Newton Poetry

Steve Craft writes in:

I bought an Apple Graphics Tablet in an eBay auction about 3 years ago for use with my Apple IIGS. There is a IIGS CDA (Classic Desk Accessory) and a NDA (New Desk Accessory) that let it be used as a mouse in non-AGT-aware apps. I got it to let my very young child do paint programs and etc on my machine.

Unfortunately, the thing did not come with the critical “dongle” that goes between the interface card and the actual device, so I have never used it. I still check eBay every now and then looking for a dongle I can use, but so far have had no luck.

I don’t really “collect” any more as much as I try to find uses for stuff I have. When they lack a use, they go.

Usually.

Steve wrote in to share some of his pictures, which you can see below.

All photos are courtesy of Steve. Thanks again for sharing!

“I am sure that, with proper care and feeding, I will be able to take out my current Mac, an almost 3 year old Macbook, from the basement 10 years from now and reminisce in the same way. I am sure it’s utility may be no less – despite the fact the world may have changed around it. It will likely be enough for me for a long time to come.”

– Minimal Mac. Right on, and the same is true of Newtons. I read about users turning one on after years on a shelf and all their data is still there, intact.

Sir David Kendal has finished uploading episode two of our The hello Show podcast, “It’s the Newton Killer” (hardy har). We talk Helvetica, the iPad, David’s iBook vs. iPad buying decision, and my own fussing about with an LC 520.

As soon as iTunes fixes itself self-awarely, we’ll post it so you can subscribe.

UPDATE: We’re now live on iTunes. Check it out.

When I bought my first iPod, the first 30 GB video version, podcasts were immediately appealing to me. It was like a talk show I could listen to any time I wanted on any subject I wanted. Over the years, I’ve developed a collection of favorites.

Which is why it’s pretty neat that Newton Poetry reader David Kendal asked me to do a podcast of our own.

So we did one. And it’s out there. We call it The hello Show.

It’s about all the stuff we’re into: Newtons, Macs, the Apple world that we tend to spend an inordinate time thinking about. Probably just like you.

We have a super-simple setup. GarageBand (and, on the other side of the Atlantic, Audacity) plus iChat plus an FTP account – with some of David’s web wizardry – is all we need. So far. We’re definitely learning as we go.

Anyway. Give it a try, if you like. We know there’s plenty out there to listen to, and we’d be honored if you spent an hour or so with us. Shucks, we’d love to have you on The hello Show. If you’d like to be a guest, please contact us and we’ll set something up. It’ll be fun.

Oh. And why “The hello Show?” After a lapse in brainstorming, David sprung the idea of the “hello” text that was featured in the original Macintosh and the iMac advertising. A great idea.

Edible Apple has a great look back at the original Apple-designed tablet device – not a computer, but more of an input mechanism like today’s Wacom tablets.

Released in 1979, during the Apple II era, the $650 Graphics Tablet had issues upon release:

The Graphics Tablet, however, wasn’t exactly a runaway hit as it was subsequently discontinued when the FCC found that it caused radio frequency interference problems.

Apple went back to the drawing board, and in 1983, it released a second iteration of the graphics tablet, which was right around the time when the Apple IIe was in production.

Check out the rest of Edible Apple’s post for more great pictures.

[Via Dave Caolo, via Splorp.]

Got a fun e-mail from Oklahoma:

Just came from your Newton Poetry site and saw your remarks about the Molar Mac. I have one that I would like to sell. I’m moving and as you mentioned this beautiful Mac weighs about 60 lbs. I LOVE this Mac. Mine is a 233 MGH and it has two SCB ports, so I was able to use a flash drive with it. Also has a working floppy drive and a non-working zip drive. Otherwise, it is in great condition and works great. I do not think it was ever used in a school. I got it from a graphic designer. It’s loaded with Photoshop, Illustrator and Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. Do you know anyone who would like to buy a great Molar Mac and who would be willing to pay the shipping cost to receive it???

