Slashdot Mirror
Newton Won't Die
Superman writes "Wired just published an article about the continuing popularity of the Apple Newton MessagePad, with props to Mad Max (a Newton MP3 Player), the new ATA driver, and Newton's 802.11 capabilities. Definitely an interesting read, and more proof that just because technology may be a little bit older, doesn't mean it's not useful." I still have my MP2000, and still think it has the best UI around. I keep meaning to convert it into a wireless MP3 player. I am currently hoping for Apple to make an iPod with AirPort and Rendezvous, though.
Good technology never dies I guess. I wonder if Apple is planning to fill the space left by the Newton. They can't be developing Inkwell for nothing can they?
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I take back my original comment about hating you. It seems you denied two lame unoriginal FP attempts from getting there in time. Kudos.
but it was first
Jobs wasn't there when the Newton came out, and he's the one who ended Newton when he came in as iCEO in the late 90s.
I know you're a troll, but you're a stupid troll.
Apple users are cultist fanatics who buy anything Jobs blesses.
Yes, that explains the phenomenal success of the Power Mac G4 Cube.
I beg to differ:
a ti cians/Newton.html
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathem
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
See my other post below.
...and I bet Apple knows *exactly* how many colors it displays. 2?
I'm angry, and I Meta Moderate!
Apple: Though I fell off of that tree just as hard as I could, I could not overcome 32 feet per second squared. Thus, Newton would not, and could not die.
I regret this, my brothers, and hope that one day if enough of us fall on his head, we may kill him yet. If it comes to it, we may even coerce an entire branch to snuff him out!
Yours,
The Apple
Try this link:
Newton
Dunno why the first added a space into the middle of the link. It wasn't there when I pasted it.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
As big and heavy as the Newton is (compared to a Palm or iPaq or Zarus), and as small and light as PC laptops are becoming, whats the difference between the two other than the former being obsolescent and the latter being more flexible in terms of hardware vendors (c.f. latest Apple jackboot of non-apple DVD players and its software).
The weight and size of the Newton is a factor. Or did I mistake the slant of the article, and this is more of a nostalgia item, like rehabbing my old Amiga?
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
Actually Jobs wasn't a driving force behind the Newton.
John Scully championed the early PDA as the CEO of Apple during its introduction. Michael Tchao, Steve Capps, and Walter Smith were among the team members who worked with the OS and Stepan Pachikov developed the cursive recognition technology know then as Calligrapher.
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
At the last LinuxWorld Expo in New York, I noticed that every booth had a newton with a card reader attached to it, so they could swipe guests' badges and get a record of who visited their table. They must have had 100s of newtons.
There are no trolls. There are no trees out here.
Early models were bulky, expensive and bug-ridden. Apple marketed the Newton poorly, and it was widely ridiculed; a memorable Doonesbury strip by Gary Trudeau effectively doomed the device.
-------------------
If a comic strip could "doom" something, then MS/Windows would be dead a long time ago. It seems that slashdot alone has a large amount of these linked from user comments.
-------------------
After shopping around, he found a machine that did it all: Web, e-mail, calendar and address book, but it could also recognize ordinary, cursive handwriting that wasn't as awkward as graffiti The biggest problem with a Newton is its size: It's as big as a brick. ----------- I had a nice little acer laptop that did all of that and more. It had a 233Mhz MMX processor. It ran windows 2000 decently on 80MB (max) of RAM, and was wonderful for Linux. Unfortunately it took a spike in a power surge, silly me for not getting a surge guard
Seems to me that one could do a lot better by getting a used mini-laptop. Mine didn't cost me a huge amount, and it was a lot more productive than any handheld.
It seems that handhelds are often just used as toys, with a cheap notebook at least you can run linux or do some programming
You don't have to listen to your wireless MP3's on a Newton with a dim, old, scratched-up screen - a pal of mine has put together a display upgrade kit and is currently taking orders!
(sorry buddy!)
I thought it was oddly appropriate that this story was posted at 4:04pm ;).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
but seriously, if there is "news" that is remotely Apple related, Wired, is all over it. They love to report Apple news and culture, it tends to be of this type: Gee, Apple stopped doing X long ago, but look, these hip trendy, user groups are doing it themselves!!!! Yay Apple!
