Newton Poetry

If first impressions are everything, then MobileMe never had a chance.

After I bought my iPhone 3G, I signed up for the trial MobileMe account. Back then, it was only a 60-day free trial, but Apple soon added 30 days onto that, and then 30 days onto that, after MobileMe’s launch arrived like a lead balloon.

The idea seemed swell enough: sync your Address Book, iCal, and Mail settings and entries with the ever-present Cloud, and your iPhone. But since July, I’ve run into more problems than solutions, and MobileMe has been a frustrating mess.

My free trial is up on Monday, Dec. 8. I’m going to cancel my account.

Looking back, I never really needed MobileMe to begin with. Because I plug my iPhone into my Mac almost every night, any new entries in either iCal or Address Book get synced each way – from the iPhone to my Mac, and from my Mac to my iPhone. I don’t need the “push” capabilities MobileMe claimed to offer because my syncing schedule was fast enough.

It’s too bad. Apple had a big uphill effort replacing the .Mac service. MobileMe seemed like a decent-enough resolution to everyone’s complaints against .Mac: not much storage, lackluster syncing, no star features that made it seem worth the $99 annual subscription. With it’s modern browser interface and over-the-air syncing, MobileMe looked great on paper. In practice, however, it failed to live up to my expectations.

Maybe it was a lack of habit, but I never found myself missing MobileMe when I wasn’t using it (which was often). If I used my iPhone and Mac for business, the cloud syncing might seem like a bigger deal. But I had a system down, and it worked just fine for me.

The one feature that did catch my eye was the photo sharing galleries. My friend’s wedding photographer put together a beautiful presentation (the subjects helped) using MobileMe’s slideshow capabilities. But again: I don’t really need it. Flickr works just fine as a photo-sharing environment for me. I can make slideshows with Flickr that look fine for my needs. I’m not a wedding photographer. I don’t need anything fancy.

Another thing that bothered me? The fact that iDisk iDisk Sync [thanks commenters!] takes up the 10 GB of space from my hard drive. Maybe I’m a rare case, but when I launch iDisk, it takes away whatever space is available away from my Mac’s “available” space. Why store things on a fragile cloud when my hard drive works just fine? I love the idea behind iDisk, but my iBook is cramped enough without taking that additional 10 GB away.

Apple’s solution? Don’t use iDisk Sync.

The launch didn’t help things. We all remember that, right? The big outage that first weekend. How it took weeks and weeks of Apple tinkering to get even basic services like e-mail up and running for all MobileMe users. For a while there, MobileMe seemed like a big embarrassing misshap for Apple – right up there with the big system outage for the iPhone 3G’s launch. That kind of thing can leave a bad taste in the mouth. I guess it’s never gone away for me.

Part of me is skeptical about this “cloud computing” stuff. I understand that Google seems to have it down, barring Gmail outages, and – lord bless them – Microsoft is working on their own cloud syncing projects. But Google apps like Gmail are hooked up to my Mail.app, which runs from my desktop, and I don’t often make appointments or add contacts through a web browser. That stuff lives on my Mac. I like that I can edit a contact’s information on my iPhone and the change gets logged in Address Book in OS X. There’s no extra log-in-to-the-web-service involved.

If I had several Macs strung out over several locations, with only my iPhone in common, the idea behind MobileMe could come in handy. Backing up my data to the cloud? Sure. Do it all the time. But easy and reliable syncage still seems to be a giant Work In Progress. I’m not yet impressed.

So thanks for the couple of free months, Apple, but I’m saying “no thanks” to MobileMe. Maybe some day I’ll find a use for it – one where I can justify renewing my subscription. Right now, though, I can’t see any good reason to keep MobileMe around. It’s either been a thorn in my side or a non-starter, and life’s too short for either of those.

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.

And it’s such a snap.

More… »

Matt Howe, a Newton programmer I interviewed a few months back, has updated his Holidays package for 2009

You download the .pkg file at his site, sync it to your Newton, and your calendar will have U.S. and 10 other countries’ holiday dates for next year. I added it to my eMate and it works great – just open it up, select whichever country or set of holidays you want to addd, and presto, it’s done.

“All it does is insert the entries. Once done you can delete the pkg,” Matt says. “It does not remove the entries, nor check to see if they already exist. It is very simplistic, just a quick way to add holidays.”

You can download other fun Newton software projects from “Papa Duck’s” homepage.

By popular demand (“popular” being the two comments I received on my original “Newton-vs.-iPhone” post a week ago), today we’ll explore how an iPod Touch beats the Newton MessagePad in a war of handheld Apple devices.

This kind of thing has been done before, but never have the iPod Touch and Newton gone head-to-head in a clash of styles and features. Clearly the iPod Touch has advantages, thanks to modern touch-screen technology and miniturization, that were but a gleam in the Newton’s monochrome eye in the late ’90s.

There will be the die-hards out there that won’t believe a word here. But the march of progress goes on. Here we present the top 11 ways the iPod Touch beats the Newton to a smashed-circuit-board pulp:

1. It’s smaller. No duh, right? But really, Steve Jobs’s obsession with smaller-is-better comes to life in the iPod Touch. It’s thinner, lighter, and smaller than the classic “iBrick” Newton, and holds enough computing power to put a 1997-era Mac to shame. You can fit it in your pocket, and it rests comfortably in your palm.
2. Web browsing is better. Much better. In fact, besides Flash and Javascript, the iPod Touch’s MobileSafari browser is just about all you’d ever need. Browsers like NewtScape can’t hold a candle, or a CSS file, to the iPod Touch. Try checking your Facebook profile on your Newt. ‘Nuff said.
3. It’s the best music player out there. Yes, it’s possible to listen to music on your Newton. But give it a try on your next 3-hour plane ride and you might wish for an old fashioned Sony Walkman. The iPod Touch is the most interactive music player out there. Plus it plays videos, movies, podcasts, and audiobooks.
4. The games are way cooler. While there are tons of games available for your MessagePad, the iPod Touch offers those games and more. Browse through Touch Arcade sometime and you’ll come to realize that, with your iPod Touch, you’re holding a PS2-capable machine in your hands.
5. Easier syncing with modern Macs. There are ways to sync your Newton with OS X, but it’s kind of a project. With the iPod Touch, you just plug it in and – BAM! – your Address Book, iCal, and Safari info is magically synced with your Macintosh.
6. App writing is easier. That’s at least party true these days. Find a NewtonScript manual, boot up your text file, and start slashing away at a Newton app. Now do the same with an iPod Touch 2.0 app. Which is easier? Which has the biggest learning curve? Chances are, you’ll enjoy yourself a bit more with the iPod’s SDK. With the Apple App Store, people can find your app easier, too (though UNNA is a godsend to Newton users). Plus you don’t have to hunt down long-gone registration keys and long-dead software companies.
7. It’s sexier. This one’s more subjective (like the “underground” argument I made in the Newton-beats-iPhone post), but it stands to reason: the slick metal and glass is many times more lickable than the Newton. “Slickness” is an adjective that has come to define Ive-designed Apple products these days. The argument could be made for the eMate, but since no new product designs have come from the MessagePad camp, this one’s an easy win for the iPod family.
8. Wifi comes standard. Putting Wifi on the Newton takes some work. Not so on the iPod Touch. Wifi is in everything these days.
9. Two words: full color. A cheap-shot, but the iPod Touch’s gorgeous full-color screen is a beauty. We can check e-mail in color, browse the web in color, and see all our contacts in full, gleaming, rainbow-splattered color. The Newton’s 320 x 480 antique black-and-green screen held its own back in the day.
10. Two more words: more memory. Those flash memory cards sure were handy. But 32 gigs? Who can compete with that? I could store 90% of my music collection on an iPod Touch. Fitting two or three songs on a Newton, however, would be pushing it.
11. It’s the future. Let’s face it: there are no more Newtons in development. There may be Newton-like projects in the works, but most likely we’ll never see another Newton MessagePad. Ever. iPods? They come out every friggin’ year. And they keep getting better. There are only so many hacks you can perform on a MessagePad, and it’s a losing fight. Apple pays people to design new iPods. Newton hackers? Not so much.

So there you have it. The critics can be happy now that I’ve given the iPod Touch – a device some would argue most deserves the Newton mantle – it’s proper credit, we can bow before the modern Apple machine. The Newton, being ten years older, doesn’t stand a chance in this fight.

I say all this with a lack of passion. What Newton user can blame me? I like to stick up for the Big Green Machine whenever I can, especially when the fight isn’t fair, and I learned that the Newton brings with it a community of passionate users. The iPod Touch? Any 15 year old can go to a Wal-Mart and buy one. Where’s the passion in that?

To test my MobileMe account’s syncing ability, after getting it up and running yesterday, I ran a simple experiment: schedule a reminder on the iPhone calendar (above, for a Chicago trip this weekend), and watch what happens.

You know what happened? Nothing:

The above screen shot is from iCal, one whole day later. Notice no event scheduled to remind me to “pack for Chicago.” Nope, just a few reminders that were already there. Despite telling MobileMe and the iPhone to sync every hour, MobileMe sent nothing to iCal. And that iCal reminder, the green one about the open house? That didn’t get pushed to the iPhone, either.

Things really started to get weird when I received a phone call. Instead of my contact’s name popping up, the iPhone displayed the number only. It turns out that 90% of my contacts were missing from my Contacts app. Where did they go?

Then, while browsing with Mobile Safari, I found all my book marks missing. All Mobile Safari gave me was the stock bookmark options:

So even though I told MobileMe to sync my contacts, my iCal events, and my Safari bookmarks, none of that made it to my iPhone.

Now, after I turned MobileMe syncing off on the 3G, I can’t get my Mobile Safari bookmarks to show back up – even though I told iTunes to do so:

MobileMe, on my iBook G4 running the latest Tiger install and synced with an iPhone 3G, doesn’t work as advertised. The web version is only a little better. That “pack for Chicago” reminder? It showed up in MobileMe’s web iCal. But my contacts made it from either my iPhone or my iBook just fine – but why wouldn’t they show up on my iPhone?

Surely these are all symptoms others have reported before – but MobileMe actually syncing with Tiger was enough of a treat to try the whole thing out. It turns out, though, that MobileMe probably isn’t for me. Not the way it’s working now, at least.

You see that? Finally, after two weeks of waiting, my MobileMe account syncs to that damn cloud that keeps raining on everyone.

Every day since I purchased my iPhone and signed up for the free 90-day trial of MobileMe I’ve tried syncing my iBook (running OS X 10.4.11), and every day it gives me the same message: try again, buddy. But, like a mouse hoping the electrified button will bring more cheese, I kept trying.

Finally, this morning, after a friend had sent me an e-mail asking if I liked MobileMe (and right before I sent my reply saying “don’t even think about it”) the .Mac sync screen above showed up. It parsed through my iCal and Address Book settings and sent them to MobileMe Land, which meant I could keep everything on my iBook and iPhone synced. Good news.

Things have gotten so bad that usually-secretive Apple has a MobileMe status blog of sorts from some mysterious employee who received a directive from Steve Jobs: inform the masses. Apologize. Send it via RSS. Keep them In The Know.

In the 14 days since we launched, it’s been a rocky road and we know the pain some people have been suffering. Be assured people here are working 24-7 to improve matters, and we’re going to favor getting you new info hot off the presses even if we have to post corrections or further updates later.

The “pain” part hasn’t been so bad. I use Gmail for e-mail, and my iPhone syncs with my iBook settings every time iTunes syncs it. Before, I thought you had to have MobileMe to, say, add an iCal event on the iPhone and have it appear on your Mac in some form or another. This is false. I’ve found that, just like photos, the iPhone will “push” contact info and calendar events from the phone to the Mac when you plug it in with the USB connector. Which is handy, and doesn’t make MobileMe a necessity. Thank goodness, because MobileMe hasn’t been what we would call “reliable.”

The true test comes in about an hour, when my MobileMe account is scheduled to sync. I added a Calendar (is it iCal on the phone? I get confused…) event on the iPhone, and we’ll see if it shows up in iCal on my Mac sometime in the near future. But even that little note above, where the .Mac preference pane shows the damned thing doing something, is enough to give me hope.

Any other MobileMe syncing successes out there? Let me know in the comments.

[Update to an update: MobileMe is still acting weird, with no end in site.]

It’s typical of an Apple product to delight and amaze the more you use it. The iPhone 3G is no different. It’s been a ton of fun to use and explore in the week I’ve had it.

First, I discovered this blog looks good on the iPhone’s screen, both in vertical (above) and landscape mode.

Other blogs out there are helping me discover new things.

Lifehacker shows how, by holding down the “.” and “.com” buttons in Safari and Mail, you get more options:

First, in Mobile Safari, just hold down the .com button for a second to see other domain options (namely .net, .edu, and .org). Second, when the keyboard has the @ symbol but no .com key, you can hold the ‘.’ (period) key to get the same domain shortcuts – something that comes in especially handy when you’re manually entering email addresses or filling in login credentials in new apps.

Just the “.com” in Safari was enough to make me smile. But this? That’s handy.

Wired’s How-To Wiki taught me how to avoid SMS charges (I opted for no text plan): plug your contact into AOL’s free iPhone AIM client and text to your heart’s content for free.

I’ve tested it, and it works great.

To Do apps, however, were another story. I struggled with the multitude of options out there: free apps, pay apps, voice note apps. I hate to sound cheap, but I was mostly looking at free solutions, and the reviews were of little help because they went either way. Finally, a new app popped up in the App Store – Dobot’s To Do app – so I downloaded it on a whim. And so far, it suits my needs pretty well.

I was never a big fan of the Newton’s solution to to-do lists. The easiest way was to sync the Newton with Newton Connection Kit and type up the list on my iMac. The keyboard made the whole process more comfortable and quicker. But on the road, you have to scribble a note, highlight it, have Assist interpret it, and the it appears in your to-do list. Way too complicated, and awkward when all you want to do is have a list of check-off items. In fact, it’s one of the key gripes that I have against the Newton. I’m sure there’s another to-do app out there, but I’m limited with my Newton OS 1.0.

If Dobot’s To Do app fails me, I can always spring for app that costs actual money. What I’m hoping, however, is that somehow Apple includes some sort of iCal to-do list sync.

My experiment is to try and use only the iPhone for lists, to-dos, and calendars for the next few weeks. By forcing myself to one platform, I can get to know its ins and outs, and find out what it lacks.

The above shot was taken on Sunday’s Macsurfer homepage. Just look at those headlines. If that isn’t a PR nightmare for Apple, I don’t know what is. This after they did such a super job before the iPhone 3G was announced.

Fortune talked about the perils of “event marketing” – how, yeah, a big huge event like this is fun and draws attention, it’s catastrophic when something breaks down. As it did on Friday. Apple is an expert at drawing press attention. That only makes the scrutiny laser beam that much hotter.

Despite everything that happened, it could’ve been worse. But I’m starting to wonder how. Just from personal experience, this week has been a bummer with my Apple gear. First, I updated my Airport Express base station’s firmware. Afterward, the thing crashed, and now I can’t use my external USB hard drive.

The update must have damaged my USB drive somehow, because I had to repair the thing in Disk Utility and now iPhoto crashes every time it tries to load my library from the disk. Even worse: my iBook and Airport Utility won’t even recognize the base station:

So much for a helpful “update.”

Then, after I thought MobileMe was actually giving me a chance to try it out (I set up my account, and could log in online), I find out that OS X 10.4 has issues connecting with MobileMe. In fact, the .Mac icons won’t even change over:

Just when it looks like MobileMe (or .Mac, or .Whatever) is going to sync my contacts and calendars and whatnot, I get this:

At least this is just the 60 day trial. If I were paying for this, I would not be a happy Apple customer.

And that’s just it. Even amidst Friday’s hellbroth during the iPhone 3G launch, I still played the dedicated Apple soldier. Most of the folks in line with me understood, too, that these things happen, and we were still a part of Something Special. But when the nuts of bolts of Apple’s operation start to come undone, that’s when you get people angry. People will stand in line for hours for the iPhone, no matter what activation issues are taking place, with a gritted smile on their face. That smile soon disappears, however, when basic things like Airport and “Exchange for the rest of us” (more like, “for the most patient of us”) start breaking down.

Apple has got a mess on its hands, it seems, and I wouldn’t want to be their PR department for the next week or so. The least they should do is offer some sort of apology, admit their mistakes, and fix their damn software. Those are the basics.

Do that, and we might forget our USB drive crashing through Airport Disk Utility. Might.

That’s probably the best news I’ve received all day: my iPhone is synced and ready to go.

At 10 p.m., I finally got up the nerve to plug the sucker in and give it a whirl. And everything went great.

MobileMe is offering a free 60 day trial for us suckers, so I thought, why not? My System Prefs are still showing .Mac syncing, however, and I imagine it’s because I’m still a OS X 10.4 user. MobileMe is giving me error messages, so I’m not going to get my hopes up. But a free trial is a free trial. What’s the harm.

Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at see, I hope you’re having the same luck I’m having right now – which is good luck. Now I’ve got all weekend to play with the beast.

Newton Connection, one of the applications that lets you sync your Newton MessagePad to modern OS X Macs, released a 2.1 update that allows for screenshots.

Newton Poetry covered apps like NCX, and it’s nice to know Newton developers are still working hard on viable connection solutions. NCX does everything the old Newton Connection Utilities did, but runs under OS X.

// Via Cult of Mac