Newton Poetry

“The question is not ‘why do you want something that old?’ but rather: Why would I want anything newer? This computer serves my purposes perfectly well. It would be nice to be able to run Mac OS X Leopard and run all the latest software, but for somebody like me whose heaviest task is editing a photo taken with a point-and-shoot camera, I’ve found that this computer is quite powerful enough.”

- David Kendal, my podcasting buddy, with a good pre-emptive piece that nicely accompanies my rant from the other day.

Almost five years ago, I acquired a new hobby. It started when I purchased my first Macintosh computer, an iBook G4, and it’s been chugging along ever since.

I have many other hobbies: writing, comic books, traveling, working out, politics, and sometimes playing some video games. But the one I’m probably most recognized for is the Mac hobby.

Someone asked, on a little experiment I ran last week, whether they thought my Macs would “possess” me. By this, they probably meant, “Don’t you think this is getting out of hand?” Or, “when will you stop acquiring and dinking around with Macs?”

To which I would answer: no, and maybe never.

I’m not sorry about my hobby. The Macintosh, both old and classic, interests me in ways that have long reflected my personality. I’ve been a computer geek for 15 years, and messing with Macs fits perfectly into my lifestyle.

The first possible question, the “getting out of hand” one, probably refers to the amount of Macs I own, and there I’ll give the questioner some credit. By now, I’ve reached a certain limit, where anything new that comes in replaces something I already have. I don’t want any more Macs. To make room, I’ll replace the ones I have with one I want more. Out with old, in with the new.

But every once in a while, someone will walk in an ask, “How many computers do you need?” Truth is, I don’t need any of them, any more than you need four pairs of blue jeans or seven guns hanging out in a (hopefully) locked safe. It’s not about need.

There are a million different hobbies out there, each with their own culture and lexicon and history. I think each and every one of them – from velvet Elvis paintings to horses – is fascinating in their own way. My roommate is interested in World War II, so he watches TV shows about the war and plays a video game that lets him re-experience the battles in his own way. World War II doesn’t define him. It’s simply what interests him.

Another friend switches hobbies like he switches underwear. Something will catch his fancy and, zoom, off he goes to collect and learn all he can about it. Then something new comes along and, zoom, off he goes to that. Maybe his hobby is hobbies.

Here’s the thing: as a creative professional, I feel like I can get my work done best on a certain computing platform. And it’s fun to use, and has a compelling history, so that I’m interested in more than its practical aspects. Also, the older models are interesting in their own way, and they give me an affordable way to mess around with computers.

Fact is, I rarely pay for the Macs I acquire. More often than not, they’re gifts or eureka finds. Just my luck that I can get my hands on something I love to tinker with. My grandpa used to get bikes at yard sales, fix them up, and sell them in his front yard. Sometimes people would stop by just to give him their old bike. He made a little income, got to fiddle with chains and tires, and spent time in his old garage tinkering by himself.

I do this with Macs.

Some women love to take their credit card and go shopping just for shopping’s sake. For them, it’s an activity to do with friends and they – hey! – get something on the other end. Their closets are full, they spent a bunch of money on stuff they really didn’t need, and they’ll do it again next weekend. Shopping can be a hobby.

So can anything. That’s the great part about life: we can be unapologetic about our interests because they’re our interests. Having a hobby is never having to say you’re sorry, unless your hobby is hurting other people. In that case, look into professional wrestling (look, another hobby!).

Now, hobbies can become destructive. If you don’t have any money, you probably shouldn’t go shopping just for shopping’s sake. If my Macs distracted me from any of the other fun and wonderful things I enjoy, it would be a bad thing. When all you care about is your hobby, not only are you boring, but you’re hurting yourself.

But I can tear apart an old iBook or figure out a way to install some Newton software and read, write, spend time with my girlfriend, and get out of town on the weekend. I think I live a well-rounded life, dominated by nothing more than anything else. Sometimes it feels like I’m interested in too much, because the world fascinates me to no end. So I have to set limits.

The question a hobbyist has to ask themselves is, if I lose all this stuff, will it matter? Or is it the doing that’s enjoyable? Honestly, if a fire were to consume all my hobby Macs tomorrow, I wouldn’t shed a tear. They’re just things. In fact, I had the Mac of my dreams for an entire year, and I sold it. Just like that. I had it, and then I didn’t have it, with no regret involved.

The things I would miss in a fire are the things that I really care about, like – oh – my pictures and identity and stuff. Everything else is replaceable. It’s just a hobby.

