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Handhelds Businesses Apple Hardware

Newton Won't Die 235

Posted by pudge from the nyah-nyah-nyah dept.
Superman writes "Wired just published an article about the continuing popularity of the Apple Newton MessagePad, with props to Mad Max (a Newton MP3 Player), the new ATA driver, and Newton's 802.11 capabilities. Definitely an interesting read, and more proof that just because technology may be a little bit older, doesn't mean it's not useful." I still have my MP2000, and still think it has the best UI around. I keep meaning to convert it into a wireless MP3 player. I am currently hoping for Apple to make an iPod with AirPort and Rendezvous, though.
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Newton Won't Die More

Newton Won't Die

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  • Inkwell (Score:5, Interesting)

    by feldsteins ( 313201 ) <scott.scottfeldstein@net> on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:10PM (#4166364) Homepage
    Good technology never dies I guess. I wonder if Apple is planning to fill the space left by the Newton. They can't be developing Inkwell [apple.com] for nothing can they?

    • Re:Inkwell (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mblase ( 200735 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:41PM (#4166562)
      I like to imagine that the Inkwell technology isn't going to be filled by a handheld portable, but by a smaller kind of laptop. Microsoft has its fantasy for the Tablet PC, but I think Apple's going for it first. Inkwell is smart, it recognizes handwriting instead of Graffiti, it can tell the difference between writing and mousing. Apple now has all it needs to take the keyboards off the iBook and sell it as a tablet-sized iPad.

      Filling the Newton's void would be futile; Palm's got it filled neatly and PocketPC fills the rest of it. Apple makes money by filling voids that don't have any clear winner; think of the iPod, without a doubt the most usable MP3 player for the past year. They'd do well by selling an easy-to-use, student-targetted, MacOS-powered tablet computer before Microsoft can get the hardware out there.

      • Re:Inkwell (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aluminumcube ( 542280 ) <greg@nOsPAm.elysion.com> on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:10PM (#4167127)
        I think that your wrong in saying that revising the Newton would be a futile attempt at filling a void that other companies have since occoupied. Apple doesn't fill voids; they create elegant and useable solutions for markets where others have hacked together crap products. Look at the iPod- was it the first MP3 player? No. Was it the first HD based MP3 player? No. Was the MP3 player market a void before Apple came along? No. Has the iPod been a raving success? Yes.

        In many ways, I think the current handheld market is the same. Palm passes off the fact that their handhelds are using 10 year old technologies as 'Elegance' while the Pocket PC features typical Microsoft bloat. In the end, I am personally not satasfied with either of these products because I don't think they are the epitome of what a handheld could be.

        Let's all face it, what people want out of a handheld computer is relatively simple- it is an extension of the desktop computer. Palm has got this much right. The problem with a Palm however is that the desktop experience has changed from where it was in 1995- people listen to music with their desktop, they play videos, they talk in IMs, surf the web and get email. Palm simply hasn't got the horsepower to keep up.

        Apple, on the other hand, does. Between OS X, Apple's core technologies and the iApps, they have the resources and technologies to truly extend the modern desktop computing experience to the mobile market. The two technology barriers that do exist for Apple (handheld hardware and wireless connectivity) can easily be acquired from other companies (with whom Apple currently has relationships- StrongARM, Motorola, Erricson and Nokia).

        Imagine an elegantly designed handheld computer running a stripped down version of OS X. At home, it uses AirPort and Bluetooth to run as a LAN mobile extension of your desktop machine, letting you view video from your desktop or play MP3s away from your office.

        On the road, an always on cellular modem talks to your desktop computer over a secured broadband connection. Mail that arrives in your Mail.app is now with you wherever you go. You can view and update your iCal calender or Address book from anywhere (and those iCal changes can be updated on the web at your .mac personal web site for all to see). Need to grab a file in your Home directory to give to someone? You just grab it of of your desktop and Bluetooth/IR/802.11B it to someone else.

        Need to make a call? Your handheld could act as a wireless IP phone extention to your home telephone and answering machine (with your desktop Mac's modem plugged into the POTS line at home). No more having to hand out a mobile+home telephone number to someone or check two voice mail boxes. Need to reboot that home machine? No problem, open up Terminal.app and go for it.

        I would buy such a device in a heartbeat and I think a lot of other people would too. I wouldn't think an Apple handheld like the one above would fill a void; it would show people what a mobile computer could really do.

        • ...a built-in camera, synced with iPhoto? (Hey, Danger [danger.com] is pretty close to doing this.)

          You're not the only one wishing for a mobile device that works in tandem with your desktop. The kind of scenarios you describe are the stuff of my dreams, too. The only problem I see is that Apple already has a handheld device on the market -- the iPod.

          MP3 playing is one of the primary functions people want in a good handheld, and I don't see Apple competing with itself by offering two handheld mobile devices.

          Could Apple evolve the iPod into this new dream handheld by slowly adding features? I don't know. The iPod's genius is in its form factor -- it's perfect for playing MP3s. Unfortunately, the same thing that makes it a great MP3 player makes it awkward as a general purpose device. And redesigning the iPod to make a better general purpose device would make the MP3 player experience worse.

          I think this, frankly, bites, because Apple is the only company that can pull off the user experience I want in a mobile device. I want it wirelessly synced with every aspect of my desktop, I want to be able to plug in a pair of headphones and watch video while lying in my hammock. I want it all integrated seamlessly, and only Apple can pull that off. But I suspect their experience with the Newton has soured them on the idea, and the iPod fills its niche so well, there's not much room left to grow. More's the pity. The iPod's a great MP3 player, but it's not anything close to what Apple could do if it tried.

          Thanks for the great post.
  • I beg to differ:

    http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathema ti cians/Newton.html

  • Looks like a decent unit... (Score:5, Funny)

    by vortexf5 ( 221744 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:14PM (#4166394)
    ...and I bet Apple knows *exactly* how many colors it displays. 2?

  • Despite my attempts to kill him... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ratfactor ( 15886 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:15PM (#4166397) Journal
    Apple: Though I fell off of that tree just as hard as I could, I could not overcome 32 feet per second squared. Thus, Newton would not, and could not die.

    I regret this, my brothers, and hope that one day if enough of us fall on his head, we may kill him yet. If it comes to it, we may even coerce an entire branch to snuff him out!

    Yours,
    The Apple
  • As big and heavy as the Newton is (compared to a Palm or iPaq or Zarus), and as small and light as PC laptops are becoming, whats the difference between the two other than the former being obsolescent and the latter being more flexible in terms of hardware vendors (c.f. latest Apple jackboot of non-apple DVD players and its software).

    The weight and size of the Newton is a factor. Or did I mistake the slant of the article, and this is more of a nostalgia item, like rehabbing my old Amiga?

    • So how long until we get real PCs (as in AT386 clone) in a palmtop form factor? Wouldn't that deal with the question of software availability at a stroke? Or maybe such devices already exist and they failed miserably.

      BTW, the Ipaq uses the same (StrongARM) processor family as the Newton, doesn't it? Unless the Newton has some weird hardware support, it should be possible to port the Newton OS to the Ipaq.
      • AFAIK the Ipaq runs on a Pentium III 400, with 64 megs of RAM.
        My friend put it best when he said "I have Web servers with less power than that!"

        Here is a link to an iPaq on Compaq's site [compaq.com]
        • The iPaq handhelds run on ARM/XScale processors, not X86 compatible.

        • Re:Newton or Pad comp? (Score:2, Informative)

          by raduga ( 216742 )
          (Score:-2, Flaming Troll)

          AFAIK the Ipaq runs on a Pentium III 400, with 64 megs of RAM.

          You don't seem to Know too far, then. Read your own link.

          Its a 400mhz Xscale, which is an ARM based chip, in the same family as the Newton's oddly enough. You got the memory right, and the 400mhz Xscale surely is more powerful than many servers, but strangely its slower for many things, than the 200mhz SA-1110 it replaced. And XScale is only on the newer Ipaqs; the older ones use the Strong-Arm CPU, (as does the MP2000).

