Newton Poetry

I’m all about the classic Mac’ing around these parts. That’s why I thought Jason Snell’s “A Time Machine trip to the mid-’90s” article for Macworld.com was so darned cool: he lets us know about some of the never-to-see-the-light-of-day features of Copland, Apple’s vaporOS.

I remember reading about Copland and Pink and all the other weird OSes Apple was planning, but it was cool to see the operating system screen shots. Love that ’90s styling – takes me back to the Packard Bell computer my dad bought (and I ruined).

Check it out for a neat comparison on features in Copland and today’s OS X Leopard.

Marketing guru Seth Godin has a new book out, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. As a way to promote and brainstorm the book, he invited an online “triiibe” to make a book of their own. It’s available for free on Seth’s blog (which is great, and updated every day).

In the free, PDF version of the “Tribes” book, I couldn’t help but notice how many times Apple is brought up. On page 17, an author talks about the not-so-first-in-line Polish iPhone buyers. On page 51, the iPhone unlocker tribe gets its day. “Think Different” is listed as a War Cry on page 41. On page 60, Tom Bentley describes how he’ll be a Mac guy for life after his first experience:

The Mac tribe, of course, has been written about extensively, as has Appleís design magic. There have been some clunkers, but in the main, many are marvelous advances in computing and design. Iím not quite the zealot fanboy who would immediately flame online columnists who question any aspect of the Macintosh Creed, but I get where the fanatics are coming from. Iím in their tribe, after all.

“I am now part of the Newton tribe” sparked my interest at first glance, even if the actual article was about Newton running shoes. Even there, though, Marcus Galica talks about how Newton-wearing runners recognize each other out in the wild. Remember when that was true for iPods? How iPod wearers would give each other “the nod” or “the look”?

Apple’s relatively smaller user base than PCs gets a mention on page 63 (“I’m a Mac, I’m a PC”). Online groups and surfers and ethnic groups are all mentioned in this “Current Tribes Casebook,” but Apple gets its a big share (perhaps more than fair – is that my “tribal mind” talking?) of the attention.

I joined the Apple tribe three years ago in November, and I haven’t looked back. More recently, I joined the Newton tribe (and the jogging tribe and the local brewery tribe, and perhaps a few more), and it’s been a heckuva lot of fun.

What would be written about our little group of holders-on and our big green friend?

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.

The madness continues, but us AAPL investors have to be feeling better than we were just a few months ago.

Conventional wisdom says buy on the rumor, and sure enough – after the iPhone 3G announcement, AAPL stock took a bit of a dive. It’s been bouncing back and forth (with the markets, apparently, in red and orange above), now resting at $173 as of today’s closing.

Apple is in good condition, and with the iPhone price drop, I can only imagine things will get better. And others agree (including a blogger I read regularly over at The Simple Dollar). The final pricing point doesn’t matter. What’ll be interesting is to see how the stock performs come July 11, when lines outside Apple stores will surely beat last year’s. I hope to be at our own Ann Arbor store that morning. If it’s anything like the store’s opening, it should be a fun day, indeed.

For all the speculation and gambling and non-news that gets thrown around in regards to Apple, what matters most is the ability of the company to churn out high-quality computers and phones and music players that people want. And they are doing that.

If, as king-hell capitalists believe, a company’s stock price is the true measure of its worth, than Apple is in good condition. Says one analyst (thanks to Reuters):

Analyst David Bailey also raised his target on the stock to $220 from $185, and said Apple should be able to increase its available iPhone subscriber base by more than 80 percent this year due to aggressive expansion into international markets.

Will all that optimism change should that Jobs guy leave the company?

Who can tell? The experiment marches on, anyway.

For a guy that was no fan of social networking sites Myspace or Facebook – or computers in general, once upon a time – Brian Floe sure thinks along those lines.

Floe is the creator of MyAppleSpace.com, a growing social site dedicated to Apple fans.

Why not just create a “Mac Lovers” group on Facebook?

“Why not just buy a PC and put an Apple sticker on it?” Floe says. “Mac users especially always want the next big thing, not the second best thing. We have high standards.”

Good point. That’s why Floe says MyAppleSpace is “a little space for the rest of us.”

More… »

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Apple iMac.

I’m lucky enough to own one of the Bondi Blue beauties; it’s mostly my finance and gaming (WarCraft II) machine. I like to mess around with Photoshop on it, and I also got a copy of Adobe’s proto-web WYSIWYG editor PageMill to play with.

I’ve got mine running OS 9, but they originally shipped with OS 8, I think. It’s my truly “classic” machine, and also my Newton MessagePad hub. It still runs like a dream, humming along at 233 MHz with 160k of RAM.

So thanks, Steve Jobs, and thanks, Jon Ive, for bringing such a wonderful machine into being.

Demigods in Canada, and virtually unknown in the U.S., The Tragically Hip are the greatest live band I’ve ever seen.

So it was a heckuva treat to see some classic Macs sitting at the desks during the Hip’s “My Music at Work” video:

Gord Downie, the lead singer, has either a classic 128/512k Mac or a Mac SE – I can’t make out which. The video seems to be a rip on the drudgery of work, but they picked the wrong computer to represent such an idea; a Packard Bell would’ve worked much better.

They look like they’re having some fun, thanks to Gord, though I bet an office environment would be infinitely better with a Mac SE at every desk.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB_K66mrZi4&hl=en]

I had my own bit of fun for April Fool’s Day, but this is a hoot: a “virus” that makes…well, just watch.

Love the name!

// Originally seen here.

Newton Connection, one of the applications that lets you sync your Newton MessagePad to modern OS X Macs, released a 2.1 update that allows for screenshots.

Newton Poetry covered apps like NCX, and it’s nice to know Newton developers are still working hard on viable connection solutions. NCX does everything the old Newton Connection Utilities did, but runs under OS X.

// Via Cult of Mac

It takes some strong willpower not to give in to temptation and grab a new 20-inch iMac for $999.

Apple’s refurb site is an endless source of lust for me. I’ve grabbed a few iPods as gifts off the refurbished list, and the deals are great.

What stops me from grabbing my tax rebate check and ordering a new Leopard-powered beauty? For one, I don’t have enough room in my apartment for a dedicated desktop machine. My iBook gets me by just fine, and I have a Bondi iMac G3 that gets me by as a “gaming machine” and Newton hub.

After seeing one of the new iMacs in person (the monstrous 24-inch model), however, I can’t help but yearn for one. My plan is to purchase an iMac after I purchase my own home, which may be a year or two into the future – or when I get my own apartment (I have a roommate, who has his own computer).

In the meantime, I’m hoping some angel stops by Apple’s site and surprises me on my birthday this weekend. Hope springs eternal!

Time for some links:

• Download iPhone apps to iPod Touch for free [via Simplehelp]
• iTunes now #1 music retailer [Ars Technica]
• Celebrity Mac/iPhone/iPod sightings [Macenstein – they have a whole series going, but this one was one of my favs]