ππΎποΈ Day 6: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar - Apple Newton eMate 300 ππΎποΈ
The eMate 300 was a before-Chromebook education-centric "laptop" by Apple, designed specifically for education as a low-cost laptop running the Newton OS. Released in 1997, it featured a 6.8-inch 480x320 grayscale touchscreen, a stylus, and a compact keyboard. It had a 25 MHz ARM 710a processor and built-in rechargeable batteries that could last up to 28 hours (I did not get that on ours, though). It was less powerful than the Newton MessagePad 2000, which was out at the same time however - the eMate had internal memory expansion and a PCMCIA slot for accessories like modems and Ethernet cards. Best of all, it had the translucent ascetic, which was popular then and built for classroom use. There were unreleased purple, clear, red, and orange versions, but we have yet to see those in real life.
