Newton Poetry

The Newton eMate 300 is a great machine. Small, portable, rugged – a sort of proto-netbook that lets you type on the go. And the battery life is great if you have a working, rechargeable battery with plenty of juice.

When my eMate came, I found out right away that the battery pack was probably the original. It held a charge for about three minutes. So while it’s handy to pop a few fresh AA batteries into a MessagePad and be back up and running, the eMate relies on its single battery pack. If it goes, you’re stuck with replacing it, building a new one from scratch, or keeping your eMate plugged in at all times.

I opted for the simplest solution: buy a new battery pack on eBay and installing it myself.

To start, I grabbed a new eMate battery pack from PowerBook Guy, a Torx wrench (I actually took my eMate into the hardware store to get the perfect-sized wrench), my eMate, and some starting instructions from Frank.

The first step is to flip your eMate over. See that half-circle hatch near the handle (above)? That’s what you’re taking off.

There are just two screws to remove on the cover, and they’re both at the top.

I left the screws in their slots as I lifted the cover off so I wouldn’t lose them. Now you see the good stuff: a few memory slots and the battery.

The battery pack isn’t bolted to the eMate; it simply rests in a little trench, with a wire attached to the circuit board.

This is the most delicate of the steps: pulling the battery connection cable away from the circuit board. Be careful, and use something (I used my fingernail) to wedge the connector away from the plug-in.

From here, pull the battery pack out of the eMate. The actually battery pack fits snugly inside the holster, but slides right out.

Here’s what the empty battery tray looks like inside the eMate. The soft pads keep the battery pack case from sliding around inside the Newton.

Slide your new battery back inside the protective casing, with the connection wire sticking out of the right-hand side.

Now carefully slide the connection wire into the circuit board until it snaps tight. A little push on the white part will be plenty.

Place the battery case inside the eMate, replace the cover, and tighten your screws. That’s all.

I plugged my eMate in and let it charge a whole day, and now it’s like I have a whole new eMate. A fully-charged battery pack should last you for days, even with heavy usage.

The battery pack cost me about $20 (plus shipping) on eBay. There are some DIY die-hards who are all about making their own battery pack, but the soldering made me nervous. Maybe someday I’ll give it a try. This solution, however, worked fine for me.

Now my eMate is truly portable because I don’t have to worry about keeping it plugged in at all times. Replacing the battery pack was a cinch, too, and took all of about five minutes.

A while back, I asked, “How many Macs are too many?” I asked this after realizing that I have, at this time, three working Macs surrounding my Nerve Center here at home.

Newton Poetry reader Rand Careaga chimed in with his impressive suite of Macs, including the above beauty: an all-in-one G3 PowerMac, also known as the Molar Mac.

Like the eMac after it, the Molar Mac was designed for the education market, where the look-ma-no-mess-of-wires design was attractive. And hence the name: the thing looked like a giant tooth.

A giant heavy tooth: they were almost 60 lbs. heavy, and that’s only with a 15″ CRT screen. As the Washington Apple Pi Journal puts it in their hilarious (and comprehensive) post:

While it is possible for a single large, stupid person to uncrate one (or even six) of these without assistance, Don’t Do This. The machines are heavy, and the boxes are deep. You can fall into a box and never be heard from again. You can rupture vital organs of a personal nature. Accept the fact that this is a two-person task.

The All-In-One G3 came before the iMac, meaning no USB ports. It did come with serial and ADB ports for peripherals, as well as a floppy disk drive.

Molar Macs came in two speeds, 233 MHz PowerPC and 266 Mhz, meaning they run at the same clockspeed as the original iMacs, and shipped with 32 MB of RAM. For their time, these were speedy machines. And speedy to set up, too, thanks to their all-in-one design.

Sadly, I’ve never seen one in person. Any Molar Mac owners out there that can speak to their uniqueness?

How about that? An April Fool’s giveaway that’s not a joke.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog is giving away a Newton MessagePad 130:

If you want to join the chorus of Newton owners, here’s a unique opportunity: win a mostly-functional (delivered as-is) MessagePad 130 that has been sitting in a box in Mike Rose’s office for years now. The left side of the screen is wonky, but other than that it seems to be in working condition. Along with the MP130, you’ll get a leather Newton case, a Fodor’s 1994 Travel Guide card, a copy of the MessagePad 2000 manual, and a bonus: a copy of the 1996 World Wide Web Yellow Pages.

You have until Sunday, April 5 to enter to win.

Former Apple developer Chris Christensen has a lot to say about the beginnings of Apple’s former online community, eWorld, and how it grew parallel to the Newton.

