Newton Poetry

Two days and about $15 later, my “Yikes!” PowerMac G4 now features full USB 2.0 capabilities thanks to the PCI card I installed on Thursday.

More… »

What would we do without eBay? Found two 256 MB RAM sticks on eBay for less than $20 (with shipping), and couldn’t pass up on the deal to boost the PowerMac G4’s RAM from 320 MB to…well, strangely, only 704 MB…

But before we get to the goofy math, let’s explore how we got this far.

More… »

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

One of the challenges of owning and using a Newton in the modern computing world is its lack of support for Apple’s OS X.

There’s no easy direct-connect option that offers the stability and goof-proof usability of Newton Connection Kit or Utilities, but there are options (as this Google Answers commentary points out).

The idea is that, using apps like NewTen, Escale or NewtSync, you can sync your iCal and Address Book entries to Newton’s own Calendar and Names databases. It’s a beautiful idea, and a handy route for us Newton die-hards who want a more modern interface than OS 7+ offers. Who needs a Blackberry or Palm when you’ve got Apple’s original PDA?

I will say that I’ve tried a few these solutions, and none have worked for me. I think that it’s a combination of (a) my USB-to-serial adapter isn’t supported by my iBook G4 and (b) these applications require Newton OS 2.0 to run properly. Stuck at OS 1.3, there’s not much I can do but use Newton Connection Kit on my G3 Bondi iMac.

But some Newton users have used both of these programs with varied success rates. There has been plenty of dicussion in the Newtontalk mailing list about both applications, and some support is out there for Newton users having issues.

So let’s dig into these one by one, and see what each have to offer.

More… »

Apple dropped the price of its mini-sexy iPod Shuffle yesterday to $49, and announced a 2 GB version that’s coming soon

Which is cool. It’s a competition thing: other manufacturers are releasing similar products for much less (some in the conference swag industry give these things away, like thumb drives). So it only makes sense that Apple would practically give away a USB drive that plays music.

What doesn’t make sense is why Apple’s refurbished models are still at the same price:

What gives? The point of refurbished models is the lower price, especially when someone else has already had their grubby hands on it.

Refurbished models are iPods that someone has already owned but turned back in. Apple then cleans them up, wipes the memory, repackages them, and sells them to you and me.

I bought a refurbed iPod Shuffle for my sister for Christmas, one of the brighter, more vibrant models that came out before this last batch. That little magenta gem was a great gift, and very affordable, and my sister never knew about its former life.

But now if you buy a refurbished Shuffle, you get no deal.

Hopefully, in the days to come, Apple will drop the price and make these little beauties ever more affordable. Let’s hope.

Sometimes, geek dreams really do come true.

First, some background: I bought an Apple Newton – the first PDA ever invented – almost a year ago, just to play around with it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to sync it to my Macs. The Newton uses an old serial cable that no one uses anymore.

Then I found a serial-to-USB adapter, but the Newton’s batteries soon ran dead, with no hope of recharge. So I bought some Sanyo Eneloop pre-charged batteries, and have finally been able to mess around with the MessagePad.

And for the past few days, I’ve dug the adapter out and tried syncing it with my laptop and my iMac – with no luck. Then, tonight…

Whala. There it was. I messed around with the hookup settings late tonight and finally, my Newton and iMac are talking.

More… »