Don't believe me? Try this story or this story or this story
Or maybe I'm just missing something? Is there really a well dresses, over educated, hip Apple underground that I have never seen? Wired just tends to report these user groups and people as trendy, San Fran artist types. They have swallowed more than just a bite of Apple's marketing message. (bad pun, I know)
Kind of like Slashdot reports on Linux types... Think about it, it is easy to come up with stereotypes of Wired readers. And slashdot readers for that matter.
but I digress, I do think the Newtons are cool.
.....
This sounds cool, but can you connect it to a PC? I don't have money for a Newton and a Mac.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Which begs the question, who'd be interested in building it?
The HWR system then known as CalliGrapher is still known as CalliGrapher today, also under the name Microsoft Transcriber on PocketPC and PenOffice on desktop Windoze. At Newton OS 2, Apple dumped the then fairly buggy CalliGrapher, and used their own recognizers that were better, and now found in OS X as Inkwell. CalliGrapher has shaped up in years since, and is pretty decent on PocketPC. CG6 on PocketPC is nowhere near as integrated as Newton HWR was on the Newton OS 2.x, but it beats using a character recognizer any day of the week. :)
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Why?
- A PDA needs a good os, good applications AND a good physical shape much more than a PC. Apple is hands-down the best at this. (For a PC, expandability is often very important. Apple isn't so hot at this IMO.)
- .Mac and the digital hub are crying out for way to TAKE your information with you. How awkward did Palms V5 look in the demonstration unvailing
.Mac
- A PDA is (was) a new platform and doesn't (didn't anyway) need the existing software so much. It was a level playing field that Apple had a natural gift at competing on.
- It's F**ing hardware. I thought you ran a hardware company Jobs!
;-)
Frankly I can't come up with a many good reasons not to.- The market already has fantastic products is highly competitive. Palm might have been, but it looks aging. Win CE? It's microsoft on try 3 and the market is still Palms. There is room here
- Afraid of a second failure
- Waiting for the next BIG thing. Bluetooth? Cheaper color screens? G5s...
Ok so everyone else here probably just made this list, but it was fun speculating!Thanks for moding me redundant! It was a pleasure
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Eat up Martha!
Eat at martha's
Random is the New Order.
Nelson: Take a note on my Newton to beat up Martin.
Kearny: (scribles "Beat up Martin" on Newton's display
Newton: (converts handwriting to "Eat up Martha")
Nelson: (grabs Newton and hurls it at Martin's head)
"Brrraaaiinnssss..."
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
HA HA! Beat you both!
om my Mew7on. 1 love this cool hamb writing pecognition. 1 think Cndr Taco yses one to post 5lashdot stories.
a memorable Doonesbury strip by Gary Trudeau effectively doomed the device.
The Comic
=-Jippy
I wish they still made G4 cubes(and not because Jobs "blessed" it). Maybe one day Apple will make some thing similar again.
Neither will this stack of old 386's in my office. I really wish they would die, and then conveniently decompose.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Wired and the typical Mac user have a lot in common -- they're far more interested in shiny objects than technical underpinnings.
We have a couple Newtons here in our company, and my brother recently resurrected his from the shelf. The handwriting recognition is out of this world. How it recognizes print or cursive is just amazing. Text to speech was actually useful (and used, might I add). The database for contacts was extensible. The cross references between messages/notes/contacts, etc. was very fast and intuitive.
The only issue we had with it was the synchronization capabilities. Apparently, it syncs quite well with Mac apps; however, that's one thing we don't have here.
Hell, we were just talking about this yesterday -- we wish they'd bring it back. The Newton platform is really nice. To me, its somewhere between Palm OS and CE (for those that wish to compare).
Since they stopped supporting the same PCMCIA cards that my laptop uses -- and relying on grafitti rather than a keyboard.
I remember my HP 200LX back in the stone age. I could pop the modem out of my laptop and dial up and run telnet sessions and check email -- all the while saving out to the (albeit expensive at the time) 4 meg CF card. I did this all on a regular (albeit small) keyboard. All of this and it rode on my hip -- and the batteries lasted for days. Ever since then PDA's have gone downhill for all I care.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
There's a project over at PDA HandyMan that the site's owner is running on their messageboards. Though I doubt this thing has legs (like that other failed NewtOS project I can't recall at the moment) he's got a decent looking plan.
Disneyland still uses Newtons for surveys, or at least they did a year and a half ago when I got married and went on my honeymoon there (she had a 5 year old, which became my five year old, so a honeymoon there made sense).
I used to own a Newton 120, and tried to find it a while ago. It's buried deep somewhere.
