Newton Poetry

Perhaps you’ve noticed, but things have been a little slow here at Newton Poetry. Lately I’ve relied on quotes and other bloggers’ posts to fill my quota of three posts or so a week.

I will say that I’ve had a few large, ongoing projects that have filled my time. It’s also worth noting that Newton news, such as it is, has been sparse these past few months – with the exception of the 2010 Patch.

Writing about the Newton has a built-in challenge: there’s not much new to report.

But Newton Poetry has always been as much about Mac projects as Newton ones. In that case, I’ll mention that I’ve been pinching my project pennies to save for a new Macintosh when OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is released. My goal is to buy a pretty, shiny new iMac. As a result, I’ve cut back on my eBay spending. This hobby ain’t cheap.

Many readers have asked me about some sort of post on getting a Newton hooked up to a wireless Network. That has always been a goal of mine, and as soon as it becomes a reality, I’ll post it to this site. Going wifi with a Newton is right up there with connecting it to OS X. If you’re going to use the Newton in the modern world, the thinking goes, it just makes sense to get a wireless connection.

Also on my to-do list is to do more Newton projects in a Windows-based environment. Windows users outnumber Mac users by degrees upon degrees, and certainly there’s an audience out there that would benefit from a few Microsoft-based posts. Just know that I’ll be doing it holding my nose.

Stories on handwriting recognition and the unification of the smartphone/PDA are of interest to the Newton user, if only for history’s sake, so you’ll see that kind of stuff as usual. And I’m always finding Mac tidbits to share and comment on. One subject I find fascinating is the world of backups and archiving, both on the Mac and on the Newton. Look for more posts on those, and other subjects, as time goes on.

When I look at my goals for Newton Poetry, many have been checked off the big to-do list: buying an eMate, connecting with OS X, giving this site a self-hosted domain, and archiving long-lost Newton web sites. I’m proud of each one.

It’s always good to have a few more goals, however, just to keep things fresh. If you have any suggestions or requests other than the ones I have listed, please let me know in the comments.

Backup isn’t backup, the saying goes, unless you automate it.

Backup experts also say you should keep a second, off-site copy of all of your important materials. If your house burns down, or zombies darken your door, that melted or masticated external hard drive isn’t going to be worth squat. Better to make a backup to a cloud-based system or a drive you keep away from your home.

A recent, goofy hard drive glitch got me thinking about both scenarios: the need to make an easy, automatic backup, and the need to archive it to some remote location. Since I don’t have OS X 10.5, with it’s compulsory Time Machine backup system, I needed to make my own backup strategy using the tools at hand on OS X Tiger.

So here’s how I used two OS X 10.4 applications, Automator with a dash of iCal, to develop a backup system that fits my needs.

More… »

My Mac-enthusiast friend Curtis chimes in with his latest project, a Dell netbook Hackintosh:

It was an easy install and it worked *very* well.

The little machine reminds me of the days of my PowerBook 100!

Congratulations, Curtis!

Now I wonder if you could get NCX running on it and sync a Newton. Anyone tried yet?

Lots of good stuff from Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (including a new iPhone 3GS), but the part that caught my eye was the ability of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to recognize Chinese symbols through handwriting recognition on Mac trackpads:

You can now use a Multi-Touch trackpad to draw Chinese characters in your documents. They’ll appear on the screen in a new input window, which recommends characters based on what you drew and lets you choose the right one. The input window even offers suggestions for subsequent characters based on what you chose.

The iPhone had this ability first, but now it’s an OS X-wide feature. Pretty cool.

Us Newton users are always curious to see how Apple uses handwriting recognition in our post-MessagePad world. The technology lives on in Inkwell, but would it be useful to have English handwriting recognition on Mac trackpads?

Looking through the Newton Poetry archives, I realize that there are quite a few articles about how to do stuff – fax, connect with OS X, reset – that may have been lost in the shuffle.

Those articles are some of my favorites, because I’m learning how to do them at the same time you are. That’s what I like about writing Newton Poetry: getting my hands dirty with little projects. It’s a blast.

Connect your Newton with Mac OS X
One of the more popular features, this article explains how to use NCX to sync your 2.x Newton with a modern Mac running OS X. You can also learn how to connect with Escale and with NewTen.

Send a fax with your Newton
Faxing with your Newton is old school. The fax seems like an ancient technology, but with a 1.x or 2.x Newton and a simple modem, you can send faxes through the phone line.

Reset your Newton
Let’s say the worst happens, and your Newton somehow locks up or is frozen by a software error. There are different levels of restarting your Newton, and this post explains them all.

Take screenshots on your Newton
Recently, I learned how to take screenshots of my eMate using the Newton Toolkit. There are other, more complicated ways, but this one was the most immediately useful for my needs.

Install packages on your Newton
The Newton is kind of like the iPhone in that you can take it out of the box and it’s immediately useful and usable. But the fun part of owning one is installing cool apps that make it even more useful. That’s where installing .pkg files comes in handy.

