Tag: eMate

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The Apple eMate 300 in education. brochure (1997)

This brochure is titled “The Apple eMate 300 in education.” and is printed on matte, textured paper.

Introduced in 1997, the eMate 300 was a personal digital assistant (PDA) designed specifically for the education market as a low-cost, laptop-like device that ran the Newton operating system. The eMate 300 was the only Newton that had a built-in keyboard, and like all other Newton devices, used a stylus and had a touch screen.

This brochure is a comprehensive description of Apple’s vision for the eMate 300 in education. It included the following sections: introduction; what is the eMate 300?; learning beyond the classroom anytime, anywhere; today’s learning environment; why introduce the eMate into teaching and learning; what comes with the eMate 300; incorporating the eMate in teaching and learning; and lesson ideas for writing and communication, math and analysis, and science and critical thinking.

The introduction begins with the statement, “Apple introduces a product designed with the belief that, given the right tools, students can accomplish extraordinary things.”

The design of this brochure uses pastel colors and a decidedly late-1990s design aesthetic. While the majority of the brochure uses the Gill Sans font, the same font used for the Newton brand identity, Apple Garamond is also used as a contrasting design element throughout the brochure.

This brochure is stapled, measures 8.5 x 11 inches, and has 20 pages.

Source: Wikipedia

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eMate Replacement Pens (1997)

These boxes contain eMate Replacement Pens. The box is labeled “24 low-cost replacement pens for the Apple eMate 300 mobile computer.” One of the boxes I have is factory-shrink-wrapped and the other is an open partial box.

The eMate 300, a member of the Newton family, shipped with a stylus of the same design as these replacement pens. Comparing the pen that shipped with the eMate 300 and these replacement pens, the two appear identical.

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eMate 300 (1997)

The eMate 300 was designed specifically for the education market and was used extensively in the schools where I was a Director of Technology in the late 1990s to early 2000s. 

At the time, students primarily used desktop computers in a computer lab setting, while laptops were used by some school administrators and few teachers. We used the lower-cost eMate 300 for students who had difficulty handwriting, and most students and teachers preferred typing on this device over an AlphaSmart keyboard device that was also available at the time.

The eMate 300 ran the NewtonOS, a different operating system than the Macintosh computers of the time. The eMate 300 featured a 25 MHz ARM 710a processor, 8 MB of ROM, 3 MB of RAM (1MB of DRAM+2 MB of Flash Memory for user storage), a PCMCIA slot, IrDA-beaming capabilities, and a proprietary Newton InterConnect port.

The design was quite unique with a translucent aquamarine and black “clamshell” portable case with a 480×320 16-shade grayscale backlit LCD display. The eMate 300 included a stylus and a built-in keyboard (and did not support a mouse).

The eMate was the only Newton model to resemble a traditional laptop rather than a handheld device. Although the device was called the eMate “300,” no other models were manufactured.

eMate 300 design elements were clearly used in later Apple designs: the translucent plastic would show up a year later in the original Bondi blue iMac and later in the original iBook designs; the retro-futuristic curves and overall shape was also echoed in the iMac and iBook; and the NewtonOS is often considered a precursor to the iPhoneOS that would later become iOS.

My collection features several eMate 300 devices, many of them including original packaging.

Source: EveryMac.com