Newton Poetry

Here’s a novel concept: use what you’ve got until you can’t use it anymore.

For Newton users, the concept isn’t new or novel. We do it every time we see our green screens glow.

But the good folks at Last Year’s Model are spreading the good word that new isn’t always better. The “need” to upgrade to the newest and shiniest (and I’m as guilty as anyone) isn’t always the best policy, especially when what you’ve got works just fine.

I’ve loved the idea behind Last Year’s Model since I stumbled on my iMac G3 at a recycling event. The best Macs (ahem) are often the ones that are quote-unquote obsolete.

And hey, there’s a whole group of productive, sane, intelligent human beings who use a last-decade’s-model PDA. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

There’s not a lot of oomph behind Last Year’s Model. It’s really a place to share stories and spread the word, with Facebook and Myspace groups along with a Twitter hashtag. The site doesn’t ask you to share videos or spam your friends’ inboxes. The aim is to simply raise awareness that, say, your eMate is just fine banging out the latest novel project you’re working on.

From Ken Fager, who has also been using Grackle68k, which I’ve heard about all over the place recently.

It’s geeky enough to get a Mac SE online, but it’s super cool to send toots via Grackle. Kudos to you, Ken.

[Via Ken’s Twitpic and Twitter.]

Here’s a call out to all my classic Mac using friends.

From what I’ve read here and here, it’s not looking good. All the updates Apple threw into OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and with the abandonment of PowerPC Macs, things like networking with OS 8 and 9 Macs and AppleTalk have been put out to pasture.

I was trying to network my PowerMac G3, running Mac OS 8.6, to my new Snow-Leopard-powered iMac over my Airport hub. No luck, despite some handy how-tos here and here.

After a half day spent trying to figure this out, and a bunch of forum list reading, I’ve just about given up. I thought it would be a fun rainy-day project for those with new and old Macs, especially for you, the people, who have OS 9/8 Macs still sitting around collecting dust.

Any suggestions, drop me an e-mail.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Via badbanana.

Head to my eBay listing to bid on my baby – an iMac G4.

Please, give it a good home.

“If you look at the some of the work done in the early to mid-eighties you can see the limitation. We finally got a 512k machine, the Mac Plus, which is how Design Quarterly was done. We used MacVision, which was a little beige box that hooked up to a video camera and ported right into the Mac. You could scan over an image and it was tiled out. We kept moving the camera, scanning and repeating.”

– April Greiman, designer, in an interview on idsgn.org.

Perhaps the quality wasn’t all there, but Greiman’s interview shows that even the lowest end of the low end Macs were capable of design work. Great two-part interview.

The original idea behind the One Used Mac Per Child was to take classic Macintoshes and give them to underpriveleged kids who could use a computer.

Recently, though, I’ve learned the idea can apply to anyone who needs a capable computer to get things done: word processing, e-mail, basic Internet surfing.

I was finally able to put my idea into practice with Mirza, my new Pakistani neighbor. Mirza moved to Michigan from Karachi, Pakistan to pursue a career in physical therapy. He earned a work visa with our local hospital and is spending two years in America learning the trade.

Mirza left a wife and three kids back in Pakistan. He tries to talk to them every day, but the phone bill is getting expensive. E-mail is much cheaper. But first, he needs a computer and an Internet connection.

He asked me to go “laktop” shopping with him. He balked when I told him the price of a decent laptop, so I remembered that I have a very useful PowerMac G4 sitting around my apartment looking for something to do.

Finding a modest high-speed connection in our area is easy. Connecting the Mac to the Internet will be simple. But now I’ve learned that Mirza has virtually no experience with computers. He doesn’t know how to type, or how to navigate the Web, and doesn’t even have an e-mail address.

At least now he has a used Mac to get him by. For his simple needs, the PowerMac – running OS X 10.3 with a bit of TextEdit and Firefox – will suit him just fine. A combination printer/scanner, to scan family photos and print driving directions (once he gets his driver’s license), is all that’s missing.

For everything else, the PowerMac is perfect. Sure, it’s an older Mac lacking the latest and greatest web browser and software package. It’s not the quietest machine anymore. And the giant CRT Apple Studio Display cramps his small apartment. But since he won’t be doing any video transcoding any time soon, the 400 MHz, 768 MB RAM machine will carry his workload with nary a sputter. After he buys an DSL connection, he’ll be up and running in no time.

In fact, he won’t know any different, and I saved him from being soured on computers with some cheap Windows Vista laptop.

I was just glad to have an extra, useable Mac hanging around for Mirza to use. In the end, I saved him several hundred dollars (at minimum) and handed him the best operating system of its time. If he wants an different computer, then I’ll take him “laktop” shopping.

Teaching Mirza to type? That’s another project entirely.

Grant Hutchinson is taking part in a clever project:

A box full of electronic junk? Most excellent. But, wait a minute … a box full of electronic junk that you are encouraged to take things out of, put things into, and then continually track on the interwebs? It sounded too good to be true, but that’s exactly what “The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronic Junk” or TGIMBOEJ is all about. Loosely described on the project’s site as “… halfway between P2P zip archive sharing and a flea market …”, it was something I was destined to participate in.

What was in Hutchinson’s Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronic Junk (hereafter, the junk box)? Oh, some Newton and Mac peripherals, of course, like an original MessagePad stylus and an Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II.

Want to participate? Grab a sturdy cardboard box, some e-junk, and fill out a form. Then give the box to someone, and help move it along every two weeks while tracking its progress.

I know I’d love to pass along an old external hard drive casing and a few Apple mice myself.

An iMac G4 makes the perfect addition to any workspace, even ones with chill-inducing dog decorations adorning the wall.

It looks like a modest 15″ edition running OS X 10.4 Tiger, the same as mine. Here’s another workspace featuring an iMac G4 that’s a bit more my style. Love the chair.

[Via Desire to Inspire, courtesy of Fffound!]

Okay, maybe it’s just me with a tear in my eye.

Apple is listing the iMac G4 series as “obsolete” as of September 15. This means Apple won’t make repairs on the beloved iLamp.

The iMac G4, as I’ve said time and time again, is my favorite Mac design ever. It’s so great that I went and bought one last summer, and now it serves as my main web surfer, e-mail, and blogging Mac.

[Via Cult of Mac.]