The problem was, while it worked, if was highly flawed. The handwriting translator was a problem from the get go. Character recognition was fair at best and more time was spent fixing errors than actually writing the notes.

They kept at it though and version 2.0 of the software was released. It had become a well functioning handwriting translator but, the damage was done, the public lost faith and interest.

While it was a technology that could have been salvaged, the death blow came quick. Jobs was able to regain control of the company from Sculley and one of the first things he did was kill the Newton. He absolutely hated it.

“God gave us ten styluses,” he would say, waving his fingers. “Let’s not invent another.”

In the biography titled Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, he is quoted saying,

"If Apple had been in a less precarious situation, I would have drilled down myself to figure out how to make it work. I didn’t trust the people running it. My gut was that there was some really good technology, but it was fucked up by mismanagement. By shutting it down, I freed up some good engineers who could work on new mobile devices. And eventually we got it right when we moved on to iPhones and the iPad."

That was it. The Newton was discontinued on February 27, 1998