Newton Poetry

Hats off to Andy Hill, creator of the Newton Art blog, for coming up with a heck of an idea.

Using packages like HexPaint and Newton Works, Hill highlights artistic scribbles that are created on the MessagePad and eMate. He’s taking user-submitted work as well.

Here’s how Hill recommends getting the artwork off your Newton:

First draw the picture. Then copy it and paste it into a new Note. Mail the note to yourself using Mailv – and make sure you choose GIF in the format not text. Then upload the image to the blog.

Simple enough, although I would think taking a screen capture would work as well.

There are more and more artwork-themed apps coming from the iPhone; it’s nice to see Newton fans getting creative, too. They just have to stick to monochrome masterpieces.

As a side note, I’d like to point to the Newton Art blog as the perfect example of what constitutes a great blog. It’s unique, it’s quirky, and I bet it’ll be a lot of fun for Hill to maintain. Who else does this kind of stuff?

[Via NewtonTalk.net.]

“I think what I want is an instant-on Newton-like device in the Kindle form-factor but with a stylus and it only runs OneNote (but better than OneNote) and is also my iPhone. Or something like that. Yeah. That sounds about right…I imagine nobody has done it yet because the market demographic consists entirely of people who are legally insane.”

– Steven Frank, from his blog stevenf, on a dream machine/wiki that holds everything he knows.

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.

Let’s say the improbable happens during the iPhone 3.0 media event today and Apple releases the rumored 10″ iTablet.

Are we then looking at the proper heir to the Newton MessagePad?

Back when I first started Newton Poetry, a few months after the iPhone came out, people were talking Newton 2.0 in the form of a larger-form iPod Touch: 10″ screen, iPhone OS, touch-screen input, etc. Even before that, as far back as 2002, rumors told of the Return of the MessagePad in some form or another.

Now the rumors are back, with evidence to boot, and meanwhile the iPod Touch/iPhone gets an update from Apple that could make its usability as close to the Newton’s as ever before.

Think about it: cut and paste, to-do and notes syncing, some kind of premium app store for business-centric applications.

Perhaps the only questions that remain are which rumored features will Apple leave out and wait to install next time? Over time, the iPhone will surely eclipse the Newton in its feature set (it may have already).

For us Newton users, how many features does it take for us to accept the iPhone as the successor to the Newton?

There are still Newton-like features missing on the touch screen platforms: a wide-open application base, handwriting recognition, innovative file system, and kick-ass battery life. Newton users never have to worry about Apple rejecting a great app, or of losing service thanks to AT&T’s sub-par network.

But still. Eventually, Newton users will have fewer and fewer excuses not to make an upgrade of some kind. If the very thing Newton die-hards are looking for – a bigger iPod Touch with full PIM capabilities – comes out in the next few months, will a lack of handwriting recognition be enough to hold off on making the purchase? What will be left lacking?

The Newton has more personality than devices twice its size and half its age. Part of it is its pioneering spirit, and part of it is its clever UI. Is that enough to make people hang on to their eMates?

Granted, no solution works for everyone, which is why some Newton users will never accept a system that (a) doesn’t allow for HWR and (b) features a crap-tacular battery life. The simplicity and intuitiveness of the Newton OS has lasting power, too. Apple may have had a hard time figuring out what to do with their device, but Newton users have no such hesitations.

Hell, with an iTablet, we still don’t know if we’ll get some kind of watered-down Mac OS X or a beefed-up iPhone OS.

Maybe some of my co-MessagePad fans can shed some light on this thing for me. Is this idea of the giant-sized iPod Touch enough to satisfy what you’ve been missing since 1998? Does anyone think an Apple tablet/netbook thingamabob gets released at this iPhone 3.0 event? Will some Newton users be forever locked in a world that existed 10 years ago?

Let me know in the comments.

Since you all were nice enough to share a little bit about yourselves last week, it’s my turn.

My name is Dave Lawrence. I’m a 27-year-old communications specialist for a local credit union in my hometown of Jackson, MI – a smallish city along the I-94 corridor about an hour and a half west of Detroit.

I graduated with a degree in English/journalism from Adrian College and came back home to find my job.

While I worked with Macs at the campus newspaper, I didn’t get serious about them until the winter of 2005, when I bought my first computer – and first Mac: an iBook G4. Since then, I haven’t looked back. My collection has grown to include an iBook G3 clamshell, an iMac G3, two Mac SEs, a PowerMac G4, an iMac G4, and – most recently – a PowerMac G3.

My first Newton came in December 2006, and was more or less something to mess around with. I felt you can’t have a truly righteous Apple collection without a Newton, so I bought a MessagePad 110. Later, in the fall of 2007, I launched Newton Poetry. I also have an eMate.

Besides Macs and Newtons, I love to travel, read, watch “The Office,” head out on the town with friends, and get involved in my community. I’m in a local Rotary club, am on the board for a recycling non-profit, and get involved in politics whenever I can.

I’ve made several life-changing trips in the past few years, including driving down Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, taking the northern route from Michigan to Seattle, and exploring Revolutionary War sites in New England. This summer, my big trip will include a cross-Canada drive to Vancouver for the Worldwide Newton Conference.

I do Newton Poetry because the Newton community fascinates me, and the device is so much fun to use. There’s still an audience out there who craves information about the Newton – how to make it work, how to connect it with modern Macs, where the Newton ideal will take us in the years ahead.

Also, I love to fiddle with computers and projects, and Newton Poetry gives me an outlet to write about those projects. What I found was that people who, say, want to install an Airport card in their iBook, like to have help as they do it. As a result, that post is one of my most popular.

There’s tons more about me, of course, so feel free to browse my personal blog, follow me on Twitter, or hang on and see where else Newton Poetry takes us.

