Newton Poetry

[Update 3.8.09: Reader Ivan found an archived page with the correct links. Also check in the comments section for more links.]

Thanks to a reader, the almost-original Keyspan drivers page has been found.

Torner left a comment on my post about Tripp-Lite purchasing Keyspan. Keyspan makes (err, made) serial-to-USB adapters that us Newton fans use the heck out of, but after they were purchased their drivers download page disappeared.

The new Keyspan drivers page looks just like the old one, but with a new URL, and is much easier to use than Tripp-Lite’s version.

Good sleuthing, torner!

Looking for something?

Newtonsearch.net is a “searchable index of web sites” for Apple’s Newton MessagePad. Think of it as the Google of Newton-topia, except Newtonsearch only searches Newton-related sites.

The site also provides a giantlist of Newton sites that it indexes “from time to time.” What I like is that there are a ton of sites Newtonsearch crawls through.

Though when I tried a few search terms myself, I noticed how many times Newtontalk conversation threads appeared in the results – which only makes sense. Newtontalk subscribers talk about everything.

I can’t wait to browse through the searched sites and add them to my own Newton Sites list.

Just a fun heads-up: I created a bunch of Macintosh-inspired iPhone wallpapers over at my Flickr account and on the iPhone Wallpapers Flickr group. I took a bunch of recent Macs, like the G4 Cube above, and paired them with their marketing slogans, or a simple label, all on a clean white background.

Now you can carry around your favorite G3, G4, G5, or Intel Mac around with your iPhone. My iPhone is sporting the PowerMac G4 right now, just because I love the slogan so much.

Enjoy!

It wasn’t the Newton’s birthday, but our good friend the MessagePad did get a nod in Ars Technica’s Mac anniversary lineup this weekend.

Erica Sadun listed the Newton as one of the “best Macs” – even though it’s not a Mac. The fun part, she says, was development with NewtonScript:

It was simple, it was elegant, it was sexy. Offering objects and database “soups,” it was amazingly flexible to work with and a joy to program.

Over at Low End Mac, Tom Hormby gives us a historical view of the platform. The long and in-depth essay shows that, like the Macintosh, the Newton had its own stories of drama, success, and failure. A great read.

And for once, the Newton MessagePad makes it onto a good list: Time’s Most Influential Gadgets and Gizmos. Thanks, Time, for giving the Newton the respect it gets nowhere else. A “gizmo” is a step up from pegging the Newton as a “colossal waste of time, money, and energy.”

[Update: Ivan, in the comments, found the original Keyspan driver page.]

Last week, Leon pointed out that the pages containing Keyspan serial-to-USB adapters were nowhere to be found.

It’s true. Above is the page I landed on when I tried my own hyperlink. The page where Keyspan kept its USA-28x adapter driver was gone.

It turns out that a company called Tripp-Lite purchased Keyspan in May 2008 and dumped all the drivers somewhere else.

Keyspan USB adapters are considered the best in connecting your Newton MessagePad or eMate to Mac OS X. After a quick driver install, you can plug your Newton’s serial cable in one end of the Keyspan adapter, then plug in the adapter into your OS X Mac, and boom – full connection. If Newton users can’t find the Keyspan drivers, they can’t use the adapter.

And the new company, Tripp-Lite, doesn’t make it easy to locate the drivers. There’s a driver search page, and the USA-28x page, but it all takes some sleuthing.

This means that, after several blog posts on how to connect a Newton with an OS X Mac, I’ll have to update the Keyspan driver link. That’s not a big deal.

The big deal is Newton users struggling to find what they’re looking for.

[A big thanks to the Newtontalk gang for helping me locate the new driver pages.]

Plenty has been said about today, the 25th anniversary of the original Apple Macintosh. I was only three years old at the time of its release, and I’m a relatively recent Mac convert – so I can’t speak much about the history or the evolution of the platform. But I will say it makes for a damn fine machine.

I actually got to see an original 128k Mac at my friend Curtis’s house. He has a bit of a Mac museum in his basement, and he has his Macintosh snuggled inside a cushiony tote bag.

Happy birthday, Macintosh. Thanks for making life fun.

[Photo courtesy of William Wilkinson.]

Macworld is hosting a “Best Mac Ever” roundup, with one model – the Mac SE/30 – getting the most nods. Andy Ihnatko, however, says the best Macintosh is always “the first one you owned.”

And there’s some truth to that. My iBook G4 is still my main computer, and I’ll probably never (ever) get rid of it.

But the best Mac? It has to be the iMac G4.

You, dear reader, probably saw that one coming, right? My time with Macs has been relatively short, but I remember the iMac G4 taking my breath away when I first saw it, and it was the first Mac to really get me thinking about switching to Apple.

Now I use mine every single day. The entire G4 line has been good to me, and they’re the fastest and newest Macs I’ve owned.

What do you think? What’s the best Mac ever?

It’s really hard to avoid coincidences this strong: I read the ISO50 Blog everyday just because it shows classic computing platforms, neat design work, and thoughts on using Windows and Macs in the design world.

Last week, ISO50 shared a picture of the original computer, a PDP-7, that helped develop the Unix operating system. So I hit Wikipedia to learn more about Unix, and I stumbled on the “Year 2038 Problem.” It turns out that Newton and Zune users aren’t the only ones worrying about 32-bit integers and dates going haywire.

When some Unix systems hit the year 2038, they “will reset time to the year 1901 or 1970, depending on implementation.”

Now, you’d think I was purposefully searching for these kinds of date errors after the big 2010Fix bug hit Newton users, but that’s not how it happened. It was totally random and coincidence.

The “Unix Millenium Bug” doesn’t have an easy fix, either, though 64-bit systems won’t have to worry about blow-up dates until 292 billion years in the future. Experts regard that as the exact time length that Newton users will continue to curse Steve Jobs’s name.

There’s a web site dedicated to the Unix 2038 bug, and they place the Unixpocalypse at Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2038. On that date, Unix systems will flip to Friday, Dec. 13, 1901. It’s like a time machine with a gory name and villainous repercusions for home mortgage calculators, “microwave ovens, wrist-watches, elevators, gas-station pumps, car fuel injection computers, radios” and more.

Others have placed the end-time at dates ranging from April 2029 to Y10k, and even 32,768.

And to think I’m still collecting bottled water and canned goods for my MessagePad’s 2010 problem.

Another example of an iMac used in an office, with great effect. Last time it was a G4 (my favorite). This time, either a G5 or an early Intel iMac.

The workspace, from Apartment Therapy, is an example of a “floating desk” design for cramped offices.

I like how the iMac’s screen seems to float in mid-air, too, with the white body of the iMac blending into the wall behind it.

Which makes me wonder: will we see computer screens hung on a wall, like high-def TVs are now? Would you run the cords through the wall, so it appeared to float? I’d love to see one.

Steve Jobs and crew have some great ideas, but not all Apple innovations have come under his watch.

That’s the basis behind Mac|Life’s “Top 10 Innovative Apple Products – That Steve DIDN’T Dream Up” post.

Two items on that list are familiar: the Newton platform, and the eMate 300. Dreamed up by Apple’s Steve Sakoman, Steve Capps, and Larry Tesler (with help from then-CEO John Sculley), the Newton MessagePad and eMate were creations Steve Jobs had nothing to do with.

Mac|Life wonders: “And if Jobs hadn’t come along and killed it, who knows what might have been?”

[Image courtesy of State of the Ark.]