Power your Newton with rechargeable batteries
This is more of a tip I learned when using my MP110. Instead of relying on my long-dead Apple battery pack, I bought some Eneloop batteries and used the heck out of them. Soon, I’ll be exploring more energy options with my eMate 300.

Read Newton eBooks
Not only is your Newton a pre-Amazon Kindle eBook reader, but there’s a plugin for Firefox that lets you read Newton eBooks in your web browser.

Since my eMate 300 arrived at the end of last summer, I’ve struggled with ideas on how to use it. I bought mine mainly as a testing machine; my MessagePad 110 could only run Newton OS 1.x applications, and I wanted to experiment with more recent Newton apps. Also, eMates don’t have the portability and flexibility of their MP2x00 cousins.

So, what to do? It’s only recently, as I think back to the eMate’s original use (education, writing, word processing), that I’ve thought of a practical use for the little green machine: a journal writer.

I’ve been a writer as long as I can remember. As a kid, I used a typewriter to hammer out short stories. When I discovered the computer, it opened up a whole new world for me. I grew up to be editor of my high school and college newspaper, earned my degree in journalism, and went on to be a professional public relations writer. I live and breathe the written word.

A few years ago, I picked up journaling after a long hiatus. A plain notepad and pen have been the victims of random thoughts since I graduated college in 2003. After using a keyboard for so long, though, I notice my hand fatigues after only a few paragraphs. It’s no laughing matter.

I thought about using one of my Mac SEs as a journaling machine, just as an excuse to turn on of the little guys, but the SEs lack the true portability I was looking for. Laptops are fine – I have two iBooks – but finding excuses to use my classic Apple hardware was the goal. The eMate was just what I was looking for in a writing machine.

At home, the eMate works fine. But the rechargable battery is dead, and it’s not like a standard MessagePad with replaceable batteries. The eMate’s battery is wired in. So my next project is to find a usable eMate battery and replace my dead one.

When that happens, the eMate’s portability will be good enough to carry with me on vacations, trips to the coffeeshop, and even local performances or exhibits, where I can type down my thoughts. The smaller eMate keyboard will take some getting used to, but I’ve used it a few times already, and it’s not that big of a change.

In the meantime, I’m going to use Newton Works (with, perhaps, a few add-ons) to keep an electronic journal. I may search for other word processor apps, just to test the options, and implement a folder structure by year for organization. Now that I have Newton-to-OS X syncing down pat, I can even export my entries as text files – just in case any of them work as a blog post.

It’s hard to justify owning an eMate just for testing and projects alone. Over time, I can think about other uses for it other than journaling – like recipe-keeping (that old cliché) or even Twittering. Who knows?

All this will give me an excuse to poke around the Newton 2.0 interface a bit more, try out some apps, and goof around with my newest Newton. Stay tuned – the next Newton Poetry post could be typed out on an eMate keyboard.

Something to think about: if Apple were to come out with some sort of tablet, would you buy one?

Say you’re a Newton user, and this new iTablet comes with everything you’ve been dreaming of. Would you abandon your Newton?

Discuss in the comments section. It’s something I had to think about when I bought my iPhone 3G: would my Newton get much use when the Jesus Phone comes along (answer: it hasn’t)?

So what say you: would you buy an Apple tablet? What would you use it for?

Ahem.

Details on Monday!

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?

So I took my $30 and lucked out on an affordable Keyspan serial-to-USB adapter – model USA-28x (above). Now we can have some fun with that eMate I picked up, do some connecting with OS X, and play around with NCX, NewtSync, and the rest of the “new” Newton connection utilities.

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?

Saw this rumor (a few times, actually) over at Webmonkey: a Cocoa OS X Finder may be on its way, starting with Snow Leopard.

But wait. Isn’t the Finder an all-OS X beast?

That got me wondering what, exactly, is the difference between the Cocoa and Carbon development environments. I’m not programmer, so I needed a low-brow explanation.

Just before Apple launched OS X, Macworld had this article describing the basic differences between the two. I like to reference the original Mac OS X introduction video, by Mr. steve Jobs, as a primer, too. He goes into detail about the different levels (kernel, Carbon/Cocoa, OpenGL, etc.), which helps.

My basic understanding: Carbon is for applications that need to reference the old, OS 9 way of doing things while operating in OS X. Cocoa is an all-OS X environment, and lets developers use stuff like Core Audio and Core Animation.

Even at Apple, the two platforms have their place. Mail is a Cocoa app. iTunes is a Carbon app – a hold-over from OS 9. PhotoShop, as it stands now, is a Carbon application. Again, in terms of development, it’s an OS 8/9 relic. But that may be changing. Adobe has already produced a Cocoa-based app in Lightroom, so hope springs eternal.

Now, 32 bit versus 64 bit? That’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax.