Recog recognizes individually printed characters and gradually adapts to the style of writing that the owner uses. This may sound suspiciously similar to Apple's ancient PDA (Personal Data Assistant), the Newton.
The Newton does not use neural networks, which makes it less flexible (and less volatile) than Recog. This is advantageous since one doesn't want some random doodling to render the Newton illiterate. The other key difference is that the Newton cheats by watching the order in which the strokes of the letters are made. It watches as one writes, not afterwards. This is a great idea for a PDA, but it obviously is no good for interpreting scanned text (such as that found in a book), and it certainly isn't the way humans recognize characters.
The PalmPilot is another PDA that recognizes handwriting. But its recognition is hard-coded and unalterable. There is no adaptation or learning on the part of the computer; it is the human that must adapt to the PalmPilot.