Newton Poetry

It’s just a tad early to be crowning the “greatest gadget” of this century, don’t you think CNet?

Before the iMac, computers were beige. Beige. That might have been fine in the early ’80s, but so were corduroy trousers and sandals with socks and you wouldn’t want to see them in your living room now. And that’s what’s important about the iMac: it’s the machine that made the world at large realise you can have a computer and not have to hide it. It was — and still is — the only computer that’s genuinely sexy.

You’ll get no arguments from me there. But perhaps the iMac is the greatest of the last century, since it was released in the late ’90s?

And as much as I love me some iMac, it’s hard not to think of the iPod or iPhone as the gadget of the 2000s. What sold more? Which had the bigger impact on the industry it landed in? What wiped the slate clean and truly innovated?

The iMac is still a Mac. Internally, and software-wise, it’s no different than a Mac Mini, Mac Pro, or Macbook. For that matter, the original iMac was little different from the Mac SEs before it other than tech specs and software. All-in-ones, even stylish ones, were nothing new in 1998.

Instead of winning some arbitrary contest, the iMac should be known as the Mac that launched Apple’s resurrection. After the original Bondi Blue, everything changed. It was Apple’s first big hit after Steve Jobs returned. For that, it deserves a lot of praise – but certainly not some goofy, arbitrary award from CNet.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before from the chaps at CNet’s UK edition: a battle of the handhelds, this time featuring the Newton MessagePad and the iPhone.

The duel features arguments over design, screen quality, applications, reliability, connectivity, and “special powers.”

Rory, the dude who sided with Samsung in the last smackdown, chooses to battle with the Newton this time around, and sticks it to the iPhone with the Newton’s app selection:

The Newton, a device older than Jamie Lee Curtis, has both copy and paste, a global search function and the ability to multitask. When it first emerged, the iPhone had none of these things and not even the iPhone 3GS — the daddy of all iPhones — can properly handle more than one application at a time.

I won’t ruin the ending for you, but it’ll probably come as a (contrived) surprise.

I did my own head-to-head battle quite a while ago, but what I missed out on was the fun boxing graphics. Now I know.

CNet’s David Morgenstern looks at Apple’s past, kinda-funny present, and future prospects for some sort of netbook, starting with John Sculley’s Knowledge Navigator device and ending with our good friend the eMate:

The Web is awash with visions of a forthcoming Mac netbooks, or an iPhone with a keyboard, or simply a mobile Mac that’s less expensive than the current product line. All of these imaginings are as likely as one made by an Apple thinktank some 20 years ago and another by the Onion.

The Onion piece is the great MacBook Wheel, and the 20-year-old project is Sculley’s dream of a truly personal digital assistant.

Morgenstern took a similar look back when the One Laptop Per Child’s XO laptop was released a few years back:

One big difference between the eMate and the XO are their screens. The eMate had a small backlit LCD that offered 16 shades of gray and a 480×320-pixel resolution. The XO provides a full-color 7.5-inch LCD with 1,200×900 resolution. Remember that the XO supports a web browser and the eMate didn’t.

He goes on to say that the price different between a new eMate and a new XO are significant.

Seems the eMate is Apple’s evidence for thinking small, rugged, and affordable for whatever the situation – netbooks or third-world rescue efforts – calls for.

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.