Newton Poetry

Thomas Brand at Egg Freckles:

Despite its technological advances the iPad can never replace the Newton. No modern computer can. Today’s operating systems are modal, tasks are divided between applications. To begin a task you must first select an application. You must stop what you are doing, stop what you are thinking, and take the time to tell the computer the proper mode from which to proceed. On the Newton there are no modes. You turn it on, and you start writing, drawing, or recording. On the Newton your productivity comes first.

The Newton remembers the last place you were in a document. When you turn it on the last thing you created is the first thing you see. On the iPad and other modern computers the first thing you see is a vast selection of choices on how to proceed. Colorful icons try to show you the way. Signposts, advertising arduous pathways you must follow only to return to where you previously stood.

The difference between the Newton and any other modern computer is that the Newton stands with you, the others force you to catch up.

It’s a fun thought experiment, wondering what if the Newton’s standards for doing things – drawing a line to start a new note, its method of copy and paste – had become the new standards. The difference was the Newton’s operations were all stylus-based. Now we have touched-based standards.

Still, Brand is right: modeless data entry is great, and the always-on saving behavior can’t be beat.

This after today’s show toot:

Episode 11 is on its way. We’re being particularly lazy right now, and it’s all @davelawrence8’s fault.

What’s this “we” crap, David?

Stay tuned for the long-delayed episode 11. And have fun with Panic’s Coda Notes.

UPDATE: David and I are settling this Wild West style – with a Mario Kart Wii battle for the ages. Let us know if you want to trade Wii/Mario Kart user numbers to play online. Maybe a The hello Show tournament?

“What? No ‘Magic Stylus’ for my Newton? Lame.”

- Grant Hutchinson, from Twitter, on the new Magic Trackpad. I’m excited about this, just because the trackpad on MacBook Pros are outstanding. The Magic Trackpad takes the Magic Mouse idea and flattens it, and that leaves all kinds of openings for new input methods on the Mac. We can’t touch our iMac screens yet, but this comes darn close.

For a long time, my Newton MessagePad 110 was the only Newton I owned. Having a Newton OS 1.x device limited my software and tinkering options, however, so I shopped eBay and picked out a nice eMate 300 to try out the Newton OS 2.x software.

As a writer, I dig the built-in keyboard and convenient carrying handle. For frugle reasons, I enjoy the low cost of entry. It’s not the fastest or most up-to-date Newton, but for my modest needs (i.e., I don’t use it everyday), it’s perfect.

The eMate makes a great writing machine. Using something simple like NewtonWorks, or even the Notes app, lets you type up a storm and then export the file as an RTF or plain text file for your Mac or PC.

There have only been a few instances where I have noticed the eMate slowing down, and it has all the stock options that an MP2000 or MP2100 comes with. And at $30 to $40 a unit on eBay, an eMate costs about half as much as a nice MP2x00. If you’re just looking to get started with the Newton, an eMate is your most affordable option.

Keep in mind that an eMate is not the most powerful Newton. Clocking in a 25 MHz, with 3 MB of RAM, the eMate is only a step above the MessagePad 130. MP2x00 models weigh in at 162 MHz (with a StrongARM processor) with up to 8 MB of RAM. If you want speed, you’re going to want a upgraded MessagePad 2000 or MP2100.

The other caution I have is with batteries and charging. My own unit has a flaky relationship with its rechargable battery pack, and you have to get DIY to install your own AA battery tray. With an MP2x00, you can pop in regular AA rechargable batteries and hit the road. It’s a bit more complicated with the eMate.

There’s also the hinge problem.

But man, the eMate 300 makes for an easy, accessible way to get started with the Newton. Even if it’s just to own a piece of Apple history, or try out some old-school NewtonOS software, plunk down $30 on eBay for an eMate (with AC adapter and stylus!) and you’re good to go.

Blake Patterson of Touch Arcade and Byte Cellar (check out my interview with Blake) shared his PDA collection over at Flickr.

It’s pretty impressive, what with the Newtons, Compaq iPaq, Sony MagicLink (with Magic Cap OS), and Philips Nino prototype. The retrospective just shows how far we’ve come – from pen-based B&W screens to today’s magic pixie dust.

[Photo courtesy of Blake's Flickr album under the Creative Commons, heads-up courtesy of Blake himself.]

