You were right, Newt is OTA (Optical Tube Assembly) and dob is Alt_Az mount in nutshell, without anything else (motors etc.).
Dob is not hard for AP, but not easy either, because it lacks tracking, and when it has it, usually there is a problem with field rotation (in case of longer exposures and in some directions on the sky... not relevant for planets and Moon though).
To motorize Dobsonian, have a look here:
http://www.bbastrodesigns.com/StepperSystem.html
or here:
http://www.stellarjourney.com/index....uipment_onstep
http://soundstepper.sourceforge.net/