Thanks,
Marilyn in Tulsa

If anyone’s interested in owning a great piece of recent Mac history, drop me an e-mail and I’ll give you Marilyn’s contact info.

A few weeks ago, Morgan Aldridge wondered if going absolutely retro, with nothing but a Newton eMate 300 and an old Apple StyleWriter, would be possible.

Now, he’s testing himself – and the RetroChallenge – at his word:

The challenge is very open-ended, so I was content with setting a reasonable goal of repairing & updating an eMate 300 as a clean & simple environment for focused writing. It needs the hinge repaired, battery recelled, 2010 patch applied, and a few other issues addressed, so there’ll be more involved than merely clearing away desk detritus. If I manage all that with time to spare, then I’ll venture to craft a working modem script which allows me to get online with AT&T EDGE/GPRS via Bluetooth, but I’m not counting on it.

It’s a heckuva challenge, to use a mid-’90s-era Newton to manage your daily tasks and projects.

Aldridge is trying to use the simplified desk space to organize his life. What could be simpler than a monochrome proto-netbook? He says that being a Newton power user doesn’t make the RetroChallenge that challenging, but he gets two benefits: accomplishing a goal, and completing a contest.

“With less than an hour to go before the start of the challenge in my time zone, I’m very much looking forward to a clean, minimal, and usable Newton desk at the end of the month,” Aldridge says.

Can’t wait to see how it goes, and his results at the end of January.

From Riccardo Mori’s System Folder:

Over the years [Claudio] gave me a few of the Macs in my collection, such as the Macintosh SE FDHD and the Apple IIGS. He was my vintage hardware ‘pusher’, and I used to ask him for help when something didn’t work (and I regularly paid for his expertise, although he — being the utterly honest guy he was — never charged me the prices other Apple repair shops used to charge at the time), and every now and then I helped him put order in his crammed, messy (in a beautiful sort of way) laboratory; he called me when he meant to clean it up a bit, and gave me a lot of interesting pieces. When I was looking for a PowerBook 100, he gave me three dismantled units and told me: Here you have all the pieces to build one functional PowerBook 100.

That’s great: Mac fandom as DIY repair, probably the best way to learn how to be a Macintosh devotee.

Mori’s Mac 128k photos are great, but so is his story of the Mac repair friend that showed him how they worked, and how to piece them together.

Mac users who have Apple Wizards as friends (as I do – thanks Curtis!) are the luckiest, because they have someone to share their joy with.

“Sometimes I wonder just how “Newton” I could go. Clear off my desk and leave only an eMate and Color StyleWriter 2200? Would love it.”

– Morgan Aldridge

Greg Pak at Pakbuzz was a dedicated AlphaSmart Dana user. It’s portability, small form factor, and battery life made the Dana his go-to writing machine.

But then Pak grabbed a Newton eMate off eBay, for comparison’s sake, and has declared it the “greatest lo-tech writing machine on the planet!” The exclamation point means he’s serious.

In comparing the AlphaSmart Dana, AlphaSmart Neo (above), and the eMate, Pak found they had a lot of similarities:

Both the Dana and the eMate were designed with the educational market in mind. Both are solid state computers with no moving parts and incredibly sturdy plastic bodies. Both run on software originally designed for pocket organizers and feature a stylus rather than a mouse. Both have black and white screens with green backlights. Both use their own barebones but functional word processors that can export and import rtf files. Both turn on instantly and automatically save everything that you type. And both run for days on a full charge.

The difference is in the eMate’s syncing capabilities (thanks to the newest batch of Mac-to-Newton sync software), security, data safety, and geekiness.

The Dana and Neo win in terms of speed, weight, and long-term viability, since they’re still in production.

The fact that the AlphaSmart products both sync with USB out of the box make them attractive. Pak’s issues with document syncing seem like a killer, though. I love the ability to drop a NewtonWorks document onto my Mac desktop as a rich text document and be done with it.

Battery life on both AlphaSmart products, however, seems killer.