It it's happy days, the laptop used to run for about 1h30-2h+ playing divX movies.
This was while juicing the CD-ROM, which hugely increased the power consumption. Without the CD-ROM or a lot of flashy stuff it run quite a bit longer. The batteries were also small (2.5*3*1" or so I think), I have about 3 so it wasn't a big deal to suspend the memory (or better do a quick plug-in if possible) and plunk in a new one.
Between 3 batteries that's about 12h+ actual usage. I could probably have played some mp3's while typing and not drain the battery too much.
Oh, and the thing fit in the leg pocket of my cargo pants... which was cool. It was a Travelmate 312T if I remember correctly
And I thought Amigans were never-say-die fanatics.
Cool, now I know what to do with these dudes wasting away my drawer, one mans junk (another's ebay treasure!)
Duh, they do. It's called the "iMac"... even comes with a monitor.
The Newton group actually thought about and did user testing on their interface, then published interface standards. Unlike most OSes
Sigh. I spend so much of my professional life dealing with poorly thought out languages/systems that I look back very fondly on the Newton.
Actually I still use two of them. One is in the kitchen - I use it to keep track of groceries I need. The other sits by my desktop machine for taking notes.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
Than what is it?
Can you not call the poles of a colorspace "colors"?
If you aren't going to call it a color, what epsilon away from pure black or pure white do you choose before you can actually call it a color?
Indeed, Jobs hated the Newton- some say because it was the brainchild of the man who ousted him. Jobs bought back the spun-off Newton, Inc. and killed it, after they were actually turning a profit for a couple of quarters.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
does not ensure success, sadly. Things I thought should have done better than they did (for whatever reason they failed to find sucess):
1. Newton (Owned one and loved it.)
2. NeXTStep on PCs
3. BeOS
4. Amiga
5. Hypercard/Hypertalk (A fun programming language)
6. Magic Cap OS
7. DR DOS
8. Betamax (the death of which was recently announced)
9. G4 Cube
BTW, I thought that the Newton's interface a awesome but has anyone ever heard of or seen what a color version of the interface might have looked like?
Jobs is a fucking asshole-licking poop-faced freak who should be drowned in a tub of Crisco. Actually, maybe all Mac users are and should be?
Well, all they would have to do is remove the LCD screen of the iMac, cap the result hole, and add an ADC connector for a monitor. They could probably even build it on the same production line.
Palm realised that the time wasn't right for expensive PDAs, the Newton was over-engineered for the early 90s. Palm invented graffiti as it was easier and cheaper to get the user to learn something than add full handwriting recog to the device. In a way it's better having a company like Palm producing popular PDAs instead of one of the big players like Microsoft and Apple. Politics make the IT industry boring.
I actually chose the MP2000 because of the larger size, though I could do with less weight, because I was interested in note-taking.
When I went to a startup a few years back, it was our first computer. It sent and recieved faxes, sent and recieved e-mail, and I used the HWR to take the notes of the first Board of Director's meetings. (And yes, they were readable afterwards.)
I was just thinking I could get by with a Palm or a Handspring, and you have to go and run a story about the Newton. Thanks a lot.
*loads up eBay*
Oh well, here's an older story from the last time I was on a Newton trip.
SIGFEH
The people behind Newton's visaon were thrully visionaries: they created a device that after 4 years of "death" still can be used almost effortless.
Maybe people at Apple and other shops can learn something really valuable from the Newton comunity: any device is only "as strong" as their supporters.
And by the way if any of you are actually designing the next generation of PDA, either for Sony or for Palm, please fell free to "copy" all the best points of Newton :
excel handwriting recon soft, pc-card interfaces and easy of use.
And mix all the new features the users hope for in a PDA naoadays : MP3 playback, color display ( maybe some extensible roolup OLED screen, for a big presentation of web pages ).
Every night I pray to the God of Slashdot, please, dear lord Taco... Give us a "Not Funny" moderation option!
Just like they do a good business refurbishing and reusing the original LapTop. the Tandy Model 100.
Heck, it came with a 300 baud modem!
and yes it's huge compared to a Palm Pilot/Handspring Visor, but it lets me enter pretty fast, hadnwriting works fine for me once it learned how I write (the reverse of Graffiti, where you get to learn how to write the way it needs you to). I can use the backlighting as an emergency flashlight. What I need to do is figure out how to convert the data from the backups to a format readable by other systems. What I really want to do is export my contact list from my Newton to my iPod, but I haven't taken the time to research the intermediate steps. u
It's easy to condemn something with 20-20 hindsight; but nobody had done anything like the Newton before.
