If the thought of busting open your Newton MessagePad to see what’s inside makes you squeamish, head to CNet’s “Cracking Open” photo tour. They show what an original Newton (OMP) looks like from the inside.
It’s like Grey’s Anatomy for the PDA world.
Got to play around with an Apple II for the first time last night, in all its green-and-black glory.
Went to Curtis’s house to see if the darned thing even ran anymore. I picked it up during one of our e-waste drives, took it home, fired it up, and got a bunch of clinking sounds.
In a former life, I swear I was an IT professional, but even after taking the CPU apart I couldn’t figure it out.
Turns out, I just had the wrong floppy disks. Curtis popped a ProDOS disk in and it fired right up.
So we played with Logo and an old Jeopardy! game, and I relived my old BASIC and DOS days: all command line, all the time. Good fun.
Part of being a Newton MessagePad fan is appreciating low-end Macs and Apples. After all, if you’re using a Newton, you’re using a low-end PDA.
I took a PowerBook 5300cs over to Curtis’s to try and find an AC adapter, too, but he didn’t have anything that provided the 24 volts needed to start the thing up. Oh well – AC adapters are pretty easy to come by.
And when I do get one, I’ll be able to install that copy of Newton Quicken I’ve been wanting to play around with.
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbors,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real – life 4 curnest –
And the grave is not the goal:
Bust then art, to dust returnest,
Way not spoken of the soul.
[Read the original. One of the American greats, especially in his day.]
Now here’s a version of BINGO your grandma might not get.
Ars Technica is hosting a Macworld 2008 keynote bingo game – with a Newton MessagePad card.
Some of the highlights:
- New Mac Pro – A new Mac Pro. I’m going to buy one of these (assuming they contain 45nm CPUs), so they damn well better be introduced.
- New displays – New Apple external displays. I have grave doubts about this one (see later square), but the existing line desperately needs updating.
- MacBook Thin – A new subnotebook from Apple, regardless of its actual branding or product name. What’s a subnotebook? Use your own judgement. The only restriction I’ll add is that it must have a hardware keyboard.
- “Boom” – Steve Jobs says the word “boom” while demonstrating something.
The site has posted the card as a download-able PDF file, so you can play along at home.
But what – no Newton 2 spot?
by Shel Silverstein
My beard grows down to my toes,
I never wear5 no clothes,
I wraps my hair
Around my bare,
&nd down the road I goes.
[Read the original. We’re back on schedule now, ever since the Newton is back and running with a fresh set of batteries.]
My past Newton problems? Solved.
All it took was a fresh set of batteries. I grabbed a pack of AA Duracells, popped them into the MessagePad, hit the “Reset” button on the back, pressed the on/off switch, and *Bling!* It’s running again.
I restored the Newton’s settings via NCK on the iMac, and now all my stuff is back. The only thing that didn’t get restored was the date – and there really has to be a better way to set the date than cycling through all the months since 1995. But oh well.
What a dummy I am. I’m almost scared to report this back to the Newtonlist – but that will teach me, right?
The exciting thing is, I can get right back to Newton-izing poetry. Starting Monday.
And there it is – the second coming of Newton, thanks to YouTube and someone’s slick animation skills.
I have to admit, the dock-like scrolling along the side is pretty cool. It’s like functional Cover Flow on the iPod Touch, but pragmatic, with some AppleTV/Front Row built in.
This was made by user ElysiumMedia07, who did a wonderful job putting the “Wow” in a Windows Vista parody ad.
Fun stuff!
I went to the Newtonlist mailing group and got some direction on how to fix my MessagePad 110.
Member Sonny, I presume of Flickr fame, sent me this:
Have you tried having the MP110 without any AA batteries then holding the power switch for about 60 seconds then holding the reset for about another 60 seconds? Leave the MP110 as is for about a day or two then try powering up with a Newton Adapter or a fresh set of Duracell AA batteries…
Sonny also pointed me in this direction, which gives a similar set of instructions. But those definitely didn’t work.
This weekend I’ll pick up a fresh set of batteries. I also have to grab a recharger, but I want to get something quality, like the MAHA I’ve heard so many good things about.
I think that’ll be the lasts straw. If I can’t get the Newton running after Sonny’s advice and the new batteries, I’ll cash it in and spring for a 2×00 series model.
Total Views: 1,087
Best Day Ever: 68 — Wednesday, Dec. 19
…that’s right. Newton Poetry has reached 1,000 views, and just in time for New Year’s.
Thank you, everyone. Be safe tonight.
A new Apple “Newton 2” rumor has popped up, this time with “evidence” from a SeekingAlpha.com author, David Sieger.
Says Sieger:
This new Apple device, which could be an Ultra Mobile Computer, has not been sighted out and about the Apple campus or even in the area normally designated for testing new Apple products, suggesting that it’s still in the software and hardware design period. Once it’s physically spotted outside Apple’s secretive labs, we may see an actual product release of 6-8 months, closely following other new Apple product introductions.
Sieger’s evidence is based on Apple buying up 5.2″ touchscreens, tons of flash memory, and lack of QWERTY keyboard.
Sieger, however, leaves out room for chance, or Apple’s ability to surprise people with something totally new and unexpected.
He says it can’t be a new Newton, because of the lack of PDA demand from the American public, “although various PDA functionalities may in fact be included in the final version of the device.”
It’s all shot-in-the-dark stuff, and the evidence he sites is flimsy at best. This could all belong to that nebulous cloud of Applet tablet rumors we’ve heard so much about.