          The older ARMs, like the one the original series Newtons had, was not Intel at all; Intel bought ARM some time ago.

          • Re:Newton or Pad comp? (Score:5, Informative)

            by foonf ( 447461 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @06:10PM (#4166732) Homepage
            No, Intel never bought ARM [arm.com], they are still around and still own the rights to the ARM IA. However, the StrongARM CPU was not actually designed by ARM, but rather DEC, who licensed the instruction set from ARM. Actually, if memory serves, DEC designed the StrongARM somewhat at the impetus of Apple at the time the Newton was being developed. A few years later, DEC sued Intel over something completely unrelated: Intel had stolen part of the Alpha design and implemented it in their own chip. Intel basically conceded this, and they reached a settlement part of which included Intel buying much of DEC's semiconductor business, including the 2114x Tulip ethernet chipset, and the StrongARM. Intel basically ignored the StrongARM for a while during which time it became rather popular in embedded devices, and now they have renamed newer versions the "XScale" and started actually marketing them. Probably Intel would love to drop the chip and stop paying royalties to ARM, but their clients would just buy other ARM processors from other manufacturers, and they would not benefit at all.
          • I misread the label at CompUSA, and when checking the link I saw Intel 400 Mhz CPU. I'm sorry for being wrong, but since when does being wrong make me a "Flaming Troll"?

    • latest Apple jackboot of non-apple DVD players and its software

      I don't know the details on Apples legal stance here but I do know that the reason behind the move is to stop software piracy.

      The only way to get a license of their iDVD burning software is to buy a Mac with a built-in SuperDrive. That's the only legitimate license there is. The software itself costs nothing - you buy it with the machine. Sooo... if someone develops a hack to allow iDVD to work with non-Apple distributed DVD-burners...ask yourself what is going on here. The only answer I can come up with is that people are wanting to rip off the software.

      I have no problem with Apple trying to stop this. If it's true that the DMCA is being invoked then I can't support that particular method, however. I just don't think the "Apple = jackbooting thugs taking away your rights" knee-jerk reaction is as clear cut as some are thinking.

    • Re:Newton or Pad comp? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:54PM (#4166642) Homepage
      The Newton is more than simply nostalgia. Even today, it is still very useful and still has more power than most PDAs people are using now a days with a 162 MHz StrongARM processor.

      I personally always *liked* the size of the Newton. Sure, it wouldn't hurt if it were lighter, but I am the kind of person that likes to get a lot of use out of a PDA device- not just use it to keep track of appointments. I took all of my college lecture notes on my Newton, read a lot of ebooks/websites, IRCd, read/wrote email, even wrote full-blown Newton OS applications on the device itself.

      Then I switched to WinCE so I dedicate more time to developing and testing my PDA OS/environment [swiki.net], which aims to be Newton OS replacement for me. It's hard to get everything working as smooth as it did on the Newton. I'd much rather go back to my Newton, and I regret switching. :(
      • I personally always *liked* the size of the Newton. Sure, it wouldn't hurt if it were lighter, but I am the kind of person that likes to get a lot of use out of a PDA device- not just use it to keep track of appointments. I took all of my college lecture notes on my Newton, read a lot of ebooks/websites, IRCd, read/wrote email, even wrote full-blown Newton OS applications on the device itself.
        Well, yeah, that's the basic difference between the Newton and the Palm. Newton tries to be an open-ended general purpose system. (Though still an extension of the desktop, not a replacement -- Apple never really dealt with that aspect.) Palm just tries to do specific things. So of course the Newton has to have a bigger screen.

        But if it's for all the things you describe then the screen isn't big enough. Unless you're very good at working in such a small are (Newton die-hards always seem to have skills the rest of us lack, like consistent handwriting) you need something about the size of a composition book [officequarters.com]. If Newton had been that size, it would have worked much better. Of course, it would also have been too expensive to sell....

