Apple Computer Inc now reports that it has sold a disappointing 80,000 of its Newton MessagePads – and it had already been up to 50,000 in the middle of September. The new rate translates to about 7,500 a month. A key downer has been the much-derided handwriting recognition system, which, it turns out, does not recognise script character by character, but analyses writing a word at a time, comparing words with ones stored in its database. If the word is not there, it will inevitably come back with gobbldegook.
