Newton Poetry

CUPERTINO, Cal. – In a surprising move, Apple, Inc. (AAPL) announced today that it would drop its award-winning OS X Touch platform on iPhone and iPod Touch models in favor of its long-dead Newton operating system.

The updated Newton OS, the software used to run Apple’s discontinued MessagePad PDAs during the early and mid ’90s, will be called “iNewton,” according to an Apple press release.

“We believe the Newton OS is, by far, the superior platform, and truly belongs on our Touch-based products,” Phil Schiller, Apple’s vice president of worldwide marketing, said. “We made a mistake. The mobile OS X was a good platform, but iNewton will blow everyone away.”

Featuring black and white graphics, a green screen, and a new stylus-based input approach, the iNewton OS looks much like the Newton OS it takes its name from. Apple launched the original Newton OS in 1991 with the MessagePad personal digital assistant, and followed up with a 2.0 release with the MessagePad 120 and later models.

The announcement sent Apple stock prices soaring, up $60 to a high of $200 per share as of the market’s closing. Worried investors, distraught over the recent nosedive in Apple share prices, rallied to bump up Apple’s stock to the highest level in the company’s history.

“The doubts about Apple’s ability to innovate are long gone,” said Isaac Naughten, a prominent Wallstreet banker, said after the closing bell Tuesday. “All the complaining about Apple’s walled-garden strategy in terms of development disappeared in an instant.”

Apple discontinued the Newton platform in March 1998, shortly after Steve Jobs took over the role as company CEO.

Now, Apple plans on launching a series of “n”-prefixed products – like “nMac,” “nPod,” and “nPhone” – in deference to the revamped Newton OS.

“We couldn’t call it ‘nNewton,'” Schiller said. “That would just be silly. But everything else gets an update in this new Newton-centric age. And you can call me the ‘nVP’ from now on.”

Apple’s goal of selling 10 million nPhones by year’s end may not take that long, said some Wallstreet analysts. The company may sell 10 million nPhones in April alone. Naughten agreed.

“I feel bad for those left with the old iPhone,” he said. “Because now we’re going to see a record spike in sales and adoption rates of the nPhone device.”

Newton MessagePad fans, a disgruntled but passionate underground community that still uses the defunct Newton platform, celebrated in online discussion forms. The previous Newton OS already featured a full software library, and many Newton developers said creating software to run on the new nPhone will a simple matter of porting.

There is no word yet from Apple on whether the Mac “Leopard” OS will be updated to reflect the n-centric naming scheme, but insiders hinted at a tablet-style Mac that will run the new iNewton software.

Executives at Microsoft, developers of the rival Windows operating system, were said to be baffled by the move.

“We didn’t see this coming,” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, said in a statement. “But you can count on our next Windows release being monochrome, too.”

1. Onomatopoeia this
2. Sunday Project: Airport on G3 iBook Clamshell
3. The Death of a Soldier
4. The Guitarist Tunes Up
5. Connecting your Newton to OS X

The fun kids over at Tech Soup told me they ran an experiment to see if it’s true that Apple’s logo makes people more creative. Looks pretty convincing to me.

Thanks Alison!

So your Newton MessagePad is giving your problems. Either software is gumming it up, or its running a bit slow, or maybe the screen is acting funny. Much like a computer, the first thing to try out is a simple reset. But with Newtons, there are several reset options available: the soft reset, the power reset, and the ominous cold boot. Let’s explore each of these to find out which one could be best for you, depending on the severity of your situation. More… »

If you use iGoogle at all, which I do and love, one of the more unique widgets I’ve found is an online haiku generator, called the Computer Generated Poetry gadget (above).

It takes the form of a haiku using random words, a user-defined refresh rate (mine’s every 30 seconds), and the structure – haiku or freeform – you prefer. The “about” page says the gadget “builds a poem from a part-of-speech tagged list of English words.”

Currently, at this very moment, mine says:

answer an empire
consultant escape such Green
confined own topic

Here’s that, Newtonized:

answer an empire
Consultant excape suih Jrean
sonfined own topic

You need a to have a Google account to use iGoogle, but once you do, you can add all types of gadgets to your customized homepage, like weather, stocks, news, and even random haiku.

by Sri Chinmoy

I shall loce the whole world,
But I shall control
Only myself.

[A short, but good, one today. Read the original. It’s something I’m learning thanks to mindfulness practice.]

iPhones sell out in NYC
Man alive…:

AT&T retail stores in Manhattan aren’t yet feeling the affects of the shortage, though Apple’s online store is also reflecting an approximate 1 week delay for all new orders, suggesting that considerable backlog currently exists for whatever reason.

Glad I won’t be going there to buy mine. I just hope Ann Arbor doesn’t run short.

Five things Apple does right…
Neat piece from Low End Mac, although I think Steve asks for too many Macs. I like the current lineup, and liked the four-quadrants (pro/consumer/desktop/notebook) lineup even better.

Review: Modbook Tablet
Drool:

Sure, it’s the only Mac tablet for now, but this baby is certain to give anyone who dabbles in the dark graphical arts exquisitely rendered heart palpitations.

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Fifteen men on a Bend Man’s Just
Yo hc hc and a bottle of ruin.
Drink and the devil had love for the rest.
Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of ram.

[Find out about the original, taken from Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” of course. People love their pirates these days, don’t they? Find out why this poem is misspelled. Savvy?]

nursery rhyme

The Worth wind dvth blow and we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He’ll sit in a burn and keep himself warm
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

[A little something different today. Read the original. We had a big snow storm here in Michigan on Friday night, meaning all the birds – like robins – that flew back had to endure a bit more winter.]

Looking for loonies like yourself who enjoy low-end technology, outdated PDAs, and a knack for shaking their fist at Apple’s decisions?

Join a Newton User Group!

Chuma.org’s Newton FAQ has a listing of user groups, including where they’re at and their web site.

A few have since disbanded, but groups like Stanford’s (above) are die-hards, and I’m sure would love a visitor (visit their site here).  SNUG meets on the third Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. (right before the iPhone group) at Printer’s Inc. Café (320 S. California Avenue in Palo Alto).  Be sure to check out the group’s “gripe list.”

There’s a Michigan State group that’s just a bit north of me. I may check to see if they still meet. If they do, I’ll be sure to report back.

By the way, the Tennessee Valley Newton Users Group (TVNUG) meets the first Wednesday of each month at 5 p.m. Central at the Barnes & Nobel coffee shop, located on University Drive in Huntsville, AL, says George S. Hamilton.  The store is closing, however, so stay tuned for the new location.

If you want to do some research, check out Meetup.com’s list of Newton User Group cities.