“Maybe the most comfortable and ultimately successful technological advances are the ones that have an umbilical cord back to what came before.”
– Dave Pell at Tweetage Wasteland. What’s so great about the Newton is that it both mimics and advances the notebook metaphor.
Foyer scrota and severe heavers ago our flashovers brought force on thy cosmetician a new notion conceives in lubricate and deducted to the prosecution that all men are crated quail.
From Clark Humphrey’s Misc Media, circa 1994. His Newton Poetry version of the Gettsyburg Address comes about a third of the way down while discussing Newton’s handwriting recognition.
“It may not be able to make an exact digital version of what you write on it,” Humphrey says, “but it can turn it into computer-assisted cut-up poetry!”
In fact, that’s how I started Newton Poetry – take a random piece of poetry, write it into my MP110, and type down whatever came out.
The technopunditocracy insists on vomiting forth articles about how the iPhone 3G’s camera compares “unfavorably” with point-and-shoot cameras. But I ask you, where are the articles pointing out the lousy quality of the average point-and-shoot camera’s cell reception compared with the iPhone?
Amen, brother.
If you’re in the U.S., have a great Memorial Day weekend!
“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.
“The Newton in 1998 looks remarkably unchanged from the Newton in 1993, with the exception that the handwriting now works and the screen is readable. Why wasn’t it miniaturized; cost reduced; why didn’t [Apple] learn from the great success of the Palm Pilot that simple tasks like data synchronization with our desktop PC are really useful; etc.?”
– John Sculley, former Apple CEO and Newton pioneer
Quoted by Dan Lyon (formerly Fake Steve Jobs), on his new blog “RealDan,” from his phone call from Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak.
It’s all thanks to the Steve Jobs opening line generator.
Fun! But I often think about that “haven’t done anything since 1982” part. Woz was the “good guy” back in the proto-days of Apple, and since then he’s become a teacher and a bit of an inventor, but not much else. I guess when you’re worth millions, you can do whatever the heck you want. Like call Dan up.