The Newton community received good news this weekend from wunderkind Eckhart Köppen:

No duct tape of bumper case required here: Paul Guyot has come up with a way to prevent the reset to January 1st, 2008 with patch 71J059 after rebooting or power loss. I merged his changes into the next version of the Y2010 patch, version 711000.

This “Y2008″ bug hit back in January, soon after Newtpocalypse was averted. This issue hasn’t made Newtons unusable, but it put the brakes on the overall Y2010 fix.

Köppen credits Grant Hutchinson, Tony Kan, and Don Zahniser for helping with testing. Paul Guyot, who developed the patch that prevents the reset to 2008, is responsible for all the fun Kallisys software, including Escale and the Einstein project.

Köppen says German Newtons and all eMates will be fixed soon. This patch only fixes U.S.-based 2×00 Newtons.

As Newton users, we’re lucky to have such hard-working minds. They continue to develop fixes for all these issues, allowing us to keep using our MessagePads and eMates here in 2010 and beyond. The wait for this latest patch has been worth it.

Now I’ll sit tight until my eMate patch comes along.

UPDATE: Morgan Aldridge is doing some digging on the Adam Tow’s Alarms issue.

[Via NewtonTalk.]

Marco Arment sees that the progress of computing hardware is slowing down. So, too, is software innovation:

I use desktop computers for many hours every day. They are my profession, my hobby, and my leisure. But the pace of their software innovation that’s relevant to my everyday use has dramatically slowed. It’s not a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s great that I don’t need to constantly update and upgrade everything to maintain a stable, full-featured computing environment. This is what mature, stable products and industries are like. They work, and they’re built on decades of progress, but modern advances are infrequent and incremental.

In other words, there’s not much whiz bang happening in the personal computer world these days. It seemed, back in the PowerPC era, that we zipped from 233 Mhz to 3 Ghz in a matter of years. Since then, the only way to get more speed (as Arment mentions) is by adding an SSD drive, or maybe more RAM.

The personal computer has plateaued, argues Arment, so the focus – and, maybe most importantly, the excitement – switches to mobile computers. Not what are these devices, but what can these devices do.

This is where Apple shines. “Forget the details,” they tell us, “here’s how it makes your life better.”

“While it still surely has its niche uses, I personally don’t miss handwriting recognition. Not even a little. And I can’t help wondering if voice recognition will go the same way.”

- Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, on how tough voice recognition (and handwriting recognition) is, despite today’s super-powered PCs.

Apple’s iTunes icon has remained relatively unchanged since it’s release 10 years ago: a CD with music notes in front. The number and colors of those notes have changed, but overall the icon has stayed the same.

Isn’t it interesting, then, that some Mac users pick on Microsoft for using the floppy disk for saving files (rightfully so, I think) when Apple, who is speeding past the physical media age, relies on a flat disc of plastic to identify it’s media app?

From the days of “Rip, Mix, Burn,” Apple has encouraged users to think beyond the compact disc. With the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, our media could be captured in bits and bytes, 1s and 0s, not rotations of a disc over a laser beam. And since the post SoundJam days, iTunes has become a home for other media besides music – like books, movies, games, and podcasts. Arguably, it’s still mostly about music. But more and more iTunes has become a hub for the digital lifestyle – a homebase for all our media.

So why stick with the CD on the icon?

Recently, I read a Rolling Stone survey that said most people still get their music from CDs (I’m one of them). Record albums are becoming popular again, and legal MP3s are a close second, but more than 87% of music buyers still get their music from compact discs. With all the talk of the electronic media age, I found the survey results surprising.

But still, iTunes is becoming less and less about tunes and more about all manner of digital media. It’s hard to parse the “tunes” part of iTunes when you combine it with books, movies, TV shows, games, and iPod/iPhone management. The tunes are just one part of a collection of consumable entertainment.

Is there a good enough case for Apple changing the icon? Or is it so ingrained in popular culture that any change, like the floppy disk in Microsoft Office programs, will be unwelcome?

Think back to when Apple revamped iMovie, with the new icon.

Or QuickTime X – quite a change from the nearly-20-year-old QuickTime logo before it (above – courtesy of The Logo Factory).

It’s not like Apple is afraid of change, visually or philosophically. In the case of hardware, it’s usually revolutionary (think iMac G3 to iMac G4). Even OS X has undergone a few visual transformations over the years. Why leave the iTunes icon unchanged after so long?

Maybe the question is, what could replace the current iTunes icon?

Thank you, Growl, for the nod to the iMac G4 in today’s update.