“One way to think about the NewtonOS is as a particular way of working with words, ideas, and so forth–kind of a particular way of imagining the world. If there’s no way to interact with a Newton after the coming year, this way of imagining / interacting with the world is more or less lost to us, and that’s a very sad (cultural / ideational) loss.”
– Jonathan Dueck, on the Newtontalk list, regarding the fight to get the 2010 bug resolved.
Looking for something?
Newtonsearch.net is a “searchable index of web sites” for Apple’s Newton MessagePad. Think of it as the Google of Newton-topia, except Newtonsearch only searches Newton-related sites.
The site also provides a giantlist of Newton sites that it indexes “from time to time.” What I like is that there are a ton of sites Newtonsearch crawls through.
Though when I tried a few search terms myself, I noticed how many times Newtontalk conversation threads appeared in the results – which only makes sense. Newtontalk subscribers talk about everything.
I can’t wait to browse through the searched sites and add them to my own Newton Sites list.
“If I was CEO at Apple, I would combine the Mac Mini, the Apple TV, and the Airport Base Station into a single machine that goes into folks living rooms and networks all media into what ever the user wants. It is basically the same hardware anyways.
… and I would continue to develop the Newton…”
– matthiasm, on the Newtontalk list
Microsoft Zune users weren’t the only ones suffering when 2009 arrived. Many, many Newton users were afflicted by the new year as well, thanks to an alpha-version “fix” of the infamous 2010 bug.
The problem hit the Newtontalk list on January 1. Jon Dueck described the situation that would become well-known to most Newton users who downloaded the Fix2010 patch: when his Newton clocked over from December 31, 2008, it immediately jumped to January 1, 2025. When he tried to change the date to 2009, as the Newton should have done at midnight, his Newton chose a July date in 2012.
Other users noticed the same bug. When some switched the date from 2025 back to 2009, everything worked fine. But for others, the system clock would register the correct date while the Dates app would display a 2025 date.
By process of elimination (and through a lot of e-mails traded back and forth), the list figured that Avi Dressman’s Fix2010.pkg was the culprit.
First, some background. The Newton 2010 bug has been well-known since at least 1998. My Apple Newton does a good job of breaking the bug down. Basically, Newtons running version 2.0 and above start getting weird dates behavior past the year 2010.
Avi Drissman’s Dates/Find BugFix extension (his other software is on his Newton page) was created to fix the 2010 bug in the Newton’s Dates application. His other “fix,” the “highly-experimental” Fix2010 package, originally released in September 1998, was meant to fix the 2010 bug system-wide.
Even Avi warns users:
Are you crazy? This is ALPHA-quality software. It has undergone almost no testing. It has not proved itself. It will not become useful for another 12 years. I wouldn’t recommend installing it. Period. Still want to install it? Back up your Newton. Totally. More than once. Do not install this on mission-critical machines. Really. Ensure that packages are installed on the internal store. Use the Newton Connection Utilities program that came with your Newton device to download the included package.
Can’t get a more dire warning than that, eh? But really, Avi’s message turned out to be more than a warning. It was pure prophecy.
Someone wrote Avi and asked him to release the source code for the Fix2010.pkg, which he did under BSD, so that others could work to fix the patch.
“It’s kinda freaky, isn’t it?,” Avi wrote back. “When I wrote Fix2010, 2010 was some abstract idea way out there. Now it’s looming, eh?”
Avi’s original source code has been posted to SourceForget.net, and Eckhart Koppen started a Wiki to explain more about the problems from Fix2010.
“The fix should in the end work out fine,” Eckhart says. “The main issue seems to be the boundary condition of moving from one hexade (1993-2009) to the next (2009-2025).”
Dennis Swaney (who warned me on January 4 about this issue) offers a unique solution: set your clock to 1999. “Everything will be accurate except for the year,” Dennis says.
The Fix2010 bug had very real consequences. Jon later reported a problem with his To-Do dates setting to 2024, with repeat To-Dos appearing after he reset the date. L. W. Brown had two of his MP2100s turn into bricks trying to fix the problem. Only a full hardware reset (and a backup file) restored his Newtons to working order.
One Newton user, Lionello, said his MP2000 has displayed “wild
chime/popup activity” after removing the Fix:
This morning I think I’m facing a problem that I suppose is generated from the removed patch. In december I’ve set an Alarm for a birthday (for tomorrow), and I had set a 24-h warning. Now this morning I fired up my Newton and the popup appeared, but now the Newton seems to be in a loop, it chimes continuously, and if I try to close the Snooze/delete alarm popup, it closes, but in less than a second it pops up again with a chime.
Woody recommends resetting, moving Dates data to a card, perform a brainwipe, reinstall from a backup, delete all the Dates data from the backup, then move the data from the card to the MessagePad.
The best fix? Don’t install the Fix2010.pkg. Not until a patch is released. It may even be best to wait until January 1, 2010.
Fresh on the heels of the Zune meltdown, The Unofficial Apple Weblog broke down a few Apple bugs that have plagued users in the past, with – prophetically – heavy emphasis on Newton flake-outs.