Hobbies can lead to other hobbies. Lately, I’m learning how to make a podcast, and learning how to make and manage web sites. Because I love to learn so much, my hobbies sprout new hobbies, and maybe I’ll stick with them and maybe I won’t.

Whatever. It’s what I like to do. So the number of Macs I own becomes pointless, as long as I’m enjoying them and they don’t crowd out my roommate’s living space. You won’t understand my hobby any more than I understand your “American Idol” obsession, or your garage full of car parts, or the time spent on FarmVille, or your bookshelf full of books (well, I do understand that one).

Are they destructive? No? Then carry on.

Hobbies don’t define us. They help define us, as in, “This is part of who I am and what I enjoy doing. But it’s not the whole me.”

John Gruber and Merlin Mann, in their South By Southwest talk last year, said the moment you know you’ve got a blog topic is when you talk about something so much your friends tell you to shut up about whatever it is you’re talking about.

That’s what I did. I started a blog about retro Apple stuff, and it gives me an outlet for my hobby. Best part: I don’t have to shut up about it. People actually read what I have to say. It’s one of their hobbies, too.

So I’m not alone, even though sometimes I feel like I am, since my circle of friends roll their eyes when I start in with Mac stuff. It’s probably why I glob on to people who are interested. I remember seeing a G5-era iMac in a Chelsea market a few months back, serving as the store’s register/inventory home base, and struck up a conversation with the owners. That happens rarely, but when it does it’s memorable. Online, I can have that conversation every day.

You’ll have to pardon me when I do start mentioning Mac-related things that interest me. I’ll do the same for you when when you dig out your Beanie Baby collection and start talking about thread counts and quilting and riding your Harley on a warm summer’s day.

In the midst of all that, I’m sure we’ll find something talk about.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Via badbanana.

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?

Dan Knight at Low End Mac:

It’s a good life writing about the Mac and working with other writers with the same passion, but it’s had its ups and downs. I left my full-time job do publish Low End Mac full-time eight years ago, just as the dot-com collapse was shredding ad income. Things bottomed-out in 2002 at less than 1/10 of a cent per page view in ad income while site traffic grew by nearly 25%.

Now, he says, times are getting tougher. One of the scary realities of leaving a “real world” job for one running a web site is the swing of the market, and Dan and company seem to be affected like everyone else.

I visit Low End Mac daily because it offers a historical view of the Mac platform, something that has interested me since I picked up my first Mac and Newton a few years ago. It’s a damn fine, fun site, with tons of great insight into keeping your classic Macs running in tip-top shape.

And speaking of “tip,” Dan encourages readers to donate to the site’s Tip Jars at the end of each post. I’ll be sure to give him some of my support.

“Through October, income seemed to hold steady, and then came the crash.,” Dan writes. “We don’t know what February holds (checks usually arrive the last week of the month), but we’re looking at our options.”

What’s worse is Dan lives in Michigan, the same state I live in (a bit north of me near Grand Rapids), which means a “real life” job isn’t easy to come by. I wish Dan all the luck in the world.

Apple’s HyperCard stack-based programming tool continues to astound me. This time, it’s the Poor Man’s Newton – a HyperCard stack that lets you muck around with Newton-like features on your Classic Mac desktop.

Download a copy off UNNA, open up the stack, and bam – a fun Newton OS emulator that uses HyperCard buttons, input fields, and drawing tools.

While it lacks the handwriting recognition of the real Newton OS, Poor Man’s Newton does let you store contacts and scribbles, and search your PMN database. Says the creator, Joseph Guy Cicinelli:

Poor Man’s Newton is a HyperCard stack that contains address and telephone information and generally behaves like Apple’s new Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), the Newton MessagePad. If you are like me and you can’t afford to buy one of these high tech tools, here is your chance to own a virtual one that can used on your Macintosh.

At the time, cost was a real issue. These days you can find a quality working Newton for $30-$100 on eBay. But Poor Man’s Newton? That’s free.

You don’t get the full MessagePad experience. PMN’s “Dates” functionality only shows a calendar – you can’t save appointments or reminders. If it did, Poor Man’s Newton could serve as a stripped-down version of Claris Organizer (also available at UNNA, for Mac OS 9 and older).

Poor Man’s Newton offers a few other functionality items: unit conversions, a telephone number dialer, and plenty of printing and sorting options to keep a well-organized contacts list.

