The Apple Newton may have been rotten, yet it sowed the seed for the iPad, says Tech Sunday.

Apple and failure don’t really go together, not even in the same paragraph, let alone in the same sentence. Yet hands up anyone who can remember the Apple Newton. We thought so.

Launched in 1993, the Apple Newton was applauded as the first ever personal digital assistant. In fact, such was the novelty of the idea that even the term PDA was coined by Apple’s then-CEO John Sculley.

The Newton was a handheld communications assistant which included tools such as a calculator, currency converter and time-zone maps. Yet the Newton’s most advanced ability was its touch-screen technology and pen-stylus.

This allowed users to gather, manage and share information using three main applications – notes, names and dates. Users would enter notes in their own handwriting and the Newton would translate it into computer text, which could then be saved, printed or transferred to both Mac and Windows systems.

Despite such breakthrough technology, and a massive $100m investment, the Newton didn’t sell. First, it was so bulky that it could hardly be considered pocket-size. Also, the device missed its original goal of reinventing personal computing.

Eight models later, the Newton was discontinued in 1998.

Yet despite being a commercial failure, the Newton was Apple’s first important step towards developing a tablet platform and, eventually, the iPad. Even the people who developed the Newton went on to found Pixo, the company that created the OS for the original iPod.

So let’s not call the Apple Newton a failure – it was just years ahead of its time. And what seemed like an early harvest turned out to be a good one.