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Hey, my Newton 110 had handwriting recognition! And it was 7 years ago when I had it!

I'm not arguing real handwriting recognition wasn't possible. I'm arguing that it's not possible given the desired form factor and battery life. My first Palm (a Palm III) was 4.7 x 3.2 x 0.7 (inches), and I viewed it as irritatingly bulky, but at least it fit in my pocket. Your Newton was a monstrous 8.0 x 4.0 x 1.25. It's not going into my pocket. I carry my Palm everywhere, so size is critical. Furthermore, my original Palm III lasted about a month doing moderate to heavy PDA usage on two AA batteries. How long did your Newton last?

The Newton was, by all accounts, a sweat piece of hardware. But that power and handwriting recognition demanded a beefier processor, a larger case, and used more power. Palm guessed, correctly, that people would sacrifice power and handwriting recognition for size and battery life.

If you all think to 1990, Apple didn't have any 'i' products. I mean, the Mac II line was the top of the crop back then..... Nothing was named with an 'i' until 1998....

Politely, not so. The Macintosh IIci came out in 1989; I bought one for my work ($5000!). The "c" meant "compact," and the "i" maybe meant "intergrated video" (no card was required). The IIsi and IIvi followed soon thereafter. OK, this isn't the same as iSomething, but it did get the "i" out there for something new and cool in the stagnating Mac II line.

I think the names are mostly coincidence, but judging from the NYT article's highlight of the respect the co-founder voices for Apple's achievements, I think they're pleased to be thus associated. Apple made the "i" popular and kind of friendly. No, I don't think Apple should sue them. :)

So you want "Linux for game cube". You didn't specify "Nintendo" or capitalize "GameCube". Thus, any generic "game cube" is OK.

First of all, a "game cube" with a similar architecture to Nintendo's, the Power Macintosh G4 Cube, can run Yellow Dog Linux.

This roughly cube-shaped gaming PC and this even smaller PC can probably run Mandrake.

Now, if you're looking for Linux on a Nintendo GameCube console, you're out of luck: that's the only one that can boot only from a completely proprietary storage medium. There's currently no way to get homebrew code to run on the thing. If it could boot off one of the ports on the bottom (like the GBA can), the situation would be somewhat different.

OS X isn't new anymore, and it has proven to work reasonably well on reasonably old hardware.

OS X runs fine on a 333 iMac I have lying around, I just had to toss in some more RAM. How well does Windows XP run on a three year old, midrange PC?

The computer is a Power Macintosh 6100-class, probably a 6115CD because the 6100 didn't come with a CD-ROM drive.

There's a slim possibility that the computer could be a Power Macintosh 6100/66 DOS Compatible with a 486/66 card inside it, running Windows 95, but that only matches the photo if they added an internal CD-ROM drive to the stock machine.

and you want to do it on the cheap (but not too cheap), you should get on older/used G4 DP "dualie." See Everymac's G4 List for the low-down on the various G4 systems Apple has produced.

In practice, I wouldn't buy any lower than a 7410-G4 (the 466Mhz model), and ideally I would have a DP 7450-based oldster.

You're quite correct,

The clones were older powerpc based - however they we all going to transition to G3 sooner rather than later, some even went so far as to inclue a G3 daughter card inorder to get around Apples obnoxious legal department. here for more info .

Not only that, but MOT had it's own Mac clone that got squashed - though it was a small endevour compaired to the roumoured G3 ramp up.

more info.

according to the article, this move my apple cost MOT $95 million, who knows how much monet MOT wased on G3?

Hmmm, if it looked like this it was an eMate. NewtonOS, keyboard. Small, light, and very kewl.

nobody can hack my wire-less, state-of-the-art über laptop-computer!

Why? How?

It doesn't access the internet :)

Or even ever heard of the Apple eMate. It failed along with the Newton. But still would have beat any Palm-based system today...

Above all, caveat emptor or RTFM!

this year should see the 25th birthday special edition thingy..... there have been some mild rumors over the last year about it. the TAM was produced in very limited numbers, and by the time the public could get it, it was kinda outdated for the price (in terms of the inner schiznits). That being said, it was pretty neat, and did make it into some movies and TV shows (Batman & Robin, Seinfield etc). there are still online user groups dedicated to them, but then again there is for most everything Apple has ever made.

seeing as the TAM came out in March 1997 (discontinued in March 1998), this would be 5 years later. maybe we will see something at MWNYC? it is kind of odd you don't see Apple saying anything about the 25th anniversary of the company. seeing how the company is doing a lot better today than 5 years ago, i would think they might do *something* to celebrate.

WooHoo! I can already hook up my Apple Newton MessagePad 120 to any 802.11b network with readily available 5v PCMCIA cards!

10 years old and still ahead of the game!! :)

Say, that's a pretty good trick, keeping those machines around for 10 years. Considering they were just released seven years ago and all.

Buy hey, nice try propogating the myth that Apple hardware lasts longer than Wintel.

The iBook, which is hardware they are selling RIGHT NOW can't even run OS X properly. Where do you think that computer will be in 5 years?

1. Apple just introduced their new iMac a few months ago. It's gotten great reviews everywhere from the New York Times to BusinessWeek to most every major local daily and geek publication.
2. Apple isn't going to confuse the market with an iMac that hearkens back to the older design iMac (which they still sell BTW!)
3. However the Education market is a big one for Apple and one they've recently been taking a beating in (in spite of a few big wins.) The last education-specific-product they had was the ill-starred eMate (Netwon-based indestructo-laptop) that burnt their customers when it was suddenly dropped.
4. Folks have been whining at Apple for a 17" iMac for forever. However Apple made it clear they couldn't do it in the iMac formfactor. Well, this is pretty close but yeah, not the same.
5. So here they've solved two problems with one stone, er, Mac. They've satisfied the Edu market with a cheapie low-maint iMac that has scaled up to the 17" world. They've also managed to satisfy that market without detracting from their can't-ship-them-fast-enough new iMac design.
6. Will this eMac move into the Consumer market? Probably not as such. Right now the service, support, marketing etc. for this model is nicely contained in the Edu division of Apple and likely to stay there for a while.
7. On the other hand businesses have really taken a shine to a iMac line. This is a bit of a quandary for Apple as they'd far prefer their G-series of Macs be the corporate model.
8. The eMac might lead the way to a compromise: Here's a cheapie iMac-alike that could be a great client packaged with a MacOS X Server. This could get Apple into the 1,000-cheap-standardized-ruggedized-identical-buil t-to-be-centrally-managed desktop model that they've been completely absent from.
9. However this would somewhat expand Apple's product line which is something they're leery of after the excesses of the late 80's-90's.
10. Right now Apple's product line-up is Consumer with iMac & iBook, Professional with G4 & PowerBook. The Cube was an odd duck to this - a cross between the iMac & G4. However this is almost exactly what the eMac is just cheaper and in a different formfactor.

11. So eMac = Cube v.2?

12. This is my guess. Not only did Apple listen to what Edus wanted from an iMac but they also learned what didn't work with the Cube. Now they've merged them and I wouldn't be surprised in a rev or two to see Apple start a big public push back onto corporate desktops.
13. Just as NT was perceived as a better OS as it came in desktop & server versions (gotta have the same across the enterprise!), it was "friendlier" then Netware and the other competition (can't get nicer then Apple!) and "industrial strength" (MacOS X runs BSD for goodness sakes!) I bet Apple is getting ready for the same assault back.
14. A range of hardware, expanding marketshare, an OS that runs the same stuff as "the big boys", easy to develop custom apps for, ease of use, runs MS Office; Apple could regain some serious ground.

Check out EveryMac for a list of macs models by processor.

Check out EveryMac for a list of macs models by processor.

This FAQ says that the iMac was designed in-house by Apple.

Sorry, but the G3 tower does indeed take PC100 standard memory.

If you didn't want to use the Mac itself, the case would still be pretty useful if you could find a PC motherboard that included all the components you needed onboard.

AppleInsider is kind (brave? foolish?) enough to maintain an archive of past articles, so you can judge their credibility yourself.

(For those of you who aren't familiar with what Apple did when but want to play along anyway, try cross-referencing AppleInsider's hardware predictions with www.everymac.com.)

MacOS supports both multithreading and multiprocessing using separate interfaces.

The multithreading support is a hold-over from the pre-PowerPC days. It provides cooperatively scheduled threads and may only work for M68K code. The multiprocessing support is from the period immediately preceeding the return of Steve Jobs. It was introduced to support the PowerMac 9500/ 180MP and 9600/ 200MP, which had 2 processors, but it can be used on single processor machines as well. Threads created using multiprocessing services are preemtively scheduled, unlike almost everything else (aside from vertical retrace routines) on MacOS.

The downside of all three systems (thread manager, multiprocessing services, and vertical retrace manager) is that you are restricted in which OS calls are available to a thread/process/retrace routine. In general, you don't have access to certain parts of your applications memory space, you are not allowed to do anything which might cause memory to be allocated or rearranged[1] and you don't have much, if any, direct access to the GUI (you can calculate all kinds of stuff, but you can't interract with the user).

What this all comes down to is that you can make use of multiple processors using current versions of MacOS (all versions after at least 7.6 support the multiprocessing services) but the MacOS itself doesn't make use of more than one processor: you need to write your application to specifically use multiple processors. However, you can run multiprocessing targeted applications on single processor machines without any problem.

1. when MacOS finds that there isn't enough space to allocate a requested block of memory, it will try to rearrange stuff in memory to make enough room. Remember, MacOS dates from a time before transparant memory management in hardware

MacOS supports both multithreading and multiprocessing using separate interfaces.

The multithreading support is a hold-over from the pre-PowerPC days. It provides cooperatively scheduled threads and may only work for M68K code. The multiprocessing support is from the period immediately preceeding the return of Steve Jobs. It was introduced to support the PowerMac 9500/ 180MP and 9600/ 200MP, which had 2 processors, but it can be used on single processor machines as well. Threads created using multiprocessing services are preemtively scheduled, unlike almost everything else (aside from vertical retrace routines) on MacOS.

The downside of all three systems (thread manager, multiprocessing services, and vertical retrace manager) is that you are restricted in which OS calls are available to a thread/process/retrace routine. In general, you don't have access to certain parts of your applications memory space, you are not allowed to do anything which might cause memory to be allocated or rearranged[1] and you don't have much, if any, direct access to the GUI (you can calculate all kinds of stuff, but you can't interract with the user).

What this all comes down to is that you can make use of multiple processors using current versions of MacOS (all versions after at least 7.6 support the multiprocessing services) but the MacOS itself doesn't make use of more than one processor: you need to write your application to specifically use multiple processors. However, you can run multiprocessing targeted applications on single processor machines without any problem.

1. when MacOS finds that there isn't enough space to allocate a requested block of memory, it will try to rearrange stuff in memory to make enough room. Remember, MacOS dates from a time before transparant memory management in hardware

A few months ago in Wired reported that "Neuromancer" was being made into a feature length film:

Screenager

As a teen, Chris Cunningham read Neuromancer - three times. Soon he could imagine every scene of a Neuromancer movie and started working on storyboards. Years later, the twentysomething prodigy (he worked with Stanley Kubrick as a youth) will bring William Gibson's classic to the screen, when Seven Arts releases the pic next year. The British director - known for his f/x work in music videos and films like Alien 3 - shies away from hyping the movie while it's in development. But Gibson isn't so demure: "The guy's a genius," says the author. "He's the man for the job - Neuromancer was his Wind in the Willows."

I presume that Gibson would have heavy influence on the project, including technical and artistic input in the truest sense. Now I know Neuromancer is visionary and it can be technologically off-the-wall at some points - but at least Gibson touches base with reality.

Oh hey, totally tangential but Gibson is also in Wired 7.10, the digital video issue. Interesting... he's got a PowerMa c in a 5x00-style case sitting on his desk! (Doh! That's write - he's one of those damned artsy-litsy people, not a Linux hacker. Seriosuly though if I'm not mistaken, in the article he mentions that he's trying to learn Linux... not sure - the full text isn't on the Wired site yet and I'm too damned lazy to reread the article.)

• http://www.everymac.com/s ystems/apple/20th_mac/index.html
• http://tam.axon.net/

In the last day or so, I've received inquiries from someone using a Canon Cat (Early work processor) and from someone still using an Epson HC-40 (early portable CP/M machine.)

They contacted me because of my classic computer collection.

There are, however, still plenty of people out there using Altairs and Model 100's and GRiD's and all the other well-known and not-so-well-known personal computers, probably going all the way back to the very first.

Not everyone has succombed to the idea that if it isn't the latest and greatest computer hardware and software, it doesn't work. I drive a 1959 Land Rover; it still gets me where I want to go. Likewise, a lot of people still use computers that do what they need to do without the cost, complexity, and learning curve that newer machines represent.

Unfortunately, Dell is ignoring the fact that the IBM PC and its successors more than anything else to destroy the innovation, creativity, and variety that had existed previously in the computer industry. Very few desktop "PC's" are collectible; virtually none would be of interest to a museum of any quality or reputation.

If you really want to see older computers, come to the Vintage Computer Festival this fall.

The design of these boards is nothing like the 603 boards from '95. This is a dual-processor CHRP system. Only very recently has Apple brought to market systems that are comparable in performace to the Sta rMax 6000, a single-processor CHRP box that caused Motorola to lose its right to sell Mac clones Fall '97. (Moto, like Power Computing, lost its license for speeding ;-)