The HyperCard stack itself dates to a few years after the OMP was release (above), but it holds up remarkably well after all these years. It sweeps away everything else on your Mac desktop, acting as a distraction-free, Einstein-like app for those without a Newton ROM or a bunch of free time.

Super fun to play with if you have access to a Classic environment, Poor Man’s Newton is very small (at 1 MB) and very affordable (free!) – and you don’t need a version of HyperCard to run it.

Check this out.

Cult of Mac interviews James Wages on his classic Mac SE/30 web-surfing machine and Newton 2100 sync setup. He even uses his Newton keyboard (with an extension) on the SE! You can check out the Flickr collection here.

A lot of people might look at James’s setup and think, “Jesus, what the hell’s wrong with him?” Me? I look at it and think, “My hero.”

I’ve read Low End Mac as long as I’ve been a Mac user. Their Mac Profiles section just can’t be beat to look up old hardware specs (especially when I grab something out of the blue), and they post tons of helpful how-tos if you’re a classic Mac user.

So a big, hearty “thanks” to them for featuring our “11 ways Newton is still better than iPhone” post. The Newton officially qualifies as a low-end Apple product, even if the site mainly caters to Macintosh PCs.

Why call a music player an “iPod?”

Because, in time, that “Pod” will be much more than a music player. It will be a device to browse the web, play games, check e-mail, get things done, keep track of your contacts, and help you get fit with the right pair of shoes.

Is that what Apple was thinking when it first released the iPod in 2001?

Because that’s what an iPod is today. While the base model, the iPod Classic, is still mainly a music player, even it can play a few games and watch videos. The rest of them have become “pods” in the true sense of the word.

Back when the fruits of the iPhone/iTouch SDK were on display, it dawned on me that “iPod” is now the perfect name for what Apple’s media device does. It’s not an “iWalkman” anymore.

Essentially, the Newton MessagePad was a mini-computer: something to help you write documents and make up spreadsheets and track your contacts and do some database work. Yes, there were games, and yes, you could even listen to music – but it was primarly a work machine, even if the work it did was in your home.

The iPod, and it’s iPhone offshoot, is a consumer of media. You put stuff on it, or search stuff out, to keep entertained. That could be reading or music or TV shows or whatever. And you can get work done on the iPod/iPhone (e-mail, calendar, third-party apps), but it wasn’t made exclusively for work like the Newton was.

As months go by, we see more and more why “iPod” is a perfect name. Even if Apple didn’t intend it, it’s money-making media device’s name fits like a glove. You hold this thing in your hands, and it has access to the whole world. No wires! Like magic! It’s your pod – your iPod.

Anymore, the iPod Shuffle is the sole music-only device left in the iPod lineup. It does what it does, and nothing else, just like the original iPod did (in fact, Gizmodo argues change is bad).

The only true evolution of the Newton platform was the eMate, which included a built-in keyboard. Every other MessagePad kept the simple idea: scribble stuff on a screen with a stylus. The MessagePad got faster and bigger and could include more apps, but it essentially kept the original idea intact.

Not so with the iPod. Apple has driven it from a music player to a music player/video watcher to a music player/video watcher/Internet browser/App runner/Save the World device.

Part of me wonders whether some of this stuff – the shake to shuffle, the Cover Flow – is needed, when some basic issues of the iPod Touch/iPhone platform remain unresolved. Maybe because it’s easier?

Either way, the focus doesn’t shift totally away from music from here on out. People buy iPod mainly to carry their music around. But how much more can the iPod lineup evolve in terms of music? Most of the revolutionary stuff we’ve seen has come from apps and games and cloud computing stuff. Music is there, but it’s only a fraction of the “pod-ness” of the iPod now.

So the name fits even better – more so than iTunes, which controls far more than your tunes these days (“iDock” is more like it).

Is anyone worried about the dreaded “feature creep,” like Gizmodo is? Does today’s “Let’s Rock” event show the iPod’s attempt to cover too much?

Good news: Apple has dropped refurbished iPod Classic prices on the 80 GB model to $179, down from $199 only a week ago.

I’m always scanning the Apple Store’s refurb list for deals, and this one’s a doozy. It makes me wonder: does the price drop signal something? A clearing-out of inventory, perhaps, in anticipation of something on the horizon?

iPod Nano refurbs are cheaper these days, too, while iPod Shuffles are stuck at $10 under retail. When Apple dropped the Shuffle prices, the refurbs took a few days to catch up with the new pricing scheme.

So what do you think? Is something new coming? Or is this just a fabulous deal?