“If Apple had shipped a Newton OS device the size of a Palm Pilot for $400 by 1995, the world might be a very different place today.”
– John Gruber, in a great Daring Fireball piece. A must-read for any Newton fan.
Feeling creative with your Newton stylus?
Head to the Newton Art blog and enter their contest by creating an exact replica of this image on your Newton:
There are some stipulations, but the winner gets an 8MB flash card and an eMate/MP2x00 stylus.
Newtpocalpyse looks to be a pervasive problem in the Newton community.
All those hopes about Newton users using their eMates and MessagePads past January 5 this year? It’s still possible, just a little annoying now that something else is messing with our Newtons. Several Newtontalkers (here, here, and here) have reported that their 2010-patched Newton 2.x devices, when reset, have their dates revert back to January 1, 2008.
Sure enough, so did my eMate 300. Here it is after I did a test reset:
Before resetting my eMate, I made sure the date and time were correct (something I often neglect after my batteries die). After hitting the reset button, the 2010-to-2008 bug (Y2008?) worked its evil magic. My dates were reset to 2008.
Thankfully, Eckhart Köppen is back on the scene after some time away, and had this to report:
The NewtonOS seems to have built in a “protection” against setting the date to a nonsensical value, which kicks in only after a reset. This protection forces the date to a 1996 on an unpatched Newton.
What happens on a patched Newton is the following sequence (assuming the date is past 2009):
1. Reset occurs
2. NewtonOS notices date after 2009 and sets it back back to 1996
3. Y2010 patch kicks in and sets the time to 2008 (since 1996 is not a valid date once the Newton has been patched)I have so far not found a good place where to disable step 2, and it might be that this is happening in an unpatchable part of the ROM (step 3 is done in a pretty hackish way already), but I’m trying to get this resolved, because it annoys me as well :)
In the meantime, I would recommend not resetting your Newton if you can help it. If it does happen, simply reset your clock and dates.
And we’ll all wait for Mr. Köppen to fight this dragon, too.
Here’s the tablet before the tablet.
With all this talk of a tablet-type device set to descend from the foggy Olympus of Cupertino, I thought it might help to look back at Apple’s first flat computing device.
Yes, about 17 years ago Apple Computer released the original Newton MessagePad (OMP, or MessagePad 100). In August 1993, the company introduced a crude version of then-CEO John Sculley’s “Knowledge Navigator” concept. It was arguably the first personal digital assistant.
So I dreamed up what Apple.com might have looked like at the Newton’s launch in 1993, 10 years after my original retro Apple.com site featuring the Lisa in 1983.
This comes at the tail-end of the John Sculley era, right before the Mac PowerPC era, in the murky past when System 7 roamed the landscape and the PowerBook was changing the way we viewed laptop computers.
Behind the scenes, Apple was in full tablet mode. They saw it as a potential post-Mac future.
Back on the ground, Apple was having trouble seeing its dream become a reality. The OMP’s launch was plagued with problems, lowered expectations, and tragedy. But the idea – that you could do your computing and personal data management on the go – became reality, and it required a stylus.
Like the iPhone lacking its App Store, the Newton wasn’t fully operational at its August 1993 launch. Handwriting recognition was still iffy, and NewtonMail wasn’t operational yet. Some would argue that the Newton platform didn’t reach its true potential until the Newton OS 2.0 was released and the MessagePad 2×00 series came around. By then, however, the Newton brand had been stained, and the PDA line was finally killed by Steve Jobs in 1997.
For this retro Apple.com, I bowed to popular demand and used Apple’s skinny version of Garamond. I much prefer the new Myriad variation Apple uses, but some said the Garamond would look more authentic. So here it is.
The site also shows what was happening in the Apple ecosystem in 1993: the Mac TV would be released later in the year, the Power CD (both a music CD player and a CD-ROM for Macs) was the newest gadget, and capable Macs like the affordable LC III ruled the Macintosh world.
With all the talk of a rumored tablet, let’s not forget that, once upon a time, Apple had a tablet-style computer that ran apps, held ebooks, let you check e-mail, and managed your personal information. Now we use smartphones, but at the time the PDA was the closest thing to a tablet we could get.
Also remember: while the Apple press and public are busy waiting for some rumored tablet, there’s a big group of people out there using the original Apple tablet.
“Many devices (real, vapor, and theoretical) have tried to fill that vast portability gap between laptops and iPhones (even back when they were called PDAs and they didn’t have voice or wireless data capabilities and nobody bought them except rich people and geeks like me). Historically, this has never succeeded in a way that’s even close to mass-market penetration, including impressively forgettable eras as the ‘palmtop’ computer and the Tablet PC.”
