The
Newton is a series of
personal digital assistants developed and marketed by
Apple Inc. An early device in the PDA category – the Newton originated the term "personal digital assistant" – it was the first to feature
handwriting recognition. Apple started developing the platform in 1987 and shipped the first devices 1993; production officially ended on February 27, 1998. Newton devices run on a proprietary
operating system,
Newton OS; examples include Apple's
MessagePad series and the
eMate 300, and other companies also released devices running on Newton OS. Most Newton devices were based on the
ARM 610 RISC processor and all featured handwriting-based input.