Newton Poetry

As I hinted at Friday, I had success connecting my Newton eMate 300 with my iBook G4, running OS X 10.4, using a Keyspan serial-to-USB dongle I recently grabbed off eBay. This has been a long time coming. I first wrote about how to connect your Newton with OS X back in March, and there are tons of resources a Google search away, but here – for the first time – I got to see first-hand how the whole process works.

And it’s such a snap.

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Film director Jonas Cuaron still uses an iBook G4 as his main computer, and is fine with it.

Amen, brother. My iBook is still my “main” Mac, even if the iMac G4 gets more day-to-day use.

What’s your “everyday” Mac?

[Courtesy of The Guardian.]

Ahem.

Details on Monday!

You kids have fun with your early mornings and mad crowds and steep discounts. I’ll be celebrating Buy Nothing Day.

Celebrating, that is, unless Apple’s got something really cool lined up. And even then, I’ll shop from the comfort of my iMac.

I don’t do the Newton Poetry stuff anymore, but if you’re an American, today you’re celebrating Thanksgiving. Here’s something I posted a whole year ago to honor the holiday.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone. I’ll be enjoying a four-day weekend.

Pretty cool: an app called PhoneGap lets you turn your web site into an iPhone/iTouch app using nothing but your site’s existing HTML and JavaScript. PhoneGap is:

written in Objective-C and allows developers to embed their web app (HTML, JavaScript, CSS) in Webkit within a native iPhone app. We’re big advocates of the Open Web and want JavaScript developers to be able to get access iPhone features such as a spring board icon, background processing, push, geo location, camera, local sqlLite and accelerometers without the burden of learning Objective-C and Cocoa.

Right now, PhoneGap gives your almost-app access to the iPhone’s accelerometer and geo location services, but camera and vibration options are pending. Head to their Google Group to learn more about the project.

Seems like a neat idea to me. There are already PhoneGap success stories, where Apple has approved their App Store submittal. Is there any way to create a Newton-like shell on a web site (kind of like this blog does) and then throw it onto the iPhone with PhoneGap? One can dream.

[via Webmonkey.]

Is there a name for that feeling you get (sober or drunk) when, after you bid on something, you regret your bid, and then you hope someone outbids you because you don’t want to be the winner anymore? Or that feeling you get when – whew! – someone does outbid you? That relief?

I know there are other eBay regretters – different kinds all-together than my Mac-loving self.

Just curious.

We seem to be in a constant state of list mania in the Newton world, and Mac|Life adds to it with a list of the top five best and worst Apple laptops. For once, a Newton product – the eMate 300 – makes it to a “best-of” list instead of the usual what-were-they-thinking roundup.

Says Mac|Life:

Better known as the PDA That Never Stood a Chance, the eMate was a stripped-down, retooled Newton built exclusively for students and teachers. With a near-30-hour battery; 480×320 resolution, backlit, touch-screen display; serial and IrDA ports; full-sized keyboard; and Newton OS 2.1, all housed in a tough, translucent-blue clamshell case with an $800 price tag, the eMate was a revelation that came at precisely the wrong time — about four months before Steve Jobs regained his position as Supreme Ruler.

Lists like this are conversation-starters, and I’ll take the bait, because I disagree with listing the iBook G3 clamshell as one of the worsts. The magazine pokes fun at the design of the iBook (“equal parts toilet seat, suitcase and clam”), which is purely subjective, while it ignores the clamshell’s functionary details. The same features Apple pioneered with the original iBook – the handle, the ruggedness – were never seen again after the IceBook replaced the clamshell model G3, which perhaps says something.

Some Apple laptops, like the PowerBook 5300 series (hilariously called the “HindenBook” for its ability to spontaneously combust) and the Mac Portable, seem to end up in the scrap heap in every list. Macs like the Twentieth Century Macintosh and the Titanium PowerBook go either way.

Still, it’s nice to see the eMate get some positive recognition for once.

Boy, do I feel like a goober. A commenter on my “DVD-ROM doom and gloom” post, Seele, pointed me to a how-to article on switching the optical drive in a blue and white Power Macintosh G3. Here I had been having issues getting the drive tray out from the inside of my PowerMac G4; it turns out I was going about it all wrong.

My objective was to switch out the CD-ROM drive in the PowerMac with a DVD-ROM drive I picked up on eBay. Looking back at the original post, you can see where it all went wrong:

Early on, though, I found several obstacles – including ill-placed screws holding the CD-ROM drive (one placed behind the drive, facing the other side of the PowerMac, which is impossible to get to) and power supply in place. The power supply’s screw was put in such a spot that one would need an L-shaped screwdriver of some sort, while the CD-ROM’s hidden screw requires the abilities of Plastic Man.

In other words, I was trying to unscrew screws that couldn’t be unscrewed. What commenter Seele pointed out to me was I needed to start in the front of the PowerMac G4 by taking off the plastic drive covers.

A quick Google search brought me to this classic Quicktime video from Apple about how to get it done. Watching that, I couldn’t believe my own foolishness. Why hadn’t I just did some research before plowing into this project?

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Turns out you can do some blogging with your Newton and a keyboard, even these days.

Holden Scott over at This Old Mac writes:

Writing articles… well, this is a joy to do. With the Newton keyboard, it is easy to write in Newton Works’ word processor. I simply import to my computer and copy and paste the text into WordPress. It even has a spell checker. In fact, I almost prefer working in Newton Word over Apple Pages.

Holden filed that post with his Newton 2000 and keyboard. I can imagine doing the same thing with an eMate or any other MessagePad with a good keyboard. Scribbling a blog entry with a stylus? That’s a little trickier…