Since my eMate 300 arrived at the end of last summer, I’ve struggled with ideas on how to use it. I bought mine mainly as a testing machine; my MessagePad 110 could only run Newton OS 1.x applications, and I wanted to experiment with more recent Newton apps. Also, eMates don’t have the portability and flexibility of their MP2x00 cousins.

So, what to do? It’s only recently, as I think back to the eMate’s original use (education, writing, word processing), that I’ve thought of a practical use for the little green machine: a journal writer.

I’ve been a writer as long as I can remember. As a kid, I used a typewriter to hammer out short stories. When I discovered the computer, it opened up a whole new world for me. I grew up to be editor of my high school and college newspaper, earned my degree in journalism, and went on to be a professional public relations writer. I live and breathe the written word.

A few years ago, I picked up journaling after a long hiatus. A plain notepad and pen have been the victims of random thoughts since I graduated college in 2003. After using a keyboard for so long, though, I notice my hand fatigues after only a few paragraphs. It’s no laughing matter.

I thought about using one of my Mac SEs as a journaling machine, just as an excuse to turn on of the little guys, but the SEs lack the true portability I was looking for. Laptops are fine – I have two iBooks – but finding excuses to use my classic Apple hardware was the goal. The eMate was just what I was looking for in a writing machine.

At home, the eMate works fine. But the rechargable battery is dead, and it’s not like a standard MessagePad with replaceable batteries. The eMate’s battery is wired in. So my next project is to find a usable eMate battery and replace my dead one.

When that happens, the eMate’s portability will be good enough to carry with me on vacations, trips to the coffeeshop, and even local performances or exhibits, where I can type down my thoughts. The smaller eMate keyboard will take some getting used to, but I’ve used it a few times already, and it’s not that big of a change.

In the meantime, I’m going to use Newton Works (with, perhaps, a few add-ons) to keep an electronic journal. I may search for other word processor apps, just to test the options, and implement a folder structure by year for organization. Now that I have Newton-to-OS X syncing down pat, I can even export my entries as text files – just in case any of them work as a blog post.

It’s hard to justify owning an eMate just for testing and projects alone. Over time, I can think about other uses for it other than journaling – like recipe-keeping (that old cliché) or even Twittering. Who knows?

All this will give me an excuse to poke around the Newton 2.0 interface a bit more, try out some apps, and goof around with my newest Newton. Stay tuned – the next Newton Poetry post could be typed out on an eMate keyboard.

Just a heads up: Eckhart Köppen posted a wiki on his site, 40hz, that describes the 2010 Newton problem and some possible solutions. He also posted a wiki on patching the Newton.

Köppen is a Newton developer as well, and has posted some thoughts on how to do GTD on the Newton.

The good news is there are really smart people working on the Year 2010 issue, and Köppen seems to think getting a patch up and running will require “less black magic than anticipated,” as he told the Newtontalk list.

Finally.

Many months after getting my hands on a Newton eMate 300, and after taking “screenshots” with my Canon PowerShot digital camera, I’ve finally figured out how to take a real-live screenshot using Apple’s Newton Toolkit.

More… »

The Newton 2010 bug is rearing its ugly head again – this time prompting some Newton users to draft a petition to Apple asking for the release of Newton code to fix the problem.

But would a petition work?

It started on the Newtontalk list, after BobR posted a few experiments trying to see if his Newtons were affected by the 2010 bug. Then matthiasm posted a draft petition to the group, asking Steve Jobs to release Newton code to the community.

Newton users seemed to fall into two groups: one excited about the idea of lobbying Apple, and the other thinking the petition was a waste of time. The latter group seemed to think that focusing on the software and finding a fix was the most important to-do before 2010 hits.

Matt Howe (a tried-and-true Newton developer) thinks a petition is at least worth a shot:

I agree that there is a small chance this will work. I don’t believe that a petition of 100,000 signatures would move Steve Jobs to do something. And I agree that he may not even be in a position to help. But, that does not mean we should not try. People have been trying to bury the Newton line even before it went out of production. And since Apple killed it we have been considered a quaint oddity. But we know how hard we and those before us have worked to continue the platform. This is the least we can do to perpetuate little green friends.

Unfortunately, I can’t speak much to the coding side of things – for that, I would recommend checking out Tony Kan’s description of what’s needed to fix the bug.

But I will say that I agree with both sides of the argument: the software needs to be fixed, and the Newton community needs to ask Apple for some assistance. What can it hurt?

Newton users have an interesting relationship with the rest of the Apple and Mac community. There are some, like Leander Kahney, who give us a bit of respect for hanging on to our forgotten MessagePads. Meanwhile, other jackasses relegate our community to “weirdo” status, and tell us to give up our “dead” platform.

It feels like there is some sympathy to our cause, somewhere out there, and that’s why I think a big PR push – a petition, a big-name signatory (Woz?), a comprehensive engagement of the Mac media – could help. Draw attention to our plight, while the software wonks try to fix things on the back-end.

A combination of approaches seems best. After all, we’ve only got a year or so before things start really getting weird. If the Newton community doesn’t find a solution soon, our beloved Newts may become extinct next New Year’s.

matthiasm’s request – that Apple release some Newton code as they did with older versions of the Mac OS, an open-source version of Newton Toolkit, and some ROM source code – seems modest enough. Plus, Apple could score big warm-and-fuzzy points through publicity. The problem? They won’t make any money off this project.

And with Steve Jobs out for the foreseeable future, any petition or letter-writing campaign would need to reach the right people.

The important thing is to do something, and I think the best approach is to try all approaches. Hit Apple with some petitions, get the media to publicize our cause, draw some attention to the 2010 bug, and have smarter people than me work on the patch.

Who’s with me?