Apple Quickies Comin' At Ya

There are a few new product announcements recently: MATLAB for Mac OS X is available; fink for 10.2 is available for testing; Intuit has announced QuickBooks for Mac OS X; and PowerLogix has announced even more upgrades, including dual processor upgrades. And one user notes, "I wonder if the /. effect could drain the batteries of this Newton quickly?"

Comments

Yes, nHTTPd is actually useful

[RevAaron]

The Newton webserver- nHTTPd- part of the Newton Personal Data Sharing (NPDS) system has been mentioned on here a few times over the last 3 or 4 years I've been reading Slashdot.

Most of the time, I imagine that people see NPDS as a novelty, like running Apache on WinCE. And to some who run it, it is just a novelty. However, unlike some Htttpd for CE, NPDS actually manages to be useful. It serves your Dates, Names, Todo and Notes data, accessing the object-oriented database that makes up the Newton system for data storage. Of course, it can also serve regular HTML pages. I've actually seen a couple organizations that were using a Newton as a drop-in solution to managing contacts and meeting schedules. Incredible!

I suppose someone could write a C++ CGI that access the WinCE DBs for the analogous data on a WinCE/PocketPC device, but then you're stuck doing it in C++, which if a major pain in the ass compared to NewtonScript. Does anyone know of NSBasic (started on the Newton, of course :P) or a similar RAD language for the PocketPC can access the internal WinCE dbs?

In other news, someone is getting me a 2100 in exchange for attempting to develop a Squeak VM for the Newton! I recently had to sell my super-nice Newton 2100u setup, and I've missed my Newt a great deal. I guess it's one of those things where you don't understand it unless you've had a Newt yourself... but in my switch attempt to an iPAQ and more recently a Jornada 720, I've been left wanting in a lot of respects, and really can't wait to get my Newton back!