Sandwich Video‘s Adam Lisagor introduces eBay’s new My Gadgets product — and the video features a Newton ($210!) among other classic gadgets.
Seems like a good option for those of us who used to (or still do) buy a lot of classic Apple gear on eBay.
Don’t know how I missed Harry McCracken’s Newton MessagePad review over at Time.com.
All in all, it’s fun experiment: take a tech journalist who has no direct experience with the Newton, and have him use it. Even better, McCracken’s MessagePad was practically new out of the box.
This section on battery life caught my eye:
20/20 hindsight may make the MessagePad’s screen look worse than it seemed in 1993; its battery life, however, benefits from a couple of decades of diminished expectations. Back in the 1990s, people squawked that the MessagePad H1000 drained its four AAA batteries too quickly. I found, however, that I could go for a couple of weeks on a set. In an age of smartphones that conk out after less than one day, that was more than enough to keep me happy.
Isn’t it something how our expectations have changed?
[via MacBreak Weekly]
In honor of today’s iPad announcement, here’s another Newton appearance on a “worst of tech” appearance — this time on Bloomberg’s Tech’s Biggest Broken Promises slideshow:
Known as Newton, the name of its operating system, the line of Apple handhelds set out to revolutionize computing with its touch-screen and handwriting-recognition software. The technology was so bad in the $700 debut models that it became the butt of “Doonesbury” jokes: “I am writing a test sentence” became “Siam fighting atomic sentry.”
Right. Bloomberg throws the Newton a bone by lumping it in with other “heavily hyped products that were ideas ahead of their time” — the like Betamax.
Jonathan Coulton makes geeky music for geeks. That’s why this video from YouTube user KonogoRaiana, featuring Coulton’s “Still Alive,” the ending theme from Portal, makes so much sense.
The text file to get this to work, using MacInTalk text to speech code, is gibberish — but the Newton understands it just fine.
Davis Remmel shows that hard-driving spirit that Newton owners are known for, especially after discovering the price of battery trays for his Newton MessagePad 2000:
The two clips on the front AA battery tray, the ones that hold two of the batteries in, were very damaged. One was missing entirely (!), while the other was broken on one side and about to fall off. Yada yada yada, I went online to buy a new one, and the only place that had them priced them at “ONLY $95!”THAT is absolutely ridiculous, so I loaded up trusty ‘ol Inventor and started modeling a new one to be 3D printed.
Amazing what today’s 3D printing technology is capable of doing, but be sure and heed Remmel’s advice and actually try the thing.
[Via Ron Parker on Twitter]
Look at how creative Arnold Kim of MacRumors and Touch Arcade was with the Newton back in the day.
[Via Blake Patterson.]
It was soon after the iPad 2 announcement that the trouble started brewing.
Thomas Brand on Twitter: “If you think the white iPad 2 looks cheap you should see the Bondie Blue model with pinstripes.”
Neat, I thought – I’d take a Bondi Blue one any day. So Thomas made one. And then another. And then more.
We had so much fun watching all of Thomas’s retro iPads come through that, shucks, why not make a retro Apple.com page again? So there you have it: Apple.com, circa never.
This time, I used the OS X 10.2 Jaguar-era Apple.com, with a fun iPhone fake mockup and an announcement that will never, ever come.
As far as the iPad goes: the white iPad 2 is the first time I’ve actually considered wanting an iPad. I still don’t have an iPad-shaped hole in my life, and the $499 could be used more productively in a lot of other places, but who knows. It’s a wonderful-looking product, and put me down as a fan of the white versions of Apple’s mobile devices.
Another side note: Thomas has been on fire over at Egg Freckles. Not only is his the best-looking blog on the web, but he’s cranking out great stuff lately.
Good for Riccardo Mori at System Folder:
As you can see in this recent photo, a detail of my setup, the Newton MessagePad is still an essential part of my workflow. So, despite its (untimely) cancellation, the Newton is still very useful to me, and to all the Newton users out there, and to those who are curious enough to purchase a used one and give it a try, my message is:
Isn’t that great?
Here, the thirteenth anniversary of the Newton’s cancellation, Mori (and many, many others) keep the faith.
“I was there until Steve came back and it was clear he was going to kill the project. In some ways I am sad he did, but I can see why he needed to. Apple had to focus or there would be no Apple today. As it is, some of the technologies are around today (as are the engineers that created them). You can see it in the recognition of addresses and events, and in many other places.”
- Maurice Sharp, ex Newton DTS Engineer and Manager, via the Newtontalk list.
More and more of the Newton-related web is disappearing, but Forrest Buffenmyer at Newton Phoenix is trying to keep some of it alive and well in the minds of MessagePad fans.
Buffenmyer added a links page to his Newton Phoenix site, sporting everything from software sites, the Newtontalk list, and even a pair of Newton bloggers (ahem). He’s attempting to post updates from his Newton, which he says is a work in progress.
Meanwhile, I invited Buffenmyer to scour my own Newton Links page for anything he could use.
“I drew the line (arbitrarily) at 2006 as a cutoff year,” Buffenmyer told us in the Newtontalk mailing list.
It’s important to save all these sites, as UNNA, Tony Kan, myself, and several others have attempted to do. There are still folks out there who want to tinker with the Newton. Let’s help them find all the good information they can find.
