Holy cats, the Apple-branded PDA cranks were right: it's the return of the Newton! The Mac Observer breathlessly points out an Apple patent for "multiple personas for mobile devices," which clearly includes diagrams of a Newton MessagePad 130. "Big deal," you say; "why wouldn't Apple have patents on Newton technology? It was a groundbreaking platform, and there are all sorts of innovations that Apple should have patented." Well, duh, Durwood-- but this patent wasn't even submitted until last November, a good half a decade after the Newton got Steved. It was published just days ago.

You realize what this means, of course; it's the return of the Newton! Clearly the reason why Apple never sold off the technology or kept it spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary was because it wanted to develop a next-generation Newt in secret-- and after five excruciatingly long years for heartbroken Newton fans, that development is finally ready to bear fruit. Why, we bet that the real news at WWDC won't be the Power Mac G5, or a new 15-inch PowerBook, or any of the other "mainstream" rumors flying around out there right now; it'll be the relaunched Newton MessagePad 130, now featuring TINT CONTROL!

Now, we're aware that there are plenty of arguments against this prediction, such as the fact that if Apple were going to revive any Newton, it'd obviously opt for the later-generation MessagePad 2x00 series instead of the older 130. Or that the patent dug up by The Mac Observer covers technology sufficiently broad to cover pretty much any mobile computing device with a screen, and is therefore valuable to Apple even if it never releases another PDA again. Or that said patent is a continuation of an existing patent-- from August 7th, 1995, just months before the MessagePad 130 was released-- and therefore can't contain any new technology at all. All good arguments, we agree. But we have just one thing to say.

Look, it's the Return of the Newton!