Newton Poetry

Sometimes it’s fun to see how the other guys do it. In this case, T-Mobile is offering a G1 simulator running Google’s Android operating system.

It’s really an Adobe Flash-based simulator, but it gives you a good feel for how the G1’s music player (above), contacts, and apps behave. Most of all, it’s neat to see how another touch-screen phone other than the iPhone operates.

Hopefully, Palm will do something similar when they release the Palm Pre.

Yikes. Newton in your pocket?

Maybe I don’t remember ’90s jean styles all that well – I was only 12 or 13 at the time – but somehow this ad seems improbable.

What do you think? Can your Newton fit in your back pocket?

[Image courtesy of The Mothership.]

If you’re looking to…gulp…replace your Newton, Nokia’s N800 may just be the portable PC you’re looking for.

This according to a review/comparison over here that gets pretty in-depth into the features of the N800, a modern internet tablet that runs about $200.

The modern Linux interface of the N800, however, is not without its drawbacks:

I like the N800. That’s why I bought it. But as great as the N800 is, and as much of an advance it represents technologically over my 10-year-old MessagePad, I am surprised at how much more sophisticated the MessagePad is than the N800 in terms of user experience.

The handwriting recognition, printing and faxing, and battery life (themes we’ve all heard before) are superior on the MessagePad 2100, according to the author.

Check out the full review for another great fight between a modern tablet and our good friend, the Newton.

On this day eleven years ago, Apple released the Newton eMate to try and reach the education market.

Applefritter has a nice rundown of the eMate’s abilities, but I’ll tell you: they’re so cheap on eBay now I’ve thought about getting one.

I like them because, in a way, they’re the harbingers to the original clamshell iBook G3 – my favorite Apple portable of all time.

Unlike the handwriting-based MessagePads, the eMate is keyboard-friendly. It sports an ARM 710a 25MHz RISC processor (view more technical details here) and hosts a word processing program, a drawing program, spreadsheet, address book, calendar and graphing calendar.

Turns out the playa-hatas over at Amazon have launched an e-book reader, named “Kindle.”

Only $399 (the price of an iPhone), high-res (“just like real paper!”), no syncing required, cheaper prices for books ($9.99), no service plans to worry about – the thing seems like a mixed blessing.

The no-syncing part is really interesting, since you don’t need to be at home with your computer to buy a book – kind of like what Apple is doing with the iPod Touch. That’s cool. So is the fact that you don’t have to carry around a shit-ton of books to read them – just this…thing.

So, again, the Newton delivers first. PDAs, portable computers, and now eBooks.

Fake Steve Jobs has an interesting take:

I know what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t it be just kick-ass super duper if, say, Apple came along and finally delivered the ultimate product in this category? Because you just know if we did it the thing would look gorgeous and have a beautiful feature set and would just kick everyone’s ass.

And there’s already a comparison with the iPhone.

But seriously, lots of luck Amazon. You don’t have a beautiful machine, but any way to promote reading is a good thing.

There’s no telling what people will use a Newton for.

For instance, while checking Low End Mac yesterday, I discovered someone had found a way to make a MessagePad…

…a phone.

Over at the Unofficial Apple Weblog, a guy name Marcus turned a MessagePad 210 – with a little help from a SIM card – into a workable phone.

More opportunities – like, say, scribbling poetry into a Newton to see what comes spilling out – abound, which we’ll discover later.

But still. Need a weekend project that costs about $50?

Lots of luck.