How big exactly should the screen be? What resolution? How powerful a processor do people want? What things make a PDA succesful for day to day users?
There is no combination of answers that is right for every user. The Newton combination worked well for certain people. However, there were many other people who didn't need that much screen or processing power.
It did get a lot of things right, like superb battery life. On the other hand, one thing it got resoundingly wrong was connectivity. Connectivity worked OK on the Mac, but Windows utilities were always buggy and unreliable, and Apple had an indifferent attitude towards Windows users. So, you either had to be a Mac user or a tolerant Windows user to be pleased with the Newton's basic out of the box connectivity options.
The Newton screen size is a dividing point for users. Either you love it or you hate it. Most people prefer something you can slip into a shirt pocket and feels comfortable in one hand. Witness the move from clamshell PDAs to palm style form factors in WinCE. I know trying to sell users on my PDA apps, it was always a struggle with Newtons, but put a Palm in their hand and they immediately wanted it.
The Palm was a rare, perfect combination. Good battery life, large enough screen to do what most people wanted but not any larger; and excellent connectivity. By being less ambitious in the screen department than the Newton, and less ambitious in the connectivity department than WinCE, it could be smaller, simpler, more reliable and cheaper.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Hm, what does a Newton's hand writing recognition make of someone writing in l33t ?
But if it's for all the things you describe then the screen isn't big enough. Unless you're very good at working in such a small are (Newton die-hards always seem to have skills the rest of us lack, like consistent handwriting) you need something about the size of a composition book. If Newton had been that size, it would have worked much better. Of course, it would also have been too expensive to sell....
Don't forget Apple fronted a good deal of the money for ARM to get started, and they still own millions of shares of ARM stock. They may not have influence in the company any more, but it'd wouldn't be crazy for them to hook up with ARM again, and it certainly wouldn't put them in a bad position. Intel fabs ARM, but they don't own the company. A PPC handheld may be possible some day, but a G4 PDA is totally out; way too hot.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Slashcode inserts spaces when you put too many non-whitespace characters together in a row. Stops *ahem* certain posts from making the page very, very wide.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Yes, there is. I'm part of it, baby.
The new Sony Vaio U1 ultrasmall notebook machines are the Cat's Ass!
http://www.dynamism.com/u1/index.shtml
Real PC Real Small: 29 oz And that's ok because if your PDA doesn't actually fit in your pocket it doesn't matter how large it really is.
I live in Newton. It's a little snooty, just like the message pad. My bet is that there is a very high percentage of Newton owners in Newton.
Many people want a PDA that provides free or low cost information on the move. Syncronising with a desktop computer is getting a little tiresome. It would be nice to see a new PDA that slides into the iMac and can link up with the iPod. I believe people will pay more for elegant solutions.
Curiously, Graffiti was first released for the Newton and the AT&T EO (which I also had.)
Have any of y'all ever used GO's PenPoint OS? It's been a while, but it might be my favorite OS ever (even before NEXTSTEP.) It was all OOP and encapsulated a lot of the ideas of OpenDoc back in the heady days of 1993. Great OS for a great machine. Built-in crazy faxing capabilities, and it had an optional cell phone. The lack of a TCP stack really ruined more-than-nostalgia use, though.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
what most people need is now called an iPod. Contacts, calendars and MP3s. What more gadgets do you need?
And the fact that Steve killed the Newton dead with the wrath of God on a bad hair day.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
With dithering it can display 16 million!
The rosetta technology used by newton and now inkwell is leaps and bounds ahead of what anyone was doing then or is doing now in the handwriting recognition field. It puts Graffiti to shame :)
With all the wireless card support for the newton I am sure they are not far off from coming up with a kismet type wireless scanner for the device. "Hold on sir, which I whip out my newton 802.11b scanner..."
John Sculley. It's no secret that a) Steve Jobs has a tremendous vindictive streak, and b) most of the changes SJ made at Apple immeditaely upon his return were to cut or scale back JS's initiatives.
Yes, Newton was ahead of its time. It was too big. It was too expensive. It was poorly marketing. It was too __________ (fill in the blank). And, the Newton division was always in the red. That is, it was in the red until right before SJ axed it. Yes, friends, Newton was making a profit for the first time when SJ lowered the boom (two consecutive quarters, I believe); that more than anything tells me that killing it was an act of vindictiveness.
Of course, it didn't take SJ long to realize the error of his ways. About a year later, it came out that Jobs was offering to buy out Palm, but considering that Palm was mostly comprised of ex-Newtonites who were forced out by Steve (successful ones at that), there was no way it was gonna happen.
What was really crazy was that Palm was wildly successful at the time, but they were only nailing the low-end of the emerging PDA market. Newton was perfectly positioned at the time to nail the mid- to high-end of the market, particularly in vertical applications. I remember a MacWeek article at the time about how the Newton was causing a stir in several vertical markets. Apple had the first mover advantage, and they virtually owned the higher-margin high-end of the market. Killing the Newton was an act of sheer stupidity and short-sightedness.
Now that Microsoft has entered the market, I would say that the odds of Apple owning a big chunk of the PDA market are virtually nil. Palm has saturated the low and mid-range of the market; Microsoft and their partners are going after the mid to high-end. Once again, Apple set the table and Microsoft is eating the meal.
Apple might have an opportunity to add PDA features to the iPod; however, that still only gives them a small slice of the low-end consumer market.
If Jobs had been wise, he would have spun out the Newton division, much as he did the Filemaker Pro division, to create its own brand identity apart from Apple and keep the focus on cross-platform compatibility. Perhaps he might have more shrewdly licensed out the Newton OS and allowed PC manufacturers to build the hardware and sell the systems, thus getting a significant jump on Microsoft.
Ah well.
I'd probably be more cost-effective to buy a used MP120-130 on eBay if your backlight is broken.
...until I found an App called NewTen, which allows me to load software onto my MP120. Not bad.
I'd really like something that would allow me to backup the internal memory and flash card to my Mac, but oh well.
This Newton was almost free, I traded a MP100 for it. Way better software than 1.3.
I held out until last year, and stuck with my Newton, and even bought a backup against the day when something bad happened to it. I then got given an iPaq at a conference, and found it better. Yes, the UI is not as good, but I found that the handwriting was just about as good. Having said that, I print, not write, so my handwriting is neater than most. The important thing is the extras - I can put pictures of my daughter on it, and watch films on it. I gather that there is now an MP3 player for the Newton, so the iPaq has no advantage there. The only real problem with the iPaq is (a) the Mac synchronization is a pain and (b) the battery life leaves something to be desired. But I never thought I would give up my Newton, and I eventually did.
Run OS/2 on a Newton and load it up with Amiga software.
Table-ized A.I.
Disneyland uses it? You mean MICKEY MOUSE and DONALD DUCK? Hahhahhah! That's right.
Close but not quite. By the time of NewtonOS 2.0 and 2.1 the Apple handwriting recognition technology known as "Rossetta" was awesome at recognizing printed writing and was rapidly improving at cursive but wasn't quite good enough early enough to entirely replace CalliGrapher. So they left a semi-decent version of Calligrapher in the ROM too. If you told the Newton you write mostly "printed, disconnected" text, you are using Rossetta. But if you have it configured to allow cursive recognition, you are using CalliGrapher.
(I was the SQA engineer for Newton's recognition group at the time.)
Side note: the original Newton's poor out-of -the-box HWR probably wasn't the fault of Paragraph's recognizer; it was mostly due to a bad preference setting and a memory issue. Simply turning off dictionary-only mode made the Original MessagePad work much better.
I play Nerd-Folk!
When I was at university in 95 a local Apple dealer was selling off the first gen Newts at a bargain price (they had two huge boxes of them from an auction). They were selling like hot-cakes, and despite being left-handed and with scrappy handwriting, I figured I would give it a try as I could always sell it on to another student at cost.
I'd tried dozens of PDAs over the years, and they'd all fallen by the wayside. The Newt's OS, however, was so well designed and intergrated that it made it a joy to use. The recognition on that device was about 80-90% on my scrawl, which was enough for it to be usable for entering names, addresses and the like.
On leaving university and earning some real money, I went and checked out all the latest PDAs - and concluded that none of them were a patch on the Newt in UI terms. So I bought myself a 2100.
The UI in the later Newts is so well thought out that I still haven't found anything to compare (as a PDA rather than as a portable media player, which seems to be the current trend). The synching software sucks, but the Newton OS is rock solid, and has never lost a single byte of data.
