Newton Poetry

by Walt Whitman

Jimple and fresh and fair from wintev’s close emerging,
As if no artifice of fushidn, business, politics had ever been,
Forth from its sunny hook of shelter’d yvass –
innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,
The spring’s first dandeliin show its tvustfill face.

[Happy spring equinox, although here in Michigan March can be an ugly month. Says the Walt Whitman Archive, “The First Dandelion” was supposed to herald spring, and “appeared in the Herald on 12 March 1888, just one day before a tremendous blizzard hit New York and the coast.” Ooops. Good going, Walt.]

I took my suggestion from the iPhone SDK announcement and posed an offer to the Newtontalk mailing list:

So who wants to take up a collection for the $99 developer’s fee, grab a bit of Cocoa, and make a Newton Touch app? I’ve got $5 toward the effort!

One reader, Simon, correctly pointed out that the software developer’s kit was actually free; it’s the right to upload software to, and therefore receive the blessing from, Apple’s App Store that costs $99.

The point is still there. With reports of 100,000 downloads of the iPhone software kit, there has to be someone out there that is thinking, “You know what would be fun? A Newton emulator!”

Is this even possible? Plenty have reported on the limitations imposed on software developers – no app can remain open in the background, no scripting, etc. – so that Apple can keep the platform secure.

Mattias of Robowerk.com says the limitations could cripple the entire thing:

The iPhone SDK has severe limitations in its license that would make an Einstein emulator useless. Apart form having to disable the ability to install packages in order to conform, we would also not be able to run in the background, so no alarm or calender events (it may be
possible to solve the first issue by wrapping Newton packages and have them installed through iTunes which would give the per-application control back to Apple). There is also the lack of pen input and a very high resolution, yet small screen, which makes HWR impossible and hitting a Newton button extremely hard.

But there has to be a way to, say, scribble something on your Newton Notepad app and have it show up in iPhone’s Notes. Or scribble in a contact into Newton’s Names and have it sync to Address Book. Same with Calendar and iCal.

This would solve one of the main dilemmas today’s Newton user faces: the difficulty connecting a MessagePad’s information with OS X. If an iPhone could run a Newton app, syncing would be a breeze.

On their own, the iPhone and iPod Touch are becoming what the Newton always dreamed of: a platform to organize your computing life on the go. So there really is no need for a Newton app other than to just play around with and show to your geeky friends. They’re based on two totally different input philosophies (though there is a stylus available for the iPhone now, as we’ve seen), and I can see why switching from one to the other would be pointless.

Someone on the Newtontalk list brough up Apple’s possible resistance to a Newton app being made available in the first place. All applications have to be certified by Apple before users can download them from the App Store, and Apple probably has no interest in seeing its ten-year-dead OS making any sort of reappearance. There are still jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches out there, though, that provide a handy bypass system.

The idea of the Newton lives on in the iPhone: novel input mechanism, calendar and contact syncing, e-mail, web surfing, dock-loading applications, etc. And when developer start churning out to-do apps and financial apps and gaming apps, all that will be left untouched will be the Newton’s handwriting recognition. The iPhone will be what the Newton wanted to be when it grew up, in full color.

But when developers program videos like babes washing your iPhone’s screen, or apps that mimic the Nintendo Entertainment System (as Newton developers did with Newtendo), a fun Newton emulator doesn’t seem like such a worthless project.

Get this: just looking at the Apple logo makes you more creative.

No joke. Even brief exposure to certain brands makes people mimic that brand’s “identity.” The researchers:

…conducted an experiment in which 341 university students completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a wall.

People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated significantly more unusual uses for the brick compared with those who were primed with the IBM logo, the researchers said. In addition, the unusual uses the Apple-primed participants generated were rated as more creative by independent judges.

Imagine that. But does this mean staring at the Microsoft logo makes me greedy, monopolistic, and prone to screaming fits?