Apple’s eWorld was an America Online-like online hub that was created in the early days of the Internet. Since its creation, AOL has worked closely with Apple (ever wonder why iChat automatically uses AIM accounts?), including on NewtonMail. The relationship wasn’t always beneficial to both parties, says Christensen:

[AOL] also had two engineers on their side assigned to develop a new registration system that would be appropriate for the Newton. eWorld systems engineering resources also had to be redirected to NewtonMail instead of the eWorld launch to meet the NewtonMail schedule. Thus by doing my job of adding email to the Newton I helped slow down the eWorld launch.

Christensen goes into more detail about how missed deadlines and the growth of the World Wide Web spelled doom for the fledgling eWorld community.

AOL has since declined dramatically in popularity. It was the first Internet service I used, in 1995 or 1996, back when those annoying and wasteful CD-ROMs with the AOL start-up software were mailed to everyone in America. Remember those? They made great coasters.

It’s interesting that the development of eWorld and the Newton platform were from the same division at Apple, and running pretty much side-by-side before their launch.

For nostalgia’s sake, you can download eWorld’s sound files for your Newton, or have fun with an eWorld emulator.

[Via Newtontalk.]

Tony Kan over at My Apple Newton discusses three possible Newton MessagePad replacements – the HTC Advantage, the HTC Shift, and eBook readers like the new Kindle from Amazon.

Tony considers what features make the Newton so worthwhile – form factor, OS, battery life, third-party software, etc. – and then seeks a comparable product available today.

For me, the PIM applications, reading and generating new MS Office documents, must also be added in for consideration. Of course Value for Money must also be included. But this is a final but not insignificant evaluation which can only be carried out after having applied all the other tests.

He notes that the HTC products are stuck with the Windows Mobile platform, but features like superior wi-fi connectivity and handwriting recognition make them worthy competitors.

I often wonder if any Newton “replacement” will hold water with the Newton community. The platform has such a unique personality and does what it does so well, it’s hard to imagine a product that will ever be accepted with such vigor and passion as the MessagePad. Perhaps we’ll see if Apple’s rumored netbook/tablet can serve as a sequel – though if it lacks handwriting recognition, I doubt it.

Let’s say the improbable happens during the iPhone 3.0 media event today and Apple releases the rumored 10″ iTablet.

Are we then looking at the proper heir to the Newton MessagePad?

Back when I first started Newton Poetry, a few months after the iPhone came out, people were talking Newton 2.0 in the form of a larger-form iPod Touch: 10″ screen, iPhone OS, touch-screen input, etc. Even before that, as far back as 2002, rumors told of the Return of the MessagePad in some form or another.

Now the rumors are back, with evidence to boot, and meanwhile the iPod Touch/iPhone gets an update from Apple that could make its usability as close to the Newton’s as ever before.

Think about it: cut and paste, to-do and notes syncing, some kind of premium app store for business-centric applications.

Perhaps the only questions that remain are which rumored features will Apple leave out and wait to install next time? Over time, the iPhone will surely eclipse the Newton in its feature set (it may have already).

For us Newton users, how many features does it take for us to accept the iPhone as the successor to the Newton?

There are still Newton-like features missing on the touch screen platforms: a wide-open application base, handwriting recognition, innovative file system, and kick-ass battery life. Newton users never have to worry about Apple rejecting a great app, or of losing service thanks to AT&T’s sub-par network.

But still. Eventually, Newton users will have fewer and fewer excuses not to make an upgrade of some kind. If the very thing Newton die-hards are looking for – a bigger iPod Touch with full PIM capabilities – comes out in the next few months, will a lack of handwriting recognition be enough to hold off on making the purchase? What will be left lacking?

The Newton has more personality than devices twice its size and half its age. Part of it is its pioneering spirit, and part of it is its clever UI. Is that enough to make people hang on to their eMates?

Granted, no solution works for everyone, which is why some Newton users will never accept a system that (a) doesn’t allow for HWR and (b) features a crap-tacular battery life. The simplicity and intuitiveness of the Newton OS has lasting power, too. Apple may have had a hard time figuring out what to do with their device, but Newton users have no such hesitations.

Hell, with an iTablet, we still don’t know if we’ll get some kind of watered-down Mac OS X or a beefed-up iPhone OS.

Maybe some of my co-MessagePad fans can shed some light on this thing for me. Is this idea of the giant-sized iPod Touch enough to satisfy what you’ve been missing since 1998? Does anyone think an Apple tablet/netbook thingamabob gets released at this iPhone 3.0 event? Will some Newton users be forever locked in a world that existed 10 years ago?

Let me know in the comments.

I must say: I’m not a big fan of the new iPod Shuffle. I bought a 2G model, one of the bright blue ones, and I love it. It’s perfect for my gym workouts and jogging trips.

But this new simplistic one is just a step too far. I mean, what’s there to like? It’s a metallic slab.

Thankfully, some geniuses have invented the iMac Shuffle – “simplicity defined.”

Just think. All you need is a big metallic slab of Mac to stare at all day. Isn’t that wonderful?

[Via Macenstein.]

Since you all were nice enough to share a little bit about yourselves last week, it’s my turn.

My name is Dave Lawrence. I’m a 27-year-old communications specialist for a local credit union in my hometown of Jackson, MI – a smallish city along the I-94 corridor about an hour and a half west of Detroit.

I graduated with a degree in English/journalism from Adrian College and came back home to find my job.

While I worked with Macs at the campus newspaper, I didn’t get serious about them until the winter of 2005, when I bought my first computer – and first Mac: an iBook G4. Since then, I haven’t looked back. My collection has grown to include an iBook G3 clamshell, an iMac G3, two Mac SEs, a PowerMac G4, an iMac G4, and – most recently – a PowerMac G3.

My first Newton came in December 2006, and was more or less something to mess around with. I felt you can’t have a truly righteous Apple collection without a Newton, so I bought a MessagePad 110. Later, in the fall of 2007, I launched Newton Poetry. I also have an eMate.

Besides Macs and Newtons, I love to travel, read, watch “The Office,” head out on the town with friends, and get involved in my community. I’m in a local Rotary club, am on the board for a recycling non-profit, and get involved in politics whenever I can.

I’ve made several life-changing trips in the past few years, including driving down Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, taking the northern route from Michigan to Seattle, and exploring Revolutionary War sites in New England. This summer, my big trip will include a cross-Canada drive to Vancouver for the Worldwide Newton Conference.

I do Newton Poetry because the Newton community fascinates me, and the device is so much fun to use. There’s still an audience out there who craves information about the Newton – how to make it work, how to connect it with modern Macs, where the Newton ideal will take us in the years ahead.

Also, I love to fiddle with computers and projects, and Newton Poetry gives me an outlet to write about those projects. What I found was that people who, say, want to install an Airport card in their iBook, like to have help as they do it. As a result, that post is one of my most popular.

There’s tons more about me, of course, so feel free to browse my personal blog, follow me on Twitter, or hang on and see where else Newton Poetry takes us.

I had so much fun creating Mac iPhone wallpapers last time that I went back and collected a bunch of classic Mac pictures to do it again.

You can see my entire collection on my Flickr site, or head to the iPhone Wallpapers group to see a bunch more.

Nothing says “classy” like a 68k Mac on your home screen, eh?

Last week, I added another Mac to my collection: a Power Macintosh G3 blue and white model, running at 350 Mhz with 128 MB of RAM and with OS 8.6 installed.

I knew someone who had a few extra G3 B&Ws sitting around, and they were kind enough to let me walk away with one. I’ve always admired the B&W case design, since it launched the venerable G4 aesthetic – but now that I have one, what do I do with it?

First, having never owned an OS 8 Mac, I wanted to poke around the system and see what came stock on it.

Here’s the “About This Mac” section – showing the basics. Mac OS 8.6, code-named “Veronica,” was the last version of OS 8 Apple released. This PowerMac has less RAM than my iMac G3, but a faster processor and a similar-sized hard drive (6 GB).

This G3 came pre-installed with the basic OS 8.6 software, meaning there’s not much in the way of applications. Sherlock is here, as is QuickTime and all the Apple basics.

A few weeks ago, I wondered what Mac users used to manage their music libraries and multimedia files. I got my answer on the PowerMac:

This is Apple’s own CD player app, pre-iTunes. Lovely, isn’t it?

Web surfing in OS 8 means Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.5 (above). Nice to know that Newton Poetry looks decent even on a 1997-era browser.

Just for fun, I also downloaded the last version of Netscape OS 8 could handle, and Mozilla’s original web browser. I find either of these browsers can handle basic web sites well.

Now, what to do with the bugger? My first thought is, it’s nice to have an OS 8 Mac around just to play with. Right now I have a Macs with every version of the Mac OS, from 8.6 up to 10.4.

I’ve also thought about using the B&W as a file server – just an extra place to keep backup files or something. I’ve read a lot about other Mac users doing this, but I’ll have to find a bigger hard drive. A measly 6 GB isn’t going to cut it. A RAM upgrade might be needed as well.

For now, though, the Power Macintosh G3 joins my PowerMac G4 in being a project machine. Any suggestions?