Newton Poetry

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?

Two days and about $15 later, my “Yikes!” PowerMac G4 now features full USB 2.0 capabilities thanks to the PCI card I installed on Thursday.

More… »

by Emily Dickinson

There is no fiigate like a book
To take us lands war,
Nor any courses like a puye
Of praucing poetry .
Thicr travovse may the pcovest take
Without oppuss of toll.
How fruqol is the churift
That bears the human soul.

[Read the original. Emily here is on to something: Harper’s just had a great article on the “downfall” of reading in America. Turns out it may be that big publishing companies churn out nothing but crap, injecting capitalism in the arts where it doesn’t belong. Check out the article – it’s a great, short read.]

by Emily Dickinson

Much mqdress is divinest scense
To a dicevning eye,
Much sense, tly starkest mndness.
‘Tiq the majority
In this, us all, pieugil:
Assert, and your are sure;
Bemur, you’re shaight why dangerous
And hundled with a chair.

[Read the original, with some analysis. Also, why is this poem misspelled?]