        • For a fairly wide range of usertypes, the Newton had the potential to be a desktop replacement. This excludes the kind of people who don't think that a laptop is a satisfactory desktop replacement, namely, 3D gamers. I'm not into that. The only reason I sold my Newton, and the only thing I couldn't do on it that I can on my desktop (er, well, it's an iBook) is program in Squeak [squeak.org]. However, I can do this on my Jornada 720, at the expense of everything else working as nicely as it did on the Newton. With the proper knowledge of C and graphics work, I could've had Squeak running on the Newton, but even for that noble cause, having to deal with C for a big project didn't interest me.

          Unlike the Palm and for the most part, PocketPC, the Newton didn't need to be teathered to the desktop to be useful. I never sync'd with a desktop, and never needed it to get data or applications. I was able to use a browser and FTP client via ethernet for those sorts of things, just like I would on the desktop. Apple's intent wasn't to completely replace the Mac- true, but it does a pretty good job at it. Most of the missing pieces that are in the work habits of other users could easily, in most cases I'd surmise, be solved by having an application or analog of one that just didn't exist on the Newton.

          Again, this excludes hardcore 3D gamers- there is an OpenGL subset available on the Newton- but a 162 MHz StrongARM wouldn't cut it for Quake 3. :P

          The screen is indeed big enough. By "big" I am talking physical dimensions, screensize. I could see why some people would like a larger resolution, but I did fine with 480x320.

          For those things, I never wished I had a much larger screen. My girlfriend has a webpad with a 10" 1024x768 screen, and it's much too large to be comfortable for me.

          I was a Newton user for a while, but I don't think it's fair to just dismiss stories of well it worked as just reality-distortion-tunneling of "Newton die-hards." My handwriting was (and still is) a big mess, and with the Newton, I was able to get 40-45+ WPM and around 99.4% accuracy. Sorry, but the days of Eat up Martha are long ago, and the Newton 2100 is not the Newton of 1993. Newton HWR *learns* as you correct it, so it works fine even with messy handwriting like mine.

          The Newton has the size of screen of a legal-pad- obviously, people manage to use the paper version of those, do they not?
        • Almost forgot-

          Unlike the PalmOS and PocketPC, on the Newton you can program apps for the native API using the native language. The very same API and language you'd use if you were developing for Newton OS via a Mac or Windows host. Complete with an IDE and building GUIs, all on the Newton.

          Yes, on PalmOS or PocketPC, you can program using various non-native environments, LispMe, Python, etc. There are similar options to this on the Newton, but neither the other "big players" can you do first-class development. I suppose you can program in assembler on the Palm OS and probably call native Palm OS API funcs, but that's hardly how you'd usually do it on the desktop.

          I keep track of self-hosted PDA programming environments on this page. [swiki.net]

  • In use at the Javits Convention Center (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Glass of Water ( 537481 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:16PM (#4166406) Journal
    At the last LinuxWorld Expo in New York, I noticed that every booth had a newton with a card reader attached to it, so they could swipe guests' badges and get a record of who visited their table. They must have had 100s of newtons.

  • Just another toy (Score:2, Interesting)

    by phorm ( 591458 )
    Early models were bulky, expensive and bug-ridden. Apple marketed the Newton poorly, and it was widely ridiculed; a memorable Doonesbury strip by Gary Trudeau effectively doomed the device.
    -------------------
    If a comic strip could "doom" something, then MS/Windows would be dead a long time ago. It seems that slashdot alone has a large amount of these linked from user comments.

    -------------------
    After shopping around, he found a machine that did it all: Web, e-mail, calendar and address book, but it could also recognize ordinary, cursive handwriting that wasn't as awkward as graffiti The biggest problem with a Newton is its size: It's as big as a brick. ----------- I had a nice little acer laptop that did all of that and more. It had a 233Mhz MMX processor. It ran windows 2000 decently on 80MB (max) of RAM, and was wonderful for Linux. Unfortunately it took a spike in a power surge, silly me for not getting a surge guard

    