Every morning my Newt wakes up at 6:30 and a piercing alarm goes off. I hit the power switch and it snoozes. At 6:40 it silently wakes up and picks up my emails and newsgroups before going back to sleep. At 7:00 the alarm clock snooze times out and it wakes me up properly. I then lie in bed reading my emails.
I go through this every day, yet it only needs about 1 hour's charging every week or two. And if I have to travel, I have the option of using standard AA batteries, or even a solar panel! In fact, they are so efficient that Trevor Bayliss (Mr. Clockwork Radio himself) once demonstrated an eMate modified to run on clockwork.
It will print to most parallel port printers (via an adaptor) or over IR to a suitable printer. With an extra bit of software you can beam data to and from a Palm. You can even run a web server on it in case you need to view your contacts or diary from elsewhere on your network.
I really wish they'd released a smaller version as a companion to the 2100. I would have bought both, as the size of the Newt is sometimes a problem. Generally, though, I like the large size as it makes data entry so much more practical.
With the 2100 (and possibly 2000) the Newt was really starting to deliver on its early promise. If I'd been Steve Jobs, I would have fixed the synch software to make it more intuitive and work better over IR, then offered bundle deals with the original iMac (which also had IR and came out around that time). The iMac would be the "family" computer, the 2100 for Dad, something similar (in translucent) for Mum, and eMates for the kids. All able to beam data between each other and the iMac.
There is a development group working on a port of Waba for the Newton. Waba is a Java'ish environment that is aimed at small platforms like PDA's. By porting this environment to the Newton, this group is making continued development on the Newton feasible for those who can't get the old Newton Development software. It also bouys up Newton development by providing an expanding market for the resulting software to the developer because the code will work on many other platforms (and PDA's) as well. In addition most third party Waba software that was written by those who aren't necessarily targeting the Newton platform, will, nonetheless, work on the Newton.
Unfortunately, this wonderful work is not much good to me because my third, and only functional Newton is just barely functional. It is so delicate that moving it around causes complete system failure. It's fine on my desktop, but I can't take it with me, which defeats the purpose. of having a PDA! Getting yet another replacement has become increasingly difficult and expensive. Consequently, I've switched to an iPAQ running the SavaJe operating sytem. At least that supports a FULL J2SE (Java) environment so there are lots of applications that I can run on it.
Best of luck to those WabaNewtDev folks out there. If you're a Newton enthusiast, you should definitely consider supporting these folks. They do great stuff!
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
i live in newton (MA, that is) and own a MP 130. it is not currently working, however, and i am unsure what is wrong. So, that makes, uh, one?
Situations like this really make me question product/company loyalty as well. Especially after mentioning Steve Jobs vindictive tendencies.
As much as the Apple hardware and software are looking quite attractive to me these days, I can't understand these people who are so overzealous about Apple.
Do these people think Apple really cares what they think? We all know that in the end Apple only really cares what the shareholders think. I was laughing at the portion of the article that mentions Newton users protesting. I could just see the Newton users out their with their placards, and Steve sitting in his office sipping his latte saying "Awww - isn't that cute. But the Newton must die.".
On top of that, everything I read having to deal with Steve Jobs makes him come out like an asshole. From random readings on the net to comments from Linus Torvalds. Maybe that's just my interpretation of things.
I just woke up and started rambling - if something doesn't make sense I apologize.
This technology saw last light at least a decade ago and still has its fans. Slashdot periodically runs stories about the imminent ressurection of AMiga.
Oooh, and since I checked out your dynapad site, I thought I'd mention NewtWiki. Excellent excellent excellent tool.
A quick search on eBay shows a thriving market and some fairly high prices (considering auction prices tend to balloon in the few hours before they close). I sold my 2100 on eBay for over $400 about a year ago. It seems significant to me that these machines still fetch more in the used market than most new PDAs. Had Apple continued making them, they probably could have hit that price point by now.
Mod this guy up. He's more correct than the parent.
The lifespan of PDAs with quirky OSs, like Newton, Psion or even Palm, is limited. For *real* longevity look into the HP 200LX. It's DOS, baby! It's only the size of a squashed sunglasses case, but it runs all the 10^9 programs written for the PC, XT and AT in real mode with CGA. I've got Word 5.5, WP 5.1, Excel 2.03 and more on mine. DOS 5.0 and Lotus 123 2.4 came built in, along with a bunch of other goodies. Oh yeah, it runs Win 3.0 too -- faster and more stable than WinCE or whatever MS is calling it these days. Then there are the hardware hacks -- double clock speed, backlighting, up to 96 Mb RAM, etc. You thought HP calculator cultists were nuts? Do a Google for "200LX" some time...
