Newton Poetry

How about that? An April Fool’s giveaway that’s not a joke.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog is giving away a Newton MessagePad 130:

If you want to join the chorus of Newton owners, here’s a unique opportunity: win a mostly-functional (delivered as-is) MessagePad 130 that has been sitting in a box in Mike Rose’s office for years now. The left side of the screen is wonky, but other than that it seems to be in working condition. Along with the MP130, you’ll get a leather Newton case, a Fodor’s 1994 Travel Guide card, a copy of the MessagePad 2000 manual, and a bonus: a copy of the 1996 World Wide Web Yellow Pages.

You have until Sunday, April 5 to enter to win.

Sadly, YouTube took the sound away from this Newton tribute video promoting WWNC 2009.

You can view a Quicktime version with sound on the WWNC page.

Did you notice Mr. Ballmer’s picture on there, at the end? It comes from my post about FSB a while back.

As if Apple Newton users didn’t have it bad enough with the 2010 bug, this morning brings news that a new virus is striking the wide-spread MessagePad community.

Called simply “Vista,” the virus struck in the wee hours of the morning, before many Newton users noticed their pioneering device was frozen.

The Newton’s popularity and millions-strong user base made it a prime target for hackers, one expert said.

“It’s a wonder this kind of thing hasn’t been tried before,” Dr. Don Hamaker, an IT professional and recreational putt-putt golfer, said.

The virus seems to mimick an obsolete operating system, and attempts to install on Newton systems randomly. The bug-ridden OS tries to install itself (above), but hangs in the process, leaving eMates and MessagePads inoperable. Users have begun nicknaming the virus’s effects “GSOD” – or “Green Screen of Death.”

Millions of Newton users have reported bricked PDAs to Apple, who couldn’t be reached at the time of this posting. Some are turning to community forums for help and advice.

“This ugly piece of shit is totally wigging me out,” Newton fan prythisstylusfrommycolddeadhands posted on one of the message boards. “Nothing but the beautiful Newton OS belongs on Bessie (that’s what I call my MP2100).”

Experts are stumped as to how to remove the rogue OS virus. Some are calling for Newton users worldwide to unite and fight this growing menace.

“This could be worse than our worst fears,” Dr. Hamaker said. “The only thing that could be worse is if Apple decided to kill off the wildly-successful Newton platform.”

Only one suspect has been arrested on suspicion of releasing the virus into the wild. After Apple made the Newton OS the mobile standard across the product line, threats from a hacker base outside Seattle, WA became more vocal and daring. Authorities said they have other suspects in mind, as well.

In the meantime, and with no word from Apple, the legions of Newton users will be on their own to find a solution – as they’ve done before.

Everytime I see an “i” prefixing some word, I can’t help but think of how Apple created a naming convention that, to this day, continues to attract marketers and product designers. What began as the iMac turned into iMovie, iTunes, iPod, and eventually products ranging from that other iPhone to the iTrip and iToilet.

Now, with the iPhone, the “i” prefix continues to spread – this time to games and applications on the (get this) iTouch platform. We now have games like iDracula and apps like iBird Explorer Plus. It even extends to Mac apps like iStat Menus.

Apple is good at this kind of thing. If you think about it, Apple’s naming conventions go back as far as the “FirstNext” names for apps, like HyperCard and MacWrite, where the words are smooshed together with the second word retaining its capitalization. This naming convention has stuck all these years.

Like the ubiquitous “i” prefix, Newton product and app developers had their own prefix to work with: Newt. Just about everything that works with the Newton begins with “Newt” as a prefix.

There’s Newtris, the Tetris clone, or NewtTacToe. The web browser Newt’s Cape (say it fast for a variation of Netscape). Newtendo lets you emulate the Nintendo. Newtways let you connect peripherals. Stick “Newt” on the front of anything and you have a product for the Newton.

The prefix makes naming a product or application easy for the Newton. Take a bit of glue, glob it on the back of “Newt,” and attach it to whatever relates to the thing you want to promote. It’s easy because it doesn’t take much imagination or forethought. Like the “i,” you can throw it on anything and have a familiar-sounding yet brand-new product.

Some Newton developers used the “Newt” prefix in witty ways. Newt’s Cape is one of my favorites. Newtendo rolls of the tongue well.

But some are downright lazy. NewtGrocery? Really?