The bigger issue with this 2010 bug is that, for us Newton users, a fix may never be found without a resourceful programmer pulling late nights to find and fix the problem. Apple will never release a patch to fix the dates issue. The Newton is dead to them from a support standpoint. The fix will be up to the Newton community.
We’re on our own.
Any readers have an issue with the Fix2010 package and the new year?
[As a side note, I dropped the ball with this one. I should have been on this story. Around Christmas, I stopped checking my Newtontalk e-mail as often as I used to. Sure enough, the minute I do that, the Newton world goes crazy. Lesson learned.]
Check that out: a field ranger with his holstered Newt, courtesy of Steventon Consulting.
Gregg on the Newtontalk list pointed out the picture, and it turns out Sonny Hung has a blue version by Covertec posted on his Flickr page. This is like Last Action Hero stuff: “Bring on the bad guys, my MessagePad is armored!”
There are still sites out there, like this one with pictures of “The Divider,” featuring Newton holsters (though some of those look more like Man Bags).
MessagePads are already tough. A holstered Newt? There’s no telling what warzones they have seen. How about you Newton users out there – what do you use to protect your green machine?
Depending on who you ask, Amazon.com’s Kindle is a either a hit or a waste of electronics. The free web and book browsing, where you can find it, is a good thing. The outrageously-priced electronic books, however, are not good. And some think the Kindle won’t actually make people read more books, but simply attract those already-book-readers that have been dying to clear some shelf space. At most, the Kindle is a handy “information device.”
For those who aren’t willing to shell out $399 for a eBook reader, you can rely on your Newton to do the same darned thing – for free.
You see, before there was e-ink or Wikipedia, there was the Newton eBook. Every Newton released has the ability to read an eBook: a Unicode-based, read-only electronic document that supports tables of contents, some images, and internal links.
Downloading Newton eBooks is as easy as downloading a “.pkg” file from a site that provides eBooks, like Newton’s Library or StillNewt.org. Matt Howe recently offered the Newtontalk list a free copy of Robert’s Rules of Order for anyone who asked. Even the venerable UNNA.org has a list of available books.
Applications like Newton Press allow you to make eBooks and package them as “.pkg” files for download (here’s a handy tip site).
Now you don’t even need a Newton MessagePad to read your eBooks. Newton’s Library has provided a Firefox extension that allows you to read them on your browser. The effect is pretty cool:
The Firefox extension lets you read Newton eBooks in a little window, and converts the “.pkg” files to readable text.
The Kindle has the ability to seek and find free eBooks as well, as Merlin Mann over at 43folders.com points out (after he did so on the terrific podcast, MacBreak Weekly). Plus Project Gutenberg is a worthy project that is putting its library of 100,000 eBooks (HTML or plain text) into the hands of readers. All they ask is for a donation.
So if you’re looking to dive into the world of eBooks, you have options. Yes, you can opt for the Kindle – a modern, capable book reader that has a steep up-front cost but freebie options available. But this is Newton Poetry, and for more of a “project” or unique feel to your eBook reading experience that’s sure to turn heads, opt for the MessagePad version.
Well, kind of. It helps if you know who he is.
“Splorp”” is actually Grant Hutchinson, a big Newton MessagePad fan and keeper of the Newtontalk list (which seems to be down as of this posting – here’s the Twitter feed), the Newted Community, and his own personal site (and, above, his Twitter feed).
Anyway, one of the 2008 Apple Design Award winner for “Best iPhone Social Networking Application” was Twitterrific for the iPhone, and his picture is right there on Apple’s web site. Kind of cool.
He might not even know it yet, but I’ll let him know right now. Because, you know, us Newton users need all the help we can get, right?
When I first got my iBook, back in November 2005, I saw a Celldweller CD sitting on one of the desktops on Apple’s “Get to know your Mac” tutorial sites. Being a fan, I let him know, and he seemed to appreciate it. “I know we have some fans over at Apple,” Clayton told me.
Here’s your chance, LinkedIn users: a Newton group to call your own!
Morgan on the Newtontalk list promoted the new Newtontalk group, which can be found here. Says Morgan:
The primary benefit [of the group] being that it can provide another avenue for such contact & discussions that would normally be off-topic here, but that most of us wouldn’t mind as we’re a fairly tightly knit community.
I’m not a LinkedIn user myself (I’m on Facebook and Myspace), but it makes me wish someone would do it on Facebook. Maybe that’ll be another project…
The United Network of Newton Archives – known to Newton users as “UNNA” – was down for a bit this weekend, but it’s back up and running.
During the crisis, Morgan Aldridge spilled this bit of good news:
I’m actually in the process of doing a redesign and migrating to a CMS, but life decided to interrupt that and all my other projects. I’ll let you all know when it’s ready for some testing.
Hurray! First Newtontalk’s site, and now the source for Newton software, too.
We’ll keep you posted.
Kudos to Grant on the Newtontalk.net facelift. Very clean and bloggy-looking (is that a word?).
I especially like the “Updates” bar on the right, like the post from April 20: “Ooh, look. Some changes to the site design are afoot.”
Check it out, and join the list for a daily discussion on all things Newt.