As I hinted at Friday, I had success connecting my Newton eMate 300 with my iBook G4, running OS X 10.4, using a Keyspan serial-to-USB dongle I recently grabbed off eBay. This has been a long time coming. I first wrote about how to connect your Newton with OS X back in March, and there are tons of resources a Google search away, but here – for the first time – I got to see first-hand how the whole process works.
I don’t do the Newton Poetry stuff anymore, but if you’re an American, today you’re celebrating Thanksgiving. Here’s something I posted a whole year ago to honor the holiday.
Have a great Thanksgiving everyone. I’ll be enjoying a four-day weekend.
Pretty cool: an app called PhoneGap lets you turn your web site into an iPhone/iTouch app using nothing but your site’s existing HTML and JavaScript. PhoneGap is:
written in Objective-C and allows developers to embed their web app (HTML, JavaScript, CSS) in Webkit within a native iPhone app. We’re big advocates of the Open Web and want JavaScript developers to be able to get access iPhone features such as a spring board icon, background processing, push, geo location, camera, local sqlLite and accelerometers without the burden of learning Objective-C and Cocoa.
Right now, PhoneGap gives your almost-app access to the iPhone’s accelerometer and geo location services, but camera and vibration options are pending. Head to their Google Group to learn more about the project.
Seems like a neat idea to me. There are already PhoneGap success stories, where Apple has approved their App Store submittal. Is there any way to create a Newton-like shell on a web site (kind of like this blog does) and then throw it onto the iPhone with PhoneGap? One can dream.
We seem to be in a constant state of list mania in the Newton world, and Mac|Life adds to it with a list of the top five best and worst Apple laptops. For once, a Newton product – the eMate 300 – makes it to a “best-of” list instead of the usual what-were-they-thinking roundup.
Says Mac|Life:
Better known as the PDA That Never Stood a Chance, the eMate was a stripped-down, retooled Newton built exclusively for students and teachers. With a near-30-hour battery; 480×320 resolution, backlit, touch-screen display; serial and IrDA ports; full-sized keyboard; and Newton OS 2.1, all housed in a tough, translucent-blue clamshell case with an $800 price tag, the eMate was a revelation that came at precisely the wrong time — about four months before Steve Jobs regained his position as Supreme Ruler.
Lists like this are conversation-starters, and I’ll take the bait, because I disagree with listing the iBook G3 clamshell as one of the worsts. The magazine pokes fun at the design of the iBook (“equal parts toilet seat, suitcase and clam”), which is purely subjective, while it ignores the clamshell’s functionary details. The same features Apple pioneered with the original iBook – the handle, the ruggedness – were never seen again after the IceBook replaced the clamshell model G3, which perhaps says something.
Some Apple laptops, like the PowerBook 5300 series (hilariously called the “HindenBook” for its ability to spontaneously combust) and the Mac Portable, seem to end up in the scrap heap in every list. Macs like the Twentieth Century Macintosh and the Titanium PowerBook go either way.
Still, it’s nice to see the eMate get some positive recognition for once.
Writing articles… well, this is a joy to do. With the Newton keyboard, it is easy to write in Newton Works’ word processor. I simply import to my computer and copy and paste the text into WordPress. It even has a spell checker. In fact, I almost prefer working in Newton Word over Apple Pages.
Holden filed that post with his Newton 2000 and keyboard. I can imagine doing the same thing with an eMate or any other MessagePad with a good keyboard. Scribbling a blog entry with a stylus? That’s a little trickier…
After an eBay auction went sour and I was awarded a refund, I reminded myself that, from time to time, Newton Poetry covers subjects like…oh, I don’t know…the Newton?
If you’ve ever wanted to know what those eight little pins in the serial connection do, check out this handy site that lists each pin’s job and function in the Mac system. Pretty cool.
As soon as my Keyspan adapter arrives, I’ll post some project notes on how to connect a Newton with OS X. That is, assuming the entire thing doesn’t explode in my face. But that’s part of the fun, right?
Like the iMac, the iBook was designed not to be an instrument of utility but an object of desire; like the iMac, it was designed to be a pleasure both to look at and to use; like the iMac, it was designed to be designed, and by introducing it a year after he introduced the iMac and two years after coming back to Apple, he made it clear that he was not going to play the same game as those whose idea of technological innovation was beholden to the number of transistors that could fit on an integrated circuit.
Amen. The iBook G3 clamshell is still a joy to behold, even though the translucent plastic look has been gone since the G4 series. It was rugged, truly portable, and very Apple.
Later in the article, Junod quotes someone on the Newton:
“Like Newton. Remember Newton? It was the first PDA. It might not have worked, but it was the first. That’s not what they do now. Now they start with what makes an existing experience crappy. And that’s where Jobs is a genius. That’s where his ruthlessness comes in. He’s ruthless with himself, ruthless with other people — he’s also ruthless with technology. He knows exactly what makes it work, and what makes it suck. There were MP3 players before the iPod, but they sucked. So he’s like, Okay, what do we have to do so that they don’t suck? Same with the iPhone.”
“It might not have worked” is a pretty strong statement, don’t you think? Is the Newton experience “crappy”?
What could be more green than charging your Newton MessagePad or eMate with a solar battery charger?
You can find one like the above model over at Newton Sales for “only” $139.99. The subject of solar charging pops up in the Newtontalk list every once in a while, and Newton users have had varying degrees of success charging their battery packs or rechargeable AA batteries with solar panels.
It seems a bit of an expensive option to go environmental with your Newton, but maybe it’s worth it. You can charge your car’s battery with the sun’s rays for about the same price as Newton Sales’s model, or you can get your own cheaper AA battery solar charger elsewhere online.
What do you think – is it worth the extra expense just to up your geek (and green) cred?
