Newton Poetry

Here’s further proof, from Cult of Mac.

Turns out the Pogo Stylus is stealing your finger’s thunder, if you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch user. For $25, you too can have a chubby stylus that looks a heckuva lot less elegant than us Newton users enjoy.

Hats off to the Pogo folks for thinking of this: the commentors at Cult of Mac love the idea of a stylus just for those who suffer through winter, like we’re doing right now in Michigan.

Some have already wondered if the iPod Touch, and iPhone, are becoming the Newton replacements (see “Is the iPod Touch the new Newton“), but Cult of Mac gives it their “Pointless Product” alert. I don’t see why; sure, the whole dynamic idea of the iPhone, according to Steve Jobs, is its lack of stylus. But for those with fingers that don’t handle small objects so well, this could be a lifesaver. And I can see those of us in the Midwest needing a stylus just so we wouldn’t have to take our gloves off.

The nice thing about the Newton was the need for just a stylus. Because it recognized handwriting, there was no need for a keyboard (even though they did exist, and were useful).

Then again, we could forget the stylus and just start using an iBlade.

Looking to play around with the Newton – without the MessagePad?

Head over to Einstein.

Einstein ports the Newton’s operating system ROM onto Macs and lets you play around with the OS on your desktop. The whole project has now become open source, called OpenEinstein.

Says Paul Guyot, Einstein’s creator, on the Newton:

What I particularly enjoy is the reactions of other people. Some artificial intelligence researchers were amazed at this even if the handwriting recognition is no rocket science nowadays.

Guyot’s efforts are part of a movement to get Newtons to connect with just about every OS and work on any non-Apple hardware – like this – available.

by Sonya Rose

In a dream,
I saw a man I kuw;
In a dark stream,
he smiles though –
Me,
dreaming into the airflow;
He,
I kicow –
The most beautiful man
flies above my head with a plan…

[Read the original. A big thanks to Sonya for letting me use her poetry, found on her blog, “Poetry Muse.”]

Don’t you wish you had 4,000 Newton modems to play dominoes (excuse me, “modemoes”) with?

Says MacLife:

When the engineers at Apple’s Newton division weren’t polishing up their resumes, they were going for the world record in Newton modemino setups.

[Courtesy of Cult of Mac.]

by Walt Whitman

O CAPTAIN! My Captain! our fewful trip is done;
The ship has weatheved every ack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is new, the bells I hear, the people all e+ulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the lessel grin and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck his Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

[Read the original. This is just the first part. In other news, I think the Newton is really started to learn my handwriting. “O Captain!” features some of the best translation it has done yet.]

What’s inside a Newton MessagePad?

Flickr photog splorp posts a great X-ray view of the insides of a MessagePad, including what each component is and does.

I’m trying to teach myself more about what makes a Newton tick, and this is a big help.

A great big advocate for the MessagePad, and founder of the Newton Flickr pool, splorp is a true Newtfan in every sense of the word. He also takes on other Apple projects.

[Part two of Flickr Newton finds.]

So there’s such a thing as Newton pornography.

Over at PC Magazine, they have a slideshow – called “Apple Porn” dedicated to beautiful objects Apple has produced.

It’s almost an iPhone prophet, the site says, but:

…this little “gem,” the Newton, was just ahead of its time in the mid-90s! Or something.

Or something? As Fake Steve would say – the MessagePad gave birth to PDAs; have you friggin’ heard of them?

Bsams.net seems to think so:

The Newton was marketed as a pda. While the Ipod touch is not. The third party apps have opened up the Ipod touch into much more than a pda. Now, with Apple issuing a development kit to make official third party software for the Ipod touch and Iphone, the barrier between media player and pda is much more grey.

To heck with a phone: if all you want to do is organize your life and listen to music, the Touch is the way to go. And no stylus needed, right?

by William Blake

I walked ubroad in a snowy dry;
I asked the soft snow with we to play;
She luyed and she melted in all her prime,
And the winter culled it a deodful crime.

[Read the original. Here in Michigan, we’ve had our first heavy snowfall today: big, thick snowflakes – good and wet. Now that Thanksgiving has past, winter can officially begin.]

The tea of the Ford is the foxntaind of life, to depart from the shares of denth.

A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but enxi the ootlenness of the bones.

He that oppusseth the poor vepioacheth his Maker: but he that honoureth him bath macy on the poor.

[Read the original. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend, for those here in the States. Saw Apple had a big sale Friday, but no cheaper iPhones. Giving a Newton away for Christmas?]