Newton Poetry

We’ve seen this kind of thing before from the chaps at CNet’s UK edition: a battle of the handhelds, this time featuring the Newton MessagePad and the iPhone.

The duel features arguments over design, screen quality, applications, reliability, connectivity, and “special powers.”

Rory, the dude who sided with Samsung in the last smackdown, chooses to battle with the Newton this time around, and sticks it to the iPhone with the Newton’s app selection:

The Newton, a device older than Jamie Lee Curtis, has both copy and paste, a global search function and the ability to multitask. When it first emerged, the iPhone had none of these things and not even the iPhone 3GS — the daddy of all iPhones — can properly handle more than one application at a time.

I won’t ruin the ending for you, but it’ll probably come as a (contrived) surprise.

I did my own head-to-head battle quite a while ago, but what I missed out on was the fun boxing graphics. Now I know.

Here’s a novel concept: use what you’ve got until you can’t use it anymore.

For Newton users, the concept isn’t new or novel. We do it every time we see our green screens glow.

But the good folks at Last Year’s Model are spreading the good word that new isn’t always better. The “need” to upgrade to the newest and shiniest (and I’m as guilty as anyone) isn’t always the best policy, especially when what you’ve got works just fine.

I’ve loved the idea behind Last Year’s Model since I stumbled on my iMac G3 at a recycling event. The best Macs (ahem) are often the ones that are quote-unquote obsolete.

And hey, there’s a whole group of productive, sane, intelligent human beings who use a last-decade’s-model PDA. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

There’s not a lot of oomph behind Last Year’s Model. It’s really a place to share stories and spread the word, with Facebook and Myspace groups along with a Twitter hashtag. The site doesn’t ask you to share videos or spam your friends’ inboxes. The aim is to simply raise awareness that, say, your eMate is just fine banging out the latest novel project you’re working on.

Is this the new, rumored Apple tablet? Or an old patent filing from the MessagePad days of yore?

The Next Web’s Boris says it’s an old Newton patent resurfacing, and that the rumored Apple tablet will not have stylus-based input. Little clues, like how the patent isn’t about a tablet but the stylus recognition system itself, and how weirdly familiar that bottom row of buttons looks, seem to say Boris is right.

These new patent pictures were released into an online hornets nest, with everyone waiting for news on this long-rumored iSlate thingy. Any clues, no matter how old or mundane, turn into a tea-leaves-reading session. Thing is, Apple applies for wacky patents all the time.

We’ve seen other patent pictures floating around the Web for years now. None of us know if this new, still-unseen Super Newton is anything like what we’ve seen before.

What do you think? Is this a new tablet, or an old MessagePad?

[Via Tai Shimizu and NewtonTalk.]

Todd Ogasawara gives us a tour of his MessagePad 130 while waiting for his iPod Touch, for old-time’s sake.

[Via NewtonTalk.]

Newton users may wonder, with the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, whether their MessagePads and eMates would still play nice with the new operating system. You get a new Mac (as I did) with the latest install, and you might worry – is it going to work?

I’m here to report: everything works fine.

I started by download the Keyspan USA-28x driver to my new iMac for the serial-to-USB adapter. Things got weird when Snow Leopard recognized the Keyspan adapter as some sort of dial-up device (above). This wasn’t the case, obviously, but I pressed on just to see if it would work.

I went with Simon Bell’s excellent Newton Connection for Mac OS X (NCX) for the software connection, using a Newton eMate 300.

Since I’m working through the serial connection via USB, I select “serial” in the Newton’s Dock app and – whala. NCX and the Keyspan adapter give me a connection on Snow Leopard.

First, I wanted to try the new screen shot function on NCX – something that was only possible before in a few roundabout ways, like with Newton Toolkit.

In NCX, head to File > Screen Shot, then press the little camera (above) and wait a few seconds.

And bam, you get a little window pop-up with a screen shot of your Newton. Pretty handy.

Next, I tried doing what every Newton user does at some point: install a package file. In this case, I picked a periodic table app from UNNA.

This worked exactly as before.

So everything, from the screen shots to the keyboard function – which, for me, worked faster than on previous Macs – works great with OS X 10.6.

The real test, and the one I’ve had issues with on my eMate since forever, is syncing Address Book and iCal names and dates to the Newton. I’ve had no luck at all so far, besides a few to-do items syncing from iCal to the Newton’s Dates app, and I don’t guess it’ll get much better on Snow Leopard. I tried using NewtSync (above), but had no luck syncing anything.

The important message to take away is that, with software like NCX, it’s possible to connect your Newton, install packages, and do a few other tasks no matter which version of Mac OS X you’re using.

This may not always be the case. There could be some future OS X release that cripples any potential Newton-to-Mac connection. I would think it’d be in the areas of data syncing or unavailable drivers for serial adapters. But the newer MessagePads and eMates allow for Bluetooth compatibility, which shows no sign of going away.

“Efforts by Palm, Microsoft, and Symbian to encourage the development of third party software for their mobile platforms, much like Apple’s early 90s attempt to market the original Newton MessagePad, largely just copied the desktop PC software model of letting developers ship retail boxes of software on their own. The result was less successful than the PC desktop, with generally poor quality and often unfinished software titles available at only relatively high prices.”

– Prince McLean at RoughlyDrafted Magazine.

The early days of the Newton featured this boxed-software model, but as the Internet came of age Newton users could find apps online. Now sites like UNNA.org (and sometimes eBay) are the only places to find available apps for the Newton.

These days, if you want something for your MessagePad or eMate, you’ve got to hunt for it.

Fancy leather satchel? Check. Gun? Check.

Newton MessagePad? Check!

Here’s a scene from Under Siege 2, starring the acting superstar Steve Seagal, where the Newton helps to save the day.

Shucks, it’s virtually a commercial for the little gadget.

I just hope it doesn’t reveal too many of those top-secret recipes.

“I had enormous difficulty installing these patches until I read the advice to have as much space as possible on the eMate and the 2100 before trying it, after which it went like clockwork. After several weeks of frustration one feels such an idiot for having ignored that advice, but great relief when it is done. Thanks to everyone who made it possible.”

– Oliver Leaman, sharing his 2010 patch experiences with NewtonTalk. Learn more about the Newtpocalypse, and how it was avoided.

Take the iPhone form factor, marry it to the Newton’s stellar handwriting recognition, and you have the latest in PDA technology.

Well, kinda.

Above is a Notepod – a simple notepad shaped like an iPhone. For $18, you get three pocket-perfect notepads shipped from Australia. On the outside, you get a blank iPod Touch-like page, while the inside pages have grid-style paper for notes, doodles, or iPhone app ideas.

Maybe best of all, it recognizes your handwriting no matter how drunk you get – even if you don’t.

Or you can simply make your own with the Hipster PDA templates over at Active Voice. Whichever.

Via DIY Planner.

Grant Hutchinson has put together a fresh batch of great Newton photography at his Flickr gallery, Beautiful Newton, including the above shot courtesy of oxymoronik.

There are some fantastic shots in Splorp’s gallery, including an eMate-in-the-wild shot, and a submission from Sonny Hung’s Frozen Newton collection. Besides the eMate shot, my favorite has to be this simple MessagePad close-up.

[Via splorp.]