An 802.11b driver for the Newton has been completed and seems to work with a number of cards. Might be time to blow the dust off it and see how this works. Much as I love the thing, it’s hard to integrate something into you life when it needs to be wired up. If only Steve didn’t see the Newton as a reminder of John Sculley (or was there another reason for getting rid of it?), imagine where the technology could be now?
After some email correspondence with the driver’s author, it looks like the WaveLAN (Agere chipset) cards are the way to go: not enough people have provided feedback for Noguchi to flesh out any kind of matrix. If you use the driver and haven’t told him how it works for you, do it now.
The Newton group was spun out as a separate company sometime around the time of the iFounder: this was considered a Good Thing, as the Newton was languishing and exposure to the market outside Apple’s shadow would get things moving. After a short period of freedom, it was pulled back into Apple and then shut down. Another boatload of intellectual capital and user fanaticism squandered . . . . .