Newton Rumored Dead and Gone -- Information from a reliable source indicates most of the engineers working on the Newton are gone, other than those fitting a PowerPC chip into the eMate shell in place of the existing StrongARM processor. With the addition of a color screen and a stripped-down version of Mac OS reportedly under development, you end up with an inexpensive Mac OS-based network computer (combined with Rhapsody servers for a complete solution) that can potentially work off the network with decent battery life. The practical upshot is that the MessagePad 2100 will be the final Newton, and inventory is expected to run dry in the next few months. What makes this situation so confusing is that Apple only recently reabsorbed Newton, Inc. If all Apple wanted was the eMate plastics and some engineers, why not let the Newton group continue on its own or at least release the important Newton source code to the large and active Newton development community? [ACE]

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