Newton Poetry

PowerbookMedic takes apart a Newton MessagePad:

If the iPhone 3GS had parents, its father would be the iPhone 3G, and its mother would be the 1st Gen iPhone. If it had a Grandma, that would unequivocally have to be the Apple Newton. We’ve done teardown videos on all of the iPhone models, and so it seemed only logical (and respectful) to give the Newton the same honor.

A few things struck me about this video: the infomercial music, the rate of unscrewing screws (what, no fast forward?), and the brave use of a soldering iron. Maybe it’s early, but taking a red-hot poker to my Newton is a bit too advanced for me.

Anyway, a good how-to if you feel like getting your hands dirty.

[Via NewtonTalk.]

I’ve been using iTunes religiously since college, right around 2001, when an art professor told me, “iTunes is the best way to play with your music.”

And he was right. I remember those awful days of WinAmp and I cringe. iTunes, despite all its flaws, remains one of my favorite pieces of Apple software. Grab a song, hit the green “zoom” button, and tuck the iTunes mini player away until you need it. It was convenient and easy to use.

Then they went and broke the damn thing.

Now, with iTunes 9, when you hit the green “maximize” button in OS X, the mini player doesn’t appear. Instead, iTunes treats it like every other app treats it: as a way to mess with the size of the window.

So for eight years now, Apple takes an automatic iTunes response, one that my muscles have stored in the same place they store the tie-your-shoes instructions, and tossed it in the trash heap.

Here’s what happens when you hit the green plus button now:

Notice anything? Of course not – it’s BECAUSE NOTHING HAPPENED!

Nothing except a subtle screen shift to the bottom right – a transition of a few pixels. But those few pixels have screwed the entire iTunes experience.

Nope, now you have to go to the “View” menu and manually choose “Switch to Mini Player,” or – as I had to learn in an Apple Support forum – hit Option when you click the green “maximize” button.

It’s crap. Hopefully, judging from the forum responses (and the feedback link they provided) it’s simply a bug and a fixable situation.

But really – did no one at Apple click the green zoom button and try out the mini player? Does no one in One Infinite Loop actually use the damn thing?

For probably one of the most fascinating explorations of every day uses for your Newton, visit the conversation kicked off by Chris C. at the NewtonTalk list (hit the “Next in thread” link to go from e-mail to e-mail), called “A Day in the life of…”

For a down-and-dirty view, see Don Zahniser’s story. He talks about running a small farm and using Dateman (for to-dos), Notes (grocery lists and garden yields), Works, and more.

Morgan Aldridge has a good breakdown, too, showing which apps he uses throughout the day – everything from PocketMoney to Bills To Pay.

The entire thread is great for discovering apps you’ve never tried out, and practical uses for them in day-to-day life. I found a few I want to try. Browse around the United Network of Newton Archives (UNNA.org) to download some of the apps.

Back when I used my Newton for personal information management (PIM) and notes management, I stuck to the basics like Notes, Dates, To-Dos, and a few games here and there. That’s what is nice about the Newton: you can pick it up and use it as-is.

[Via NewtonTalk.]

Saw this little beauty in a local auto parts store (!), right next to iPhone skins and car chargers.

I like how it says “makes it EASY to use your iPhone.” Like using a finger is hard? Maybe if you have big fingers.

The most useful part of the package might be the included gel skin, but I can’t say that in all fairness. I haven’t tried an iPhone stylus.

Shucks, I even press some of the Newton’s on-screen buttons with my finger, just to get things moving along quickly.

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.

“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.

Jeff Hohner posted pictures from this summer’s Worldwide Newton Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Above is event organizer Ryan Vetter introducing Larry Yaeger.

Here’s an Intel iMac caught in the wild – held up by a cool modern table. IKEA, maybe?

Thanks to Thomas Brand for reminding me what the different is between an iMac G5 and an Intel iMac: the iSight camera at the top.

The new, aluminum iMacs are gorgeous, but I’ll always be partial to the gleaming white iMacs, starting with the Snowy White G3s, of the PowerPC era.

[Via Ffffound!]

Something called Magic Cap has been mentioned in the NewtonTalk mailing list lately. It has some resonance in the Newton community: Magic Cap was a competing PDA paradigm, and was helped along by two Apple pros – Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld.

Developed by General Magic, Magic Cap was an operating system that operated with a room-based metaphor: you did work in your office, you went in the hallway to grab an app, and maybe you strolled outside to get something else done. Tasks were assigned objects in each room, like a notebook to write notes or a file cabinet to access files.

Steven Levy, writing for Wired, gives a good description of the Magic Cap OS:

It had a very nice interface that obviously drew upon Bill’s HyperCard and Andy’s Mac interface, with the unmistakable graphic imprint of Susan Kare. The basic screen looked like a desktop with various tools; on the desk was a postcard that one could fill out and send to anyone…And incidentally, the interface does not use handwriting recognition. You can use a pen or your finger to draw or write on the screen, but digital text is entered with a virtual keyboard – which, surprisingly, doesn’t work too badly for short messages.

Sony (above) and Motorola, among others, developed hardware for the Magic Cap OS in the early ’90s. It became quite the operating system, using object-oriented programming and connecting with the Information Super Highway (this was the ’90s), mirroring both the user-friendliness of the Mac and the usefulness of the Newton.

Funny thing, though: there’s a psuedo-version of Magic Cap, General Magic 1.5, for the Newton.

Phil Muller pointed me to UNNA.org’s archived version of Magic Cap/General Magic. I read that the MessagePad’s version of General Magic only worked on Newton OS 1.3 systems, and that it had only been tested on MP120s.

My MP110, however, runs OS 1.3, so I downloaded the package file from UNNA and installed it using Newton Connection Kit (above). After a quick upload, I found General Magic in my Newton’s Extras – and what do you know, it launched fine.

General Magic presented a literal desktop interfact, complete with notepad (that led me back to Notes), calendar (that sent me to Dates), and both an Inbox and Outbox. In the upper corners of the screen, pointers directed me to the Hallway, where the rest of my packages – like Newtris and Pocket Money – sat inside picture frames. Click on the app icons with a stylus and the app opens up. Tony Kan over at My Apple Newton does a nice job of going through many of the Magic Cap apps and settings.

It’s a super-simple interface, and I supposed once you memorize what each icon represents (it wasn’t always intuitive for me), you can navigate your way around the Newton. General Magic is just another way to interface with the Newton OS (which is why it’s filed under “Backdrops” in UNNA’s archive), except with pictures and icons showing you where to go. It reminds me of Apple’s eWorld interface.

General Magic seems silly, though, when you need to make your way to your apps. Instead of the Extras drawer sliding up, showing you all your installed apps, you have to click your way down a hallway to view each app’s icon individually. I can’t imagine a circumstance where this would be easier than simply picking one icon from a few that are in the Newton’s Extras drawer.

Still, it’s a fun emulator to play with – especially considering Magic Cap was competing with the Newton back in the day.

Chris Barylick from O’Grady’s PowerPage, on upcoming Apple announcements:

Also likely is an introduction of iTunes 9, which has widely been rumored in recent weeks to make its debut with a handful of social networking features. Nothing is expected to be heard about the much anticipated Newton Web tablet, which isn’t expected to surface in any form until the first calendar quarter of 2010.

Hilarious. Apparently Barylick doesn’t agree with me or any other Newton fan who realizes that the rumored Apple tablet will not, in fact, be called a Newton.

[Via splorp.]