I still can't write with Calligrapher/Transcriber on my Ipaq. That program makes the assumption that everyone is right handed, so lefties like myself are SOL. When a letter crosses (like the cross in "t"), TS assumes we will cross left to right, and shows that in its example. That motion is natural to a righty as it flows to the hand. When I write, I cross right to left for the same reason. That one act throws the program's recognition into a hissy fit. Pity the TS version does not learn from experience how to recognize my writing.
Well, Silver, at least... WaveLan Silver :)
:) (I should mention that I had it with me at the hospital - surgery was done around 5 pm, and by 5 am, I was playing chess in my recovery room on the Newton :D )
Just before I went in for gall bladder surgery this month, I picked up a WaveLan Silver card. I grabbed the 802.11 Newton software that's out there, and in no time, had a handheld Newton 2100 web browser and telnet box.
For the first few days aafter the surgery, it was too uncomfortable to even have my iBook in my lap, so I satisfied my geeky urges propped up in bed with my wireless Newton
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
...something the size of a Psion Series 5 (or slightly larger at a pinch) with a useable mini keyboard (I can type nearly as fast on my S5 as on a regular keyboard, though admittedly with more errors), colour screen, headphone jack (for all the MP3s I'd be fitting on the...), hard drive (rather than CF cards), a USB and/or Firewire port, mini-office suite and Mac compatibility. Networking, wireless, etc are all secondary to me - I can wait until I can get home and link the thing up to my Mac - but I'm sure some people would want them. Now, which company could possibly produce something like that? Gee, I dunno. One named after some kind of fruit, perhaps... They won't admit to it, but I'll bet Apple are working on something for this sector of the market. Jobs says he hates PDAs - no problem, this isn't one!
You must think in Russian.
I bought a Palm VIIx off ebay earlier in the year. Specifically for use with palm.net. Now it's "obsolete", but it's replacement is just a shinier version of the same thing, maybe a little faster. Same ram, same screen.
There's absolutely no reason for me to consider handing them more money unless they come out with a color version that has wireless, which doesn't seem likely. The only innovation on the Palm platform is being done by handspring and sony, right now.
They have to compete with thier own tech being done better by others.
And the high end models are almost as expensive as the Pocket windows devices ($500+ for a handheld??, not for me).
The Newton seems like a good in-between device to carry instead of a laptop, but they'd have to compete with cheap Palms and existing used Newtons on the cheap end and the "XP in a handheld" units on the high end. Plus it would have to un-steved, which is slightly less likely than ressurecting Elvis.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
...a built-in camera, synced with iPhoto? (Hey, Danger is pretty close to doing this.)
You're not the only one wishing for a mobile device that works in tandem with your desktop. The kind of scenarios you describe are the stuff of my dreams, too. The only problem I see is that Apple already has a handheld device on the market -- the iPod.
MP3 playing is one of the primary functions people want in a good handheld, and I don't see Apple competing with itself by offering two handheld mobile devices.
Could Apple evolve the iPod into this new dream handheld by slowly adding features? I don't know. The iPod's genius is in its form factor -- it's perfect for playing MP3s. Unfortunately, the same thing that makes it a great MP3 player makes it awkward as a general purpose device. And redesigning the iPod to make a better general purpose device would make the MP3 player experience worse.
I think this, frankly, bites, because Apple is the only company that can pull off the user experience I want in a mobile device. I want it wirelessly synced with every aspect of my desktop, I want to be able to plug in a pair of headphones and watch video while lying in my hammock. I want it all integrated seamlessly, and only Apple can pull that off. But I suspect their experience with the Newton has soured them on the idea, and the iPod fills its niche so well, there's not much room left to grow. More's the pity. The iPod's a great MP3 player, but it's not anything close to what Apple could do if it tried.
Thanks for the great post.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
The Newton hardware was overpriced, a bit slow, and a bit large. Regardless, they were fun and ahead of their time. Like the Newton UI or not, the runtime architecture was amazing. NewtonScript, the precursor to JavaScript, and the Soup object storage system, both developed by Walter Smith, comprise a way of dealing with data and applications that has not been surpassed in today's architectures.
Apple is actively working on derivatives of the Newton architecture, has big plans for pen-based machines, and we all realize that Mac OS X would not scale well into small devices, therefore... Stay Tuned.