Newton Poetry

The Cult of Mac pointed me to a cool t-shirt design with classic Macs (now that G3s can be considered “classic”). What’s neat is that I have all three Macs on the shirt.

It also got me thinking about my growing collection of Mac shirts. As soon as I saw the Exploded 128 shirt, I had to have it. And now I’m in a group with a bunch of other nerdy Mac hippies wearing some other guy’s shirt (here’s me with mine).

I used to have one of these beauties, but Cafe Press doesn’t seem to make shirts that fit me. They’re either too big or too small. Still, it was a fun shirt to wear in public.

Insanely Great Tees makes some classic Mac t-shirts, and I really thought about springing for one of FastMac’s anniversary shirts.

Like the white Apple sticker on my rear windshield, Apple shirts always make for great conversation. There’s something smug in proudly displaying your computing preference across your OS X-powered chest. And why not? Everyone thinks Mac users are arrogant anyway.

If you did it right, you could wear a different Apple shirt each day of the week.

Author Peter Straub at his workspace, using either a G5 or Intel iMac.

The Where I Write project has a bunch of great sci-fi author photos taken in their workspace by photographer Kyle Cassidy. I always find it fascinating to see where other people do their creative work. How many Macs can you spot?

[Courtesy of Neil Gaiman.]

“You can buy a Mac desktop for between $100 and $350 or a nice laptop for between $500 and $999. It all depends on what you are willing to give up in order to save a few dollars.”

– Frank Fox at Low End Mac, on buying used Macs instead of new. I’m all for making good use of used Macs. I’m typing this on an iMac G4 that I got off eBay for a great deal. Sometimes “good enough” really is good enough.

The RetroMacCast team recently aired an interview with Steve Capps, an Apple Fellow, original Macintosh team member, and Newton developer, in episodes 115 and 116.

Capps is one of the genuine Good Guys: decent, hard-working, and has a great way of talking about his work on the original Mac and Newton. He helped work on the Lisa, the Mac’s Finder, the Newton OS 1.0 and 2.0.

He eventually left Apple to work on Windows Active Desktop idea and Microsoft’s Internet efforts. Since then, he’s worked on AliceX – an iPhone version of the only Apple-released game ever available on the Macintosh.

There’s a Fake Steve Capps blog (his real blog, actually), a Steve Capps Day, and a real sense of respect surrounding the guy.

Check out the podcast (iTunes link) for a great look back at the glory days of the Mac and Newton systems, and a super interview with one of the great individuals in Apple history.

Macworld has a four-part “How green is Apple?” series going, exploring the company’s e-waste practices and altruistic motivations.

Many environmental groups, like Greenpeace, say its hard to rate Apple effectively when they’re so damn secretive:

Yet Apple earned just 4.7 points out of a possible 10—dramatically lower than competitors Samsung and Nokia. That low score was largely due to Apple’s reluctance to open up more about the environmental impact of its overall corporate operations. “They could elevate their score quite easily with just a couple of fixes,” says Greenpeace’s Harrell. “They could do a greenhouse-gas inventory of their supply chain, which they probably have done. But they haven’t talked about it.”

As someone who deals with e-waste on a regular basis, I’ve had my own ethical struggle with Apple’s environmental practices. But it’s this kind of pressure, and pressure from their customers, that will ultimately make Apple more open about its “green” behavior.

[Via Macsurfer.]

Riccardo Mori over at System Folder:

When your main system is capable of keeping multiple applications open, it’s easy to be distracted by incoming emails and updated RSS feeds. Not to mention the temptation to search the Web by following the spur of the moment — when that happens, the best case scenario is that I find myself two hours later digesting a lot of information I found following link after link, yet without doing anything really productive.

His solution? Write on a Mac Color Classic, or a Newton eMate 300 when away from home, to cut down on distractions.

“No browsers, no emails, no distractions: just me, my ideas, and the word processor,” Mori says.

It’s a brilliant (and, in a recession, cost-effective) solution to a problem a lot of us face every day. Why be productive when there’s another blog post to read? I’m working on my own, similar setup with my eMate 300.

Nice to see that Mori is getting something done on perfectly capable hardware.

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 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?

Isn’t it wonderful how well the G5 and newer iMacs fit into a modular workspace like the one above?

Check out more great workspaces at The Shelby.

[Via ISO50 Blog.]