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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.
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.
If we're talking about the 2x00, it displays 16 levels of grey.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
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
I've been a longtime computer nerd and a Mac user for the last 3 years. I used to BBS a lot, and have been to a goodly amount of runs and meets, meeting up with people I've known over the ether.
In the Mac people I've known, a lot of them tend to have much less full of the anti-social nerd in them than do the Windows and Linux communities. The Mac tends to draw people that are more "hip." They tend to be people with a real life and real jobs (often not computer related) that happen to really love their Mac, whereas a lot of Windows and Linux geeks moreso tend to be people that seem to have lost sight of anything other than getting their computer to crash once less a week, or in compiling some package that no one else has, so they can namedrop later in IRC.
A lot of Mac users are these artist types. They are people who love the Mac because it does what they want, as a tool, and because they are more emotionally-driven people, who value aspects of the Mac hardware and the Mac OS that are lost on people with no artistic sense.
That said, I'm completely outside these types. I'm far from hip, and definately not interested in being it. I did ramble off many stereotypes, and I've known all kinds- you just definately do see more of these artsy hipster types in the Mac community than in the PC world.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
No, Intel never bought ARM, they are still around and still own the rights to the ARM IA. However, the StrongARM CPU was not actually designed by ARM, but rather DEC, who licensed the instruction set from ARM. Actually, if memory serves, DEC designed the StrongARM somewhat at the impetus of Apple at the time the Newton was being developed. A few years later, DEC sued Intel over something completely unrelated: Intel had stolen part of the Alpha design and implemented it in their own chip. Intel basically conceded this, and they reached a settlement part of which included Intel buying much of DEC's semiconductor business, including the 2114x Tulip ethernet chipset, and the StrongARM. Intel basically ignored the StrongARM for a while during which time it became rather popular in embedded devices, and now they have renamed newer versions the "XScale" and started actually marketing them. Probably Intel would love to drop the chip and stop paying royalties to ARM, but their clients would just buy other ARM processors from other manufacturers, and they would not benefit at all.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
There have been multiple attempts to discuss licensing the Newton OS from Apple for the sake of open source but also for commercial purposes. Apple isn't interested in letting others have access to Newton technology, even if money is offered.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Almost forgot-
Unlike the PalmOS and PocketPC, on the Newton you can program apps for the native API using the native language. The very same API and language you'd use if you were developing for Newton OS via a Mac or Windows host. Complete with an IDE and building GUIs, all on the Newton.
Yes, on PalmOS or PocketPC, you can program using various non-native environments, LispMe, Python, etc. There are similar options to this on the Newton, but neither the other "big players" can you do first-class development. I suppose you can program in assembler on the Palm OS and probably call native Palm OS API funcs, but that's hardly how you'd usually do it on the desktop.
I keep track of self-hosted PDA programming environments on this page.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad