Newton Poetry

Roger Enrico, former head of Pepsi, escapes to his favorite beach resort with a book, a soda pop, and a Macintosh.

I wish my current iMac was so portable.

[Courtesy of Vintage Ad Browser.]

Patrick Rhone at Minimal Mac:

That shiny new phone you want you don’t want bad enough yet. That system that is getting “a little slow” is not yet slow enough. Even if it is too slow for you it is more than most of the world could ever dream of having. Seriously, use your technology until it hurts – bad. Because the pain all of this consumption is bringing to a world that is just beyond yours is immeasurable.

Amen, brother. It’s something I’m fond of saying, and often repeat (and practice): just because it’s a few years old doesn’t mean it’s not worth using or tinkering with.

Rhone points to Free Geek, a larger, more organized version of my One Used Mac Per Child brainstorm a few years back.

But there’s a larger issue here than just taking old computers and fixing them up. The materials inside them, when shipped overseas, become hazardous beyond belief. We sit here in modern comfort, tossing out our old cell phones (I once saw a guy throw his phone out his truck window, smashing it on the street) or “recycling” our old Macs, never knowing where they end up.

I do my part, but I’m only one person. I do know many others that care about this stuff, and care about geeking out with old Newtons and Macs and keeping that stuff out of landfills and smelting pots. Kudos to Rhone at Minimal Mac for spreading the word.

It’s finally here: episode 11 of The hello Show, with David Kendal, me, and special guest Damian Ward.

Damian is a classic Mac collector in the truest sense. We talk about collecting old Macintoshes, why people do such crazy things, and a bit about recent Apple news.

Side note: when it comes to Mario Kart Wii racing, David and I are dead-even. Balloon and coin matches however? That’s another story…

What’s fun is that, with David in Northern England and me here in Michigan, we played a great series of Mario Kart races – even an ocean away.

Looks like I have a few things to do tomorrow.

Adam Rosen at The Vintage Mac Museum Blog:

In a Major Step Forward each model now gets its own shelved box in the attic (photo above) – a MUCH easier system than digging through a bag or box of old stuff and trying to remember if this unlabeled power supply belongs to a IIci or a Quadra. It took a few years but now I should be able to better manage growth via the addition of shelving and boxes. At least, to a point.

Organization is super important, especially with something so esoterically weird as a vintage computer collection.

I’ll admit that my own system is lacking. I have Macs scattered everywhere, with my two every day Macs (my G3 iMac and new 21.5″ iMac) getting prime spots in my office/dining room. From there, however, things get weird.

To help, I’ve dumped most of the equipment, pieces, and RAM chips I own into a box. That way, if I need something, there’s one place to get it. Software and hardware, however, are another thing entirely.

Then again, I don’t have nearly the collection that Adam or some others have. It’s a degree of scale, but organization is needed no matter the size of your obsession.

So thanks for the inspiration, Adam. Surely I need it.

Low end Mac users are masochists. There’s no easy way to take a classic Macintosh and do modern, enjoyable work without some pain or effort involved. Everything is a project.

Now, for most of us that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s why we work with classic Macs. Either that, or we know low end Macs so well that using anything prior to OS X comes as second nature. Also, it’s a hobby.

With this in mind, and as I shared on The hello Show this week, I’m undertaking a bit of an experiment: spending an entire week with nothing but my low end Macs. Specifically, I’ll be using:

• My rev. B Bondi Blue iMac G3, 233 Mhz running OS 9
• The Blue and White PowerMac G3, 350 Mhz, sporting OS 8
• The new-to-me Macintosh LC520 running OS 7.6
• Possibly the Mac SE running System 6, just for fun (and HyperCard!)

…as my main computing machines.

I’m leaving my new 21.5″ iMac switched off, using my iPhone 3G for phone calls only, and relying only on Apple products that were released in the 1990s.

I’ll call it Seven Days of System 7.

That’s not totally accurate. I’ll also be using OS 8 (on the PowerMac) and OS 9 (on the iMac). For portability, contact management, and calendar duties, I’ll use my Newton MessagePad 110 and eMate. And I might pull out my iBook G3 and boot into OS 9 for some portable Macintosh.

The experiment, inspired by Morgan Aldridge’s and Riccardo Mori’s experiences, will be me attempting to get by – or even be productive – on non-Mac OS X machines. This includes any writing, web browsing, scheduling, graphic design, and web development. For the week, I’m setting up a special page here at Newton Poetry that will be a sort of proto-blog – where I can post updates through the week. The entire thing will be made on my PowerMac G3 sporting Adobe’s classic HTML editor, PageMill.

Right now, I’m collecting other applications that I might need through the week, including:

• Claris Organizer for my to-dos, contact management, and calendar, synced to my Newton
• Corel Graphics 8 for design work
• PhotoShop LE for image manipulation
• Panic’s Audion and iTunes 2 for music
• AppleWorks 6 for spreadsheets or heavy-duty word processing
• BBEdit Lite for text editing
• The latest build of Classilla
• Adobe PageMill for web stuff
• Panic’s free version of Transmit for FTP’ing
• A bunch of games for recreation, including SimCity 2000, WarCraft II, and (for the first time) Marathon

Because it’s only a week-long experiment, I won’t need much more than that. I’m not going to do any heavy graphic design lifting, or attempt to do a whole lot. It’ll simply be a week to see how easy it is to be productive and live day-to-day on low end Macs.

There are a bunch of sources I have to credit for the help, including my podcasting pal David Kendal (for the links to Panic’s free offerings), System 7 Today for some game ideas, UNNA for Claris Organizer, and eBay for PageMill and WarCraft II.

The experiment will take place in the next week or two. In the meantime, if you have any ideas or software to try out, let me know.

Most of all, wish me luck.

Drool.

Here we see a great switcher message, and a kick-off to the “digital hub” strategy Steve Jobs laid out at Macworld the year before.

[Via David Kendal's tip.]

Neat brochure designed by The Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Looks like it’s geared toward college students.

[Via Daring Fireball.]

Patrick Rhone at Minimal Mac:

Well, wait until I tell you that I used a Newton MessagePad as my main “daily worker” for years. Every model from the introduction of the MessagePad 120 all the way until the 2100. I used it for web browsing (as it was at the time), reading, email, notes, calendar, address book, word processor, and much more. In other words, exactly as one would use any portable computer. During that time, I saw the sort of computing I was able to do with a handheld device, and the way I was doing it, as the future of computing. With the introduction of the iPad, my faith in that future is regained.

Rhone is springing for an iPad as his main, everyday computing device. Instead of purchasing a new Macbook, he’s keeping his old, black Macbook and “upgrading” to an iPad.

The linked article, the one where Rhone talks about using his Newton MessagePad as an everyday machine, is fascinating:

I used it for everything. I took all my notes with it, used the external keyboard to type up documents and e-mail, managed my schedule and contacts, and, with the introduction of the MessagePad 2000, used it for most of my web browsing. My desktop computers were always simply a backup and data conduit for my Newtons. I did not even own a laptop, my Newton could do all that I needed in a mobile situation.

“All that I needed” is the key quote here, because the iPad (and the Newton before it) represents what most people need: e-mail, writing, viewing photos, browsing the web. For years now, the low-end Mac folks have been saying this same thing as a justification for using classic Macintosh computers. If all you need is e-mail and Word, why not use a PowerBook G3?

But take that idea and make it lovely, fluid, and seamless (and affordable), and you have the iPad. All the stuff I love about Macs – the file system, the tinkering, the more in-depth and specialized software – is what turns most of the people I know away from computers. They don’t want the hassle. They just want to do stuff.

With the Newton, you could have it both ways. Take computing and abstract it: make it a notepad, a calendar, and a few data-tracking apps, and control it with a pen. Or dig into the soup and pry open Toolkit and have your way with the device. The kicker was that this device was too expensive for the simplicity it offered. And hampered by technological limitations of the ’90s.

Simpleness. The Mac shot for it. The Dynabook did, too. The Newton. Magic Cap. The ideal was an affordable, portable, light weight (upkeep-wise), intuitive device that let you get your work done and organize your life.

Rhone felt the Newton was enough in its day, and now feels the iPad is the successor to that simplistic legacy. I think he’s right.

If you’re reading this, the computer – a Mac or PC or Linux box – probably holds a special place in your life. You tinker, you develop, you read up on ways to do things better, or how to fix problems. You work with a screen with a CPU and a keyboard, with an operating system you can change and tweak, with software you can install at will. For me, it’s a hobby. I can’t imagine life without the computer as I know it (in my case, the iMac I’m writing this on).

But for some, like Rhone, the iPad is all they need. For heavy lifting, they can keep a backup.

The Newton used to be the iPad in this equation, as Rhone points out. And for some, the MessagePad will always hold a special place in our hearts. Time and technology, however, have passed the Newton by. If you want to watch movies, browse the almost-full web, play your iTunes content, or even see your pictures in color, and you want the ideal portable computing device, you’re going to have to get an iPad. The Newton can still do a lot of what the iPad can do, and it can still be a useful device. It’s just that the iPad gives you a richer, more modern way to do it.

Rhone calls it a “return to the future” – a sense of some far-off, ideal gadget that fulfills the promises of the early ’80s and ’90s. It’s amazing to think that this flat, touchscreen gadget can, day-to-day, replace a Mac notebook. For me, it couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t want it to happen.

But for some, like Rhone, it’s finally feasible.

“There’s long been grumbling about the iPhone OS’s lack of multitasking capability, especially its suitability as a serious business smartphone. However, the clamor has cranked up by several magnitudes of intensity since the iPad announcement.

My own take is that going back to working without multitasking would be too much like reverting to the early Mac OS – before MultiFinder was introduced for System 5.”

- Charles Moore at Low End Mac, on a neat comparison. He mentions the old Switcher that paused “one running application while you launched another one.” I would think, with the iWork apps on the iPad, you have to have multitasking to get any kind of efficient work done.