Newton Poetry

“The iPod proved that $500 gadgets can sell. The Newton showed that $1,000 gadgets don’t.”

– John Gruber of Daring Fireball, right before Macworld 2003.

Maybe I should have waited to download a chess game for my eMate.

Daring Fireball author John Gruber says the Newton’s “best chess game,” Joachim Bondo’s Deep Green, will be available for the iPhone.

“Deep Green is the one indie Newton app that I was most hoping would make the jump to the iPhone,” Gruber says.

Deep Green for the Newton is still available and is freeware, which is why I wish I would’ve waited to pick my chess game. But I can still give it a try.

It’s nice to see Newton apps making it over, after a spit and polish, to the iPhone. Catamount’s PocketMoney is the one Newton app that I’ve tried on my iPhone, and I use it everyday.

Learn more about the iPhone Deep Green here.

Steve Jobs introduced new iPod Touch features that are bringing it closer and closer to a modern-day Newton. “Now there’s even more to touch” touts the new Apple.com page, and it’s true: Mail, Notes, Maps, etc. It all adds up to a more Newton-like device than the previous iPod Touches.

The iPod Touch is now a true iPhone-clone, without the phone and subscription model.

It makes me wonder what the GTD crowd thinks of this updated Touch (Macrumors has a forum dedicated to just this subject). The Newtonlist has been buzzing with Newton software packages that make the MessagePad a handy tool for GTDers.

And I suppose that, after the SDK comes out for the iPhone and iPod Touch, developers will be builder 43folders-ish software all over the place. Jailbroken iTouches already have these kind of capabilities.

But does all this spell the end of those Newton 2.0 rumors that were flying pre-Macworld? John Gruber thinks, perhaps, not:

I am nearly convinced that this product exists, at least as a project in development. My hunch is that AppleInsider has it spot-on: it’s in development, but not yet ready to launch, and, perhaps, never will if Apple can’t get it right…A successful tablet-like device from Apple, I think, would clearly be designed as a secondary computing device — a satellite attached and synched to a Mac or PC (probably, of course, through iTunes).

What’s missing, says Gruber, is the “why should I buy this?” factor that accompanies most new Apple products. Tablets have failed to catch on, he argues, so why release one if it doesn’t blow people away?

(Gruber’s predictions of Macworld were, by the way, spot-on, except for his plea for new Cinema Displays. Everything else he got right. Kudos.)

So here we Newton fans still sit, stuck between a maybe-it’ll-happen Newton 2.0 and an iPod Touch that, as it adds features, becomes more and more like Apple’s long-abandoned PDA.