Thankfully, the “Newt” naming style didn’t last as long as the “i” prefix one has. We’re about 11 years and counting with that one, ever since Apple released the original iMac.

Maybe we could combine the two. iNewtToDo, anyone?

Riccardo Mori over at System Folder:

When your main system is capable of keeping multiple applications open, it’s easy to be distracted by incoming emails and updated RSS feeds. Not to mention the temptation to search the Web by following the spur of the moment — when that happens, the best case scenario is that I find myself two hours later digesting a lot of information I found following link after link, yet without doing anything really productive.

His solution? Write on a Mac Color Classic, or a Newton eMate 300 when away from home, to cut down on distractions.

“No browsers, no emails, no distractions: just me, my ideas, and the word processor,” Mori says.

It’s a brilliant (and, in a recession, cost-effective) solution to a problem a lot of us face every day. Why be productive when there’s another blog post to read? I’m working on my own, similar setup with my eMate 300.

Nice to see that Mori is getting something done on perfectly capable hardware.

There are a few iPhone apps available that attempt to mimick Newton features, such as an updated PocketMoney and a few sketching applications.

The one that recently got my attention was WritePad by Phatware. WritePad is a free download, and offers the one Newton feature that the iPhone has been lacking so far: handwriting recognition (HWR). WritePad also offers cut and paste, a feature iPhone and iPod Touch users won’t experience until the 3.0 release this summer.

But how does it work?

Before we get into that, it’s worth noting that WritePad is a trial application. Phatware wants to test HWR on the touchscreen and is looking for feedback from WritePad users. That feedback will help develop the PhatNotes app. Hence the free download. Phatware also uses WritePad’s HWR engine to power other iPhone apps, like WritePad Events and WritePad Notes.

It’s basically a word processing program that lets you make and edit text files on your iPhone. The app includes a lengthy tutorial on how to use WritePad’s myriad features, like Auto Correct and user-defined dictionaries. There’s a lot to read and digest.

To start with, the logistics of “handwriting” on Apple’s new touchscreens are difficult. With only a few square inches to work with, and a thicker-than-a-stylus finger, your results will definitely vary. Accuracy is limited by the size of your scribbling, the size of your fingertip, and your handwriting style. And unlike the Newton, the iPhone’s relatively small screen size limits the length of your scribbles. WritePad employs a unique solution to the small screen size: you can overlap your letters in individual words. But is that even practical?

iTouch Tips give a great demonstration of the many features, like gestures and HWR options, and I’d recommend reading their post before digging in with WritePad’s options.

Without messing with the options or the tutorials, I went ahead and gave WritePad a test drive. Here are a few examples.

Given short, one-word scribbles, WritePad does a fair-enough job. I made a conscious effort to write neatly and cleanly on my iPhone, and WritePad’s HWR did the job just fine.

Given groups of complicated words, however, WritePad starts to fall apart. It reminds me of Newton 1.x’s brand of HWR: effective at times, but not nearly as good as 2.x.

I made several attempts at writing “Egg Freckles” in WritePad, and none of the translations came up accurate. In fact, the text got more garbled the more I tried.

WritePad does offer a “learn your handwriting” option, where possible words pop up to match your own scribbles. And supposedly, after a while, WritePad will learn your handwriting style. So part of it is patience, and part of it is giving the system time to adapt.

The only problem is, your words-per-minute speed will be miserable using WritePad’s HWR. With the keyboard, it logically gets better. Maybe an iPhone stylus would improve things, but I imagine few iPhone users will bother with a stylus.

It’s too bad that WritePad’s HWR is limited to in-app use. I imagine developers could find some use for system-wide HWR using WritePad’s method, but HWR is probably one of those “background” features that Apple doesn’t allow.

The other feature WritePad offers is copy/cut/paste, and this is done fairly well.

Here I write “Paste” using WritePad’s HWR (again, it does well at translating simple words).

WritePad translates the word (above). To copy the text, tap twice and drag across the word to highlight it.

WritePad offers cut, copy, and paste buttons at the bottom of the screen. To cut my “Paste” word, I just tap on the little scissors icon. To paste, simple tap on the clipboard icon, and WritePad pastes the word as many times as you tap. Clean and easy.

With the buttons, WritePad’s style of copy and paste differs both from the Newton and the upcoming iPhone 3.0 way of doing things. I can’t say if it’s better or worse because you can only copy and paste within the app. When you’re in WritePad, the copy and paste buttons are an automatic part of the UI. They work as advertised.