– Marco Arment on the rumored Apple tablet, in response to John Gruber’s epic take on the device. Via Minimal Mac.
Tony Kan has posted his annual Newton year in review, a nice wrap-up of the big stories of 2009.
He’s also kindly posted an archive of past developments for those who missed them.
Apple may have given up on the Newton platform, but the news keeps coming.
A little Christmas present for you: Grant Hutchinson has created a Newton-ized desktop wallpaper for your computer over at Simple Desktops.
Splorp has posted a few other simple desktops on the site, too – be sure to look for them.
Thanks Grant!
It’s rough writing about the Newton. There are only a few things that pop up, here and there, that are considered “news” in the MessagePad community. Like fans of the Amiga or Commodore, Newton users try to relive the glory days and make their devices applicable to modern times.
Though with the Newton, it’s fun. It’s such a sweet platform.
As far as I knew, there was only me and Tony Kan out there blogging at least semi-regularly about the Newton. But sometimes other sites pop up on the radar.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog often posts news and updates on happenings in the Newton community – more than the regular, echo-chamber type posts that appear every where else.
Every once in a while, something random will pop up. Like High Caffeine Content, a blog from Irish iPhone developer Steven Troughton-Smith, creator of Lights Off and Chalk, an upcoming Twitter client.
There’s also Johs Burker and his Blog of Musings. Burker works in education and uses his MP2100 and eMate for real life stuff, like calculating gas mileage and computing on the road. His post on getting RemoteCam working on his eMate is amazing.
As for blogs that look like Newtons, you can’t beat Thomas Brand’s excellent Egg Freckles blog. It really speaks for itself.
The Newton platform attracts die-hards, hobbyists, and everyone in between. It’s nice to see some of those folks writing about their experiences. As more new technologies are released, leave it to the MessagePad user to figure out a way to make it work with Apple’s PDA.
If you’re a Newton blogger, or you know of someone who is, let me know.
Well I’ll be.
The secret is, you have to have a jailbroken iPhone and a few connectors (details at the namedfork.net source page), but man – look at that thing in action.
Lots of luck to anyone who tries it.
[Via Thomas Brand.]
Good news: Grant Hutchinson has posted updates to the Newton Community.
After some really bad news this past winter, things have been quiet at the Newted Community, a resource and gathering place of MessagePad-minded folks. But after moving to Bluehost and setting up a new look and feel thanks to WordPress, Hutchinson has been quietly making progress on restoring some of Newted’s services.
All in the midst of a giant NewtonTalk reboot.
The NewtonTalk server switch is keeping Hutchinson plenty busy, in fact, and has kept the Newted project on the backburner. But, he says, e-mail and web accounts have been restored for several members. Also on the to-do list: a new support FAQ and membership information.
“The nice thing about Bluehost, is that the service is consistent and offers a ton of tools and add-ons,” Hutchinson says, “such as webmail and optional serverside spam filtering.”
Unfortunately, everything in the Newted archives, stored on a local hard drive, was lost in the crash.
“I had the majority of the main site backed up locally, but all user files were lost,” Hutchinson says. “Any missing bits are accessable using the Internet Archive, for the most part.”
Some Newted users personally backed up their sites, too, he says.
I was a member of the Newted clan before the big crash. Since the crash, any news has been good news. And step by step, the good news is coming along.
During the Newted’s rebirth, Hutchinson’s list of priorities include membership information, updating the About and Support pages, a revamped “Newtons Around the World” gallery, and a few other projects.
“I’m guessing that by the end of January, things should be back up to relatively normal speed,” he says.
Existing members of the Newted Community can contact Hutchinson (admin at newted dot org) to get their membership information set up again. Newton users and fans will be able to register in the next few weeks, once Hutchinson sets up a payment system.
Hutchinson says membership benefits will include:
It’s worth remembering, however, that Splorp does this stuff for “recreational web tinkering,” as he puts it. This being a hobby, and with all the NewtonTalk stuff going down, it’s understandable if he takes his time – especially to get it all done right.
“There are people who still care deeply about the Newted Community site,” Hutchinson says. “You need to pay attention to things that people depend on.”
The big lesson he learned was keeping a good backup of the Newted data. Hutchinson also learned one good lesson about hard drives.
“Act quickly,” he says. “As soon as a hard drive makes a funny sound, you almost too late.”