The news of Jeff Goldblum’s death were greatly exaggerated.
But the hoax did get me thinking about Goldblum’s Apple commercial run during the late ’90s and early ’00s. The iBook G3 clamshell, my favorite of the Mac portables, featured Goldblum in its initial commercial (above).
Here’s Apple co-founder (and dancer extraordinaire) Steve Wozniak demonstrating software called Quickscript, a handwriting recognition package based on MyScript. His tool? One of those fancy Modbooks.
Woz praises the Newton MessagePad several times during the video.
“I used to love that Newton,” he says.
[Courtesy of Mike Sforza at NewtonTalk.]
Here at Newton Poetry, there is One Supreme Operating system, and therefore most posts relate to the Newton interacting with the Mac environment.
I realize, however, that there are other operating systems out there. And, while I’m not a user, I respect that Newton fans can be Windows and Linux users. With Windows, there are tons of tips and how-tos on how to make connections and upload packages and whatnot. Sadly, we don’t hear as much from the Linux side.
Let’s put our operating system differences aside and help Newton users be better Newton users, shall we?
To start, I found the Newton and Linux mini-HOWTO, a site filled with questions and answers (like “How to upload a Newton package to Linux” and “Which Linux software is available”).
Some of the info seems to be dated. For instance, the author talks about Windows-emulating WINE to be a project slated in the future tense. Plus a few of the links are dead. But the basics are all there.
To get connected, there’s Newtonlink. There are a few more Linux applications for the Newton over at TuxMobil.
Then again, you can always replace Linux on your PDA with the Newton OS. I’m just sayin’.
Any Linux users out there that have successfully paired their Ubuntu with a MessagePad or eMate? Let me know in the comments.
My Mac-enthusiast friend Curtis chimes in with his latest project, a Dell netbook Hackintosh:
It was an easy install and it worked *very* well.
The little machine reminds me of the days of my PowerBook 100!
Congratulations, Curtis!
Now I wonder if you could get NCX running on it and sync a Newton. Anyone tried yet?
From Stanford’s Ethical Issues in Engineering:
In some fields of contemporary engineering in some countries, engineers work extremely long days and weeks, often under deadlines. Such engineers are often under immense pressure to achieve often-unrealistic project goals, as was the case from 1989 to 1992 during the development of the original Apple Newton. Psychiatrists coined the phrase “Silicon Valley Syndrome” to refer to the fact that the divorce rate and levels of alcohol and drug abuse are much higher in Silicon Valley than in the U.S. as a whole.
The “immense pressure” claimed one victim during the Newton’s development: programmer Ko Isono, who committed suicide on December 12, 1992.
Isono was said to have succumbed to the extreme pressure and deadlines while working on the first Newton MessagePad.
Yesterday, the Unofficial Apple Weblog announced that 2010 would be a dire year for Newton users. Some strange Year 2010 bug was bound to make MessagePad fans drown in tears of obsolete sorrow.
It’s too bad TUAW’s Steven Sande jumped the gun, because – as of a few weeks ago – Eckhart Köppen released a patch fixing the Y2010 bug. A quick browse through the Newtontalk list or, shucks, even this modest blog, would’ve brought Köppen’s patch to light.
Sande later fixed his oversight, but attempted to cover his tracks by making fun of Newton users.
“Frankly, considering the caveats listed on the update page, I think it would be a much better idea just to get an iPhone, guys!” he wrote.
Frankly, Steve, we’re doing just fine, thankyouverymuch – even if we don’t qualify as “mainstream consumers.”
What’s weird is that TUAW, at least twice in the last year or so, has reported on this exact same story, offering incremental updates on the situation. Both articles (along with the other Newton articles TUAW has posted, which help to keep the Newton in the public’s eye) are easily found using the blog’s Newton tag.
Do they not discuss Newton matters at the TUAW office before posting on them?
I appreciate that Sande gave an update on his error, but the little dig at the end is what got me.
Also, I can’t help but feel “Newtapocalypse” – as TUAW’s headline reads – sounds clunky. The “a” stuck in the middle adds an unnecessary syllable to the phrase. I much prefer “Newtpocalypse,” if only because it sounds more like the original “apocalypse.”
Four syllables. Rolls off the tongue nicely.
[Thanks to Newtontalk for the heads-up.]
The Cult of Mac pointed me to a cool t-shirt design with classic Macs (now that G3s can be considered “classic”). What’s neat is that I have all three Macs on the shirt.
It also got me thinking about my growing collection of Mac shirts. As soon as I saw the Exploded 128 shirt, I had to have it. And now I’m in a group with a bunch of other nerdy Mac hippies wearing some other guy’s shirt (here’s me with mine).
I used to have one of these beauties, but Cafe Press doesn’t seem to make shirts that fit me. They’re either too big or too small. Still, it was a fun shirt to wear in public.
Insanely Great Tees makes some classic Mac t-shirts, and I really thought about springing for one of FastMac’s anniversary shirts.
Like the white Apple sticker on my rear windshield, Apple shirts always make for great conversation. There’s something smug in proudly displaying your computing preference across your OS X-powered chest. And why not? Everyone thinks Mac users are arrogant anyway.
If you did it right, you could wear a different Apple shirt each day of the week.
My roommate has this thing with technology. It freaks him out.
Like when my iMac and my iPhone ring with an iCal alarm at the same time, he gets spooked. Sometimes my iMac G3, running OS 9, will wake up in the middle of the night and start talking in some robotic voice. My roommate said he almost tossed the Mac into the pond next to our apartment.
But now I’m starting to worry.
I gave that Wolfram|Alpha thingy a try the other day, on my iPhone, and got the above message. It addressed me personally, and I freaked out a little.
Now I know my iPhone has my name in it. And I know that the HAL-like graphic invokes some 2001 reference (“What are you doing, Dave?”). Still. It’s a bit creepy to have your phone address you by your first name.
Called it the Uncanny Valley, or call it some robotic defense system that becomes self aware and starts offing humans. Whatever. It’s terrible.
And now Adobe products are figuring things out on their own.
I dig technology. I’ve devoted this blog to a device that reads my friggin’ handwriting. The Newton is pretty smart.
But it doesn’t call me out by name. That’s a step too far.
Lots of good stuff from Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (including a new iPhone 3GS), but the part that caught my eye was the ability of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to recognize Chinese symbols through handwriting recognition on Mac trackpads:
You can now use a Multi-Touch trackpad to draw Chinese characters in your documents. They’ll appear on the screen in a new input window, which recommends characters based on what you drew and lets you choose the right one. The input window even offers suggestions for subsequent characters based on what you chose.
The iPhone had this ability first, but now it’s an OS X-wide feature. Pretty cool.
Us Newton users are always curious to see how Apple uses handwriting recognition in our post-MessagePad world. The technology lives on in Inkwell, but would it be useful to have English handwriting recognition on Mac trackpads?
Author Peter Straub at his workspace, using either a G5 or Intel iMac.
The Where I Write project has a bunch of great sci-fi author photos taken in their workspace by photographer Kyle Cassidy. I always find it fascinating to see where other people do their creative work. How many Macs can you spot?
[Courtesy of Neil Gaiman.]