I had hoped that WritePad could act as a Newton-like Notepad application for the iPhone. Since you can open and save text files within WritePad, you can accumulate a hefty amount of notes. The Newton Notepad offered easy ways to organize your notes, however, which is something WritePad lacks. With WritePad, you have a list of text files with no apparent folder or file system to organize your notes.

If you want an easy way to edit and write text files on your iPhone, WritePad is a fine enough word processor – assuming you use the keyboard. But any hope for using HWR in an iPhone app effectively, especially one that replicates the Newton, is dashed when you start to write longer-form words or sentences on the smaller iPhone screen. WritePad’s HWR doesn’t seem practical enough for extended use.

A WritePad app on a larger-form iPod Touch or tablet, however? The possibilities of Newton-like performance start to grow. And to be fair, WritePad is a simple testing application that provides Phatware with enough user testing to implement WritePad’s HWR engine into a new, improved suite of apps.

So we’ll see how it works out. In the meantime, WritePad offers a bit of Newton-like functionality with the HWR, and a preview of cut/copy/paste that we’ll see later this summer. And hey – it’s free, which helps.

Hats off to Ryan Vetter for getting the Newton Knowledge Wiki up and running, now with a new, easier-to-remember URL: newtonknowledge.info.

The list of how-to articles is growing. If you have some arcane, esoteric knowledge about the Newton platform, post a wiki article and help keep Newton knowledge alive.

Also, Newton Poetry reader Matej Horvat converted nine articles from the wiki into an eBook for the Newton. He says he’ll update the list every month or so to stay on top of updated wiki articles.

Long, long after we’re all dead, maybe all this information will get passed down to future Newton users who have to worry about some apocalyptic 3010 bug that keeps crashing their MesssagePad. Until then, contribute and help grow this great new online encyclopedia.

Looking through the Newton Poetry archives, I realize that there are quite a few articles about how to do stuff – fax, connect with OS X, reset – that may have been lost in the shuffle.

Those articles are some of my favorites, because I’m learning how to do them at the same time you are. That’s what I like about writing Newton Poetry: getting my hands dirty with little projects. It’s a blast.

Connect your Newton with Mac OS X
One of the more popular features, this article explains how to use NCX to sync your 2.x Newton with a modern Mac running OS X. You can also learn how to connect with Escale and with NewTen.

Send a fax with your Newton
Faxing with your Newton is old school. The fax seems like an ancient technology, but with a 1.x or 2.x Newton and a simple modem, you can send faxes through the phone line.

Reset your Newton
Let’s say the worst happens, and your Newton somehow locks up or is frozen by a software error. There are different levels of restarting your Newton, and this post explains them all.

Take screenshots on your Newton
Recently, I learned how to take screenshots of my eMate using the Newton Toolkit. There are other, more complicated ways, but this one was the most immediately useful for my needs.

Install packages on your Newton
The Newton is kind of like the iPhone in that you can take it out of the box and it’s immediately useful and usable. But the fun part of owning one is installing cool apps that make it even more useful. That’s where installing .pkg files comes in handy.

Power your Newton with rechargeable batteries
This is more of a tip I learned when using my MP110. Instead of relying on my long-dead Apple battery pack, I bought some Eneloop batteries and used the heck out of them. Soon, I’ll be exploring more energy options with my eMate 300.

Read Newton eBooks
Not only is your Newton a pre-Amazon Kindle eBook reader, but there’s a plugin for Firefox that lets you read Newton eBooks in your web browser.

“The iPod proved that $500 gadgets can sell. The Newton showed that $1,000 gadgets don’t.”

– John Gruber of Daring Fireball, right before Macworld 2003.

It’s amazing, the referring web sites that come across WordPress’s blog stats plugin.

Take this one: Google April Fool’s search. Someone searched for “coworkers” on the parody search site and found my post from last year about me pranking my coworkers.

The site isn’t officially affiliated with Google. Instead, it was created by Philipp Lenssen, who runs the Google Blogoscoped blog.

April Fool’s Day is like Christmas for me. I celebrate it every year, much to the chagrin of my roommate and coworkers, because I love to pull pranks.

If nothing else, Google April Fool’s search offers unique job opportunities for those willing to…uh…relocate to exotic destinations.

With April Fool’s coming up soon, this is a site I will be visiting often.