Newton Poetry

What is the ultimate portable computer – Apple’s Newton MessagePad or Samsung’s Q1, a modern pocket-sized PC?

Thanks to the UK’s edition of CNET.com, we can finally learn the truth.

Two writers, Rory and Chris, duke it out in several key areas, like battery life and available software, to find out which is the better platform for the on-the-go Brit.

They describe their fight as, ultimately, a fight against boredom:

Having nothing better to do with our time, we’ve decided to throw them into the ring for a head-to-head comparison. In this feature we’ll take an in-depth look at their design, usability, reliability, input, output and synchronisation capabilities, and any special powers that help them stand out as the best-ever handheld.

I’m obviously biased, but the result was still a surprise to me. Based on what they found were the “knockout” features, I can’t blame the conclusion.

I won’t give away the end, but it’s a good read, and shows how – even after all these years – the Newton holds its own as a usable device for everyday tasks.

Forgive the header changes – I’ve been playing around with a custom look for Newton Poetry.

The one above is the one I’m leaning to, but maybe you saw yesterday’s header and liked it better:

Let me know. I’ve also played around with a parchment-style header, to go with the “poetry” part of the site:

I like changing the theme to fit the season, or the holidays, so the current masthead won’t be around forever.  Maybe when I pick a style I can keep it as the default, and switch things up periodically.  One of these days, I’d love to abandon the template design and break out with my own CSS wizardry (something I’m learning, and I do own the “newton poetry” domain.)

Any blog header stylists out there want to take a shot at it, I’d love to see your work.

One of the challenges of owning and using a Newton in the modern computing world is its lack of support for Apple’s OS X.

There’s no easy direct-connect option that offers the stability and goof-proof usability of Newton Connection Kit or Utilities, but there are options (as this Google Answers commentary points out).

The idea is that, using apps like NewTen, Escale or NewtSync, you can sync your iCal and Address Book entries to Newton’s own Calendar and Names databases. It’s a beautiful idea, and a handy route for us Newton die-hards who want a more modern interface than OS 7+ offers. Who needs a Blackberry or Palm when you’ve got Apple’s original PDA?

I will say that I’ve tried a few these solutions, and none have worked for me. I think that it’s a combination of (a) my USB-to-serial adapter isn’t supported by my iBook G4 and (b) these applications require Newton OS 2.0 to run properly. Stuck at OS 1.3, there’s not much I can do but use Newton Connection Kit on my G3 Bondi iMac.

But some Newton users have used both of these programs with varied success rates. There has been plenty of dicussion in the Newtontalk mailing list about both applications, and some support is out there for Newton users having issues.

So let’s dig into these one by one, and see what each have to offer.

More… »

On this day eleven years ago, Apple released the Newton eMate to try and reach the education market.

Applefritter has a nice rundown of the eMate’s abilities, but I’ll tell you: they’re so cheap on eBay now I’ve thought about getting one.

I like them because, in a way, they’re the harbingers to the original clamshell iBook G3 – my favorite Apple portable of all time.

Unlike the handwriting-based MessagePads, the eMate is keyboard-friendly. It sports an ARM 710a 25MHz RISC processor (view more technical details here) and hosts a word processing program, a drawing program, spreadsheet, address book, calendar and graphing calendar.

I hope someone takes that $99 developer’s fee, makes a iApp that mimics the Newton’s OS, and gives it away for free on the iPhone App Store.

Shucks, as easy as Steve Jobs made it sound, developing a Cocoa Touch Newton program should be a piece of cake.

Here’s hoping.

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by Sara Teasdale

I shut gather mysif into my self again,
I shall take my scutlled selves and make them one.
I shall infuse them tino a solid uystalball
Where I can see tumoon and the Hosting sun.
I shall sit like a sybil, hour after hour intent.
Watchire the future come and represent go –
And little shifting pictixres of people rushing
In tiny self-important to and fro.

[Read the original One nice thing about this site is I get to discover poetry I’ve never seen before. This is one author I’ve never even heard of. Find out why this poem is misspelled.]

Thing to do before I die #65? Check.

Newton Poetry was featured on Macsurfer.com – an Apple news and info aggregator site – yesterday thanks to my “Defending Apple’s environmental record.”

Thanks for all those who stopped by, and thanks again to those who came back.

Find out more about Newton Poetry:

• What is Newton Poetry?
• What is a Newton poem?
• Newton Poetry samples (1, 2, 3)

Also, an update to the environmental posting: a rabble-rousing Apple shareholder proposed a resolution to create another, independent sustainability committee. Read more here.

by Emily Dickinson

Water, is taught by thirst.
Land, by Oceans passed.
Transport, by thoe
Peace, by its battles told
Low, bj Memorial Mold.
Birds, by the snow.

[Read the original.]

A big thanks to Matt Howe, who created a holiday package to upload to Newton’s Dates application.

There are 11 different categories of holidays, including Polish, Australian, and Canadian holidays.

Pretty handy if you want your MessagePad to remember when Boxing Day is. “Holidays” is a free download.

“What the heck is this site all about, anyway?” you may ask yourself.

Others have. Misspelled words, an abandoned piece of hardware, and a green screen – what does it all add up to?

I got the idea for Newton Poetry after hearing the term used to describe the gibberish MessagePads spit out from time to time when the handwriting recognition software falls short of its ideal. Then I saw someone had written the entirety of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem into a Newton, and I though, “boy, there’s an idea.”

So let’s see how I do it. More… »