While I was reading late one night, I found something interesting in the book Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue,… by John Carlton. On page 193, it talks about the lead engineer in the Newton project Steven Sakoman. It goes on to say that he was the primary one in charge or the development until he left with Jean-Louis Gassee to start Be.
This sparked something in my mind. Be just recently had all of its technology bought out by Palm. Not only that, but Palm also acquired a majority of its engineers as well as people in control of the company. I did a search on Google for Palm and Sakoman, to find out that he is now Chief Products Officer.
I like many others have been wondering why Palm would be interested in Be. A company that made an OS that failed. Since Palm has split into two companies, one for hardware, one for software, Sakoman is now working with the software side. I think that Palm as of version 6.0 is going to have a product availiable that is very much comparable to the Newton that we used to know.
Palm 5 is just a transitional OS to get developers into the new way to program for the new hardware. Only time can tell, but, this is the most promising thing to having the return of the Newton.
