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by ctxc 1252 days ago
Is it really a good FAQ if it doesn't explain _what_ it is as top level info? What is this? There are no links to the original product (or whatever it is - hardware? Software? OS?) either in the first few minutes of navigation.
4 comments

Weirdly it explains what an FAQ is but assumes you know what "Newton" is.
Has the Apple Newton really fallen so far out of the public consciousness that this wouldn't be obvious? What about the Palm Pilot? Yes, I know the idea of PDAs has basically disappeared since the advent of smartphones (which are really just PDAs that also work as phones), but even so.
I know what an Apple Newton is. But this is not the Apple Newton FAQ. It's the Newton FAQ.

If you don't specify the context and namespace, don't be surprised when people don't know wtf you're talking about. You might as well make a "String Class FAQ"

Or better yet a "String FAQ" for maximally reduced context, similar to a "Newton FAQ". Just the addition of an extra word (Apple) would help, but presumably the Newton fans are still tied to the way the Apple marketing talked about Newton without any qualification words.

https://youtu.be/lkg4EAK0Y30

> Has the Apple Newton really fallen so far out of the public consciousness that this wouldn't be obvious?

Yes.

> What about the Palm Pilot?

The what?

Kidding aside, I doubt anyone who finds their way to this FAQ without knowing what it's about will care enough to find out. If they do, there's no shortage of obvious search terms throughout the text that will make the context very easy to come by.

> Has the Apple Newton really fallen so far out of the public consciousness that this wouldn't be obvious?

They ceased production of the Apple Newton in 1998 according to Wikipedia. and the most recent Palm product I've heard of came out in 2010.

PDAs are basically floppy disks as far as the wider public knows.

Q: is this a website about Isaac Newton, the city of Newton, MA, or fig cookies? A: No, none of those things.
That's why I don't like global variables...
my thought exactly. I spent a few minutes on the FAQ and I don't know what a Newton is. Some kind of Palm Pilot like device I assume?
https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mobile-computing/...

Although if you just spent 20 minutes training it, it was frighteningly good at recognizing handwriting. It could read my writing better than I could back in the day.