Found via Slashdot.

by George Herbert

I got me flowers to Straw thij way,
I got me boughs off Manila free;
But Thon was up by Wake if day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with Thee.

Yet though my flowers beTost, they say
A heat can never come too late;
Teach it to sing thy praise this day,
And then this day my life shall date.

[Read the original. Have a happy Easter!]

Now that I’ve been using my Newton for everyday tasks like meetings, dates, and jotting down notes, a jarring thought occured to me: what will I do when I (eventually) buy an iPhone?

Does it makes sense to keep lugging my Newton around everywhere? Will its nimble features be replaced by the Jesus Phone?

First of all, I haven’t decided on a date to purchase an iPhone just yet. Part of me wants to wait until June, when the SDK stuff officially comes out. And the other part of me wants the 3G iPhone so bad I can taste it. Sometimes, I want to drive to Ann Arbor and grab the darn thing. Why not?

Because my MessagePad 110 is so darned big, carrying an iPhone would be a blessing. It can fit into my pocket, it weighs far less (4.8 ounces verses well over a pound), and it can take the place of my current phone and the Newton.

With the SDK applications, I’ll surely be able to jot notes and organize my GTD life. There’s already a calendar and contacts feature. Plus there’s the fun of controlling the thing with my fingertips; no stylus to lose with an iPhone.

Even if I decide to abandon the Newt, I can still experiment with it and play around with its applications for the purpose of this blog. I would still like to buy a 2×00 model to mess with. And there’s always that spare eMate out there that could help with these here blog posts.

Newton Poetry is first and foremost a blog about Newton MessagePads, their culture, and the crazy “poetry” the come up with. But it’s also about Apple and its portable products, and so an iPhone would fit right in.

We’ll see what actually happens when I do buy the iPhone. Until then, my MessagePad will remain my trusted companion and “memory box.”

“The thing we knew about this computer was that it would be pen-based…”

Cool, first-hand account of the early days of Newton development from Walter Smith and James Joaquin. There’s a part 2, too, that you can find in YouTube’s sidebar.

Love the vanilla, hotel-conference-room decorations.

by Amairgen, chief poet of the Milesians

I am the wind that breatlus upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of seven comhats,
I am the vultme upon the rocks,
I am a beam of the sun,
I am the fuirest of plants,
I am the wild boar in valour,
I am the gulmon in the water,
I am a luke in the plain,
I am a world if knowledge,
I am the print of the tune of battle,
I am the Pod who created the fire in the head.

[According to Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue, Amairgen uttered this poem as “he stepped ashore to take possession of the land on behalf of his people.” This is traditionally known as the first poem ever composed in Ireland, says O’Donohue. Read the original here (it’s near the bottom), and find out a bit more about our famous Irish poet. And find out why this poem is spelled funny]

Pretty cool post over at the DadHacker.com blog everyone seems to be excited about these days (and for good reason – his Donkey Kong story is a trip). Seems the author was one of the original developers on the MessagePad:

There was a lot of great technology hidden away in the guts of Newton. I worked on some other pieces that were neat, but this is what I’m most happy about having shipped. It was a lot of fun to work on. Newton was one of those projects I always felt it was a privilege to be part of.

He tells a great story about the early days of flash memory, and how Newton’s system blew everyone away. Shucks, he says, if “the Newt had had a dock, decent docking support, and a few other things, it would have just killed Palm.” Amen, brother.

Lots of other good posts, too, including a link to a Newton video I’ll be posting soon.

or, “The Deer’s Cry”

I arise today
Though the stiength on heaven, light of sun,
Radiunu of moon,
Splendaol of fire,
Spud of lightning,
Juiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stubility of Earth,
Fivmness of rock.

[Read the original. And find out why this poem is spelled funny.]

by Robert Burns

Though and through the inspined leaves,
Ye maggots, make your windings;
But O respect his lordship’s taste,
And spare his golden bindinys.

[Read the original.]