Newton Poetry

“I was there until Steve came back and it was clear he was going to kill the project. In some ways I am sad he did, but I can see why he needed to. Apple had to focus or there would be no Apple today. As it is, some of the technologies are around today (as are the engineers that created them). You can see it in the recognition of addresses and events, and in many other places.”

– Maurice Sharp, ex Newton DTS Engineer and Manager, via the Newtontalk list.

“Maybe the most comfortable and ultimately successful technological advances are the ones that have an umbilical cord back to what came before.”

– Dave Pell at Tweetage Wasteland. What’s so great about the Newton is that it both mimics and advances the notebook metaphor.

“I don’t need a phone. What I need is a mobile communications device that can also manage my contact, calendar, and run some useful apps. That’s how I started down my path of indispensable electronic do-dads with the Apple MessagePad 130, aka the Newton 130.”

– Joe Levi at Pocketnow.com.

“What? No ‘Magic Stylus’ for my Newton? Lame.”

– Grant Hutchinson, from Twitter, on the new Magic Trackpad. I’m excited about this, just because the trackpad on MacBook Pros are outstanding. The Magic Trackpad takes the Magic Mouse idea and flattens it, and that leaves all kinds of openings for new input methods on the Mac. We can’t touch our iMac screens yet, but this comes darn close.

“While it still surely has its niche uses, I personally don’t miss handwriting recognition. Not even a little. And I can’t help wondering if voice recognition will go the same way.”

– Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, on how tough voice recognition (and handwriting recognition) is, despite today’s super-powered PCs.

“Verizon has reached a powerful point in their marketing: for Verizon customers curious about the iPhone, Droid is close enough. Close enough is powerful, and Apple is rapidly losing ground to it.”

– Marco Arment on a possible Verizon iPhone. His theory is that Apple will continue to lose ground to Verizon’s Droid if it doesn’t release a CDMA iPhone. As long as you can walk into a phone store that isn’t AT&T and pick up an Android smart phone, often for free, Marco’s right – it’ll be good enough.

“It is easy to cite examples where less capable products have superseded more capable products. My favorite example of that is PDAs. I still have three classic PDAs: HP200LX, Newton MessagePad 2100, and Psion Revo. All of these have been unavailable for a decade or more, yet in many ways each has features that have been unmatched in newer and ‘better’ products.”

– Michael Anderson at Gear Diary, on the “crapification” of products – or how we’re setting for “good enough.”

“The Commodore Amiga was visionary; so was the Apple Newton. Both devices now share exalted status in the ranks of cult classic also rans, whirligigs which were ahead of their time or better than competitors’ products but which ultimately still lost their battles for market supremacy. Being first out the gate doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be the winning horse in the Derby.”

– Brian from Unqualified.org, on eBook ecosystems.

“I suspect Newton is used as a name because the device can easily be dropped (and probably as easily broken) thus confirming certain precepts of gravitation developed by Isaac Newton.”

– John C. Dvorak, computer columnist, when the Newton was announced. Dvorak calls the Newton one of the “top ten tech turkeys.”