Newton Poetry

Amanda Fortini, writing for Salon.com, finds a good reason to complain about her “evil iPhone”:

The calls that go straight to voice mail, though, are the worst byproducts of the [AT&T] network’s weakness. Those messages pool silently, while the iPhone never deigns to give a signal or beep of any kind to indicate that they’re idling in your mailbox…If the phone was previously allowing voice mail messages to pool, now it seemed to be holding them for ransom. Even when it has service, messages don’t come through, and then later show up all at once, as though the iPhone has finally decided it’s in the mood to release them. Last week, all of my contacts in the address book vanished before inexplicably reappearing. The phone is worse than an orchid; it’s a high-maintenance techno-girlfriend whose demands are inscrutable and impossible to meet.

Fortini complains about the touch-screen typing and the auto-correct feature, too, both of which I’ve become used to and – over time – have come to enjoy. I like how the keyboard changes depending on how you’re holding the iPhone.

She also complains about how easily the screen cracks after you drop it, which seems like complaining about your car’s crumpled hood after you rear-end someone. I have my own first-hand experience with Fortini’s “fault,” and I know where the blame rests: squarely with me.

But the AT&T network (lack of) service and the voicemails not appearing until hours or days later – that’s got to stop. At first, I thought it was the piss-poor service in my apartment. One side of the apartment, and the upstairs, gets decent reception. But move into the dining room or the kitchen and you cross some sadistic border where cell service is completely missing. It’s like my rooms are made of Superman-grade lead.

It’s only natural that the iPhone receives some backlash. It’s becoming so popular, and selling so well, that problems start to become a statistical guarantee. The more people use something, the more it goes wrong. Think about when the iPod become super popular and then, predictably, started to attract critics.

Some of the iPhone’s problems are legit. The problems, however, are not with the phone itself. Mostly, I blame AT&T. It’s their network that sucks, and it’s their voicemail that fails to come through.

Get even the most basic aspects of the phone wrong – you know, the calling at the messages and whatnot – and the whole device seems to be tainted. I don’t believe that’s the case. I love the apps and the iPod and the fun the iPhone provides. It’s just that I also find myself cursing when Twitterific gives me a “timed out” message, or the Facebook app loads at dial-up speeds. That’s the fault of the network.

“Don’t blame the phone,” I tell my friends. “Blame AT&T.”

It may have only been in jest, but Larry Dignan’s suggestion that the rumored Apple tablet be called a Newton seems a bit far-fetched.

But ZDNet’s editor isn’t the only one mentioning both devices, one true and one maybe true, in the run-up to some Apple product that has more possible release dates than Smile.

I haven’t dipped in to the Apple Tablet pool because, just like the iPhone before it, we have little way of knowing what it will include, how much it will cost, when it will be unleashed, and what groundbreaking new whiz-bang feature it will release upon the world. There’s just no way.

And frankly, Apple isn’t going to release another “Newton”-named product in this lifetime. This is not a company who relishes in the past, and certainly not one who would want to revive a questionably-successful product’s name when another would do just dandy.

[Via NewtonTalk.]

CNet’s David Morgenstern looks at Apple’s past, kinda-funny present, and future prospects for some sort of netbook, starting with John Sculley’s Knowledge Navigator device and ending with our good friend the eMate:

The Web is awash with visions of a forthcoming Mac netbooks, or an iPhone with a keyboard, or simply a mobile Mac that’s less expensive than the current product line. All of these imaginings are as likely as one made by an Apple thinktank some 20 years ago and another by the Onion.

The Onion piece is the great MacBook Wheel, and the 20-year-old project is Sculley’s dream of a truly personal digital assistant.

Morgenstern took a similar look back when the One Laptop Per Child’s XO laptop was released a few years back:

One big difference between the eMate and the XO are their screens. The eMate had a small backlit LCD that offered 16 shades of gray and a 480×320-pixel resolution. The XO provides a full-color 7.5-inch LCD with 1,200×900 resolution. Remember that the XO supports a web browser and the eMate didn’t.

He goes on to say that the price different between a new eMate and a new XO are significant.

Seems the eMate is Apple’s evidence for thinking small, rugged, and affordable for whatever the situation – netbooks or third-world rescue efforts – calls for.

Low End Mac’s Dan Knight on whether to go with a new iMac or 15″ MacBook Pro:

Now that Apple has an “antiglare” option for the 15″ MacBook Pro, I think it could be the perfect production machine for me at some point in the future. The size and weight aren’t an issue, and even the entry-level 2.53 GHz dual-core model has vastly more power than the 1.6 GHz dual G4 upgraded Power Mac I work with…The perfect desktop computer would take the current iMac design, move some ports for easier access, and offer an antiglare option.

It’s a decision I’m going to make in the next few weeks as well. I’ve been working on a new MacBook Pro for a few weeks now (I’ll post something here soon), and it really is the perfect laptop. I can’t imagine one any bigger or smaller.

However, I’m a consumer Mac guy, and the new iMacs offer tremendous appeal. I always said, once Snow Leopard comes out, I’m finally going to spring for a new Mac.

And while I assumed I would get a new iMac, the new MacBook Pro has me questioning my original assumption.

The New York Times’s Tech Talk podcast talked with Newton savior and Y2010 bug squasher Eckhart Köppen on avoiding Newtpocalypse, how the Newton stays relevant, and how to find a MessagePad or eMate.

It’s a great (but short) interview, and helps spread the Newton virus into the world at large.

“It is a device that does what it has to do. I keep most of my information on there,” Köppen says of his Newton. “It’s always there, and it’s really practical.”

