchscreen mobile devices and the very first tablet computer released by Apple Computer as part of its Newton platform.

History
The original MessagePad was released in August 1993 running a monochrome version of Newton OS, which was advanced for its day and came with a stylus similar to the. The MessagePad 2000 introduced grayscale support in March 1997, but the Newton platform was discontinued in February 1998.

The successor to the MessagePad is the iPad, which was released in 2010; a similar stylus did not appear until the Apple Pencil was released for the iPad Pro in 2015.

Articles

 * A Guide to the Apple Newton by Stephen Hackett at 512 Pixels (2015-08-18)
 * Retro Apple: The Apple Newton MessagePad was well ahead of its time by Steve Sande at Rocket Yard (2020-08-21, archived 2020-10-21)