Köppen brags about the Newton’s battery life, which is excellent, and about its data reliability.

“You don’t have to worry about your stuff when it’s on the Newton,” he says. “It keeps track of your stuff as you need it, when you need it.”

And hey, I learned that Köppen works for Nokia.

Check out the July 29 episode (iTunes link) for the full interview.

[Via System Folder.]

Another entry from the “iMacs in the wordspace” desk – this time either a G5 or Intel Mac.

Love the chair, but I wonder how comfy it is?

[Via Design Sponge.]

Tai Shimizu, a photo blogger, got his hands on a Newton MessagePad 2100 and posted his initial thoughts – along with some gorgeous isolated pictures of his new gadget.

Shimizu seems most impressed with the handwriting recognition capabilities and the user interface:

The UI of the Newton feels saturated with innovation, even when compared to new devices. The idea of the notepad being the centerpiece of the device is not only vastly different than current UI paradigms, but extremely useful due to the addition of the assist functionality.

The pictures, like the one above, are great.

The worst possible thing happened to me last Friday: I dropped my iPhone 3G and shattered the glass screen.

I say “worst possible” only because of the way I felt at the time. When I picked it up after dropping it on the tile floor at work, I nearly sobbed. It felt like my dog just died.

Friday’s incident wasn’t the first time I dropped my iPhone. Thankfully, each time before, I dropped it on its protective white case.

Last week, however, it landed like a piece of toast and jelly, business-side down.

I couldn’t tell whether the awful screeching sound was from the phone or from me, but I knew right away that something terrible just happened. Picking it up from the floor, turning it over to see the damage, I felt my face grow pale. Everyone has to experience post-traumatic stress disorder, I reasoned, even in non-combat situations.

This was it. My phone was doomed. It turned on, luckily. The touchscreen still worked. But now there was a horrible spider-web crack across the top half of the screen. It was more than damaged – it was shattered. I took it back to my work desk and just stared at it.

Then I did some research. I didn’t opt for the Apple Care plan, so I was on my own financially. The best I could do is take it to my nearest Apple Store and see what they could do. From everything I read online, the best option was to pay $200 and have the Apple Store mechanic replace the glass screen. iPhone 3GSs are nice, but my phone was fine, and I don’t qualify for an upgrade. Not yet.

The glass replacement is exactly what happened, but that’s only half the story.

I took it to the Ann Arbor Apple Store, at the Briarwood Mall, and explained my situation to the Geniuses. My option was exactly as I had figured: $200 for a new glass screen ($100 of that is just for labor). And it was a quick fix. I had my iPhone back in about 10 minutes. When the Genius gave it back, I clicked on the wake button, saw that the iPhone was alive and kicking, and headed out the door.

When I got home, however, I found that the home button on the phone wasn’t working. I would open an app, get done with it, and click the home button to return to the iPhone screen. But when I hit the home button, nothing happened.

Whatever happened between the Genius taking my old glass screen and replacing it with the new one was enough to make my iPhone malfunction. The home button wasn’t taking me home.

I placed a quick call back to the Apple Store. A representative, Mike, answered. When I started to explain my problem, he kept saying, “Hello? Is anyone there?” Then he hung up. Weird.

A second call yielded the same results. A rep named Cat answered, asked “Hello?” a few times, and hung up.

My mic, it seems, was busted too. In fact, everything from the the home button down was malfunctioning. I called the Apple Store on the home phone and set up an appointment for the next day – Saturday at 1 p.m.

I came back into the store, and the Genius that helped me the night before recognized me.

“Weren’t you just in here last night?” she asked.

“I was, now I’m back,” I said. “However you guys replaced the screen, it busted the home button and the microphone.”

The Genius tried connecting my iPhone with the USB cable, but it wouldn’t sync with iTunes. Even the USB port, it seems, was broken. The technician took my phone to the back, disappearing for a few minutes, and came back with good news:

“We’re going to give you a new phone.”

Hoo-ha. He switched my SIM card out of my old phone, popped it into the new phone, and kapow – I had a brand new iPhone 3G.

I took it back home and, after a few connection issues involving resetting the phone several times and a lot of cussing, synced all my apps and data back to my phone.

The whole process, from me shattering my iPhone’s screen to getting a new phone from Apple, was a lesson. Now I grip my phone a little tighter and treat it like a new parent treats their bundle of joy.

But I have to give credit to Apple. Sure, I paid $200 for a new glass screen, but they made the whole process as easy as possible – right down to recognizing that their technicians did something to break my first iPhone. They remedied that with a brand new phone, and it was the right thing to do.

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!]

The Worldwide Newton Conference 2009 took place over a week ago in Vancouver, BC, and John Coady at the NewtonTalk list offers his observations from the weekend’s festivities:

Larry Yaeger gave us a fascinating glimpse into the development of the Newton and, of course, the work that he spearheaded on the second generation print recognizer – which was based on the use of artificial neural networks – that made Newton OS 2.x so incredibly better than the original (non-Apple) version. We were shown some of the original Newton prototypes and development/testing equipment (I hope that one day these end up in a suitable exhibit in Apple’s own museum). Larry then took us on a short stroll into Polyworld where he currently explores the further application of neural networks, and their various properties, in artificial life systems (to me it looks just like a straight extension of his work on the Newton!!!).

Sounds like a blast, despite the low turnout.

I couldn’t make it, unfortunately, but WWNC organizer Ryan Vetter has posted materials from the conference at the WWNC 2009 site.

[Ed. note: I had “Dennis Coady” when it should have been “John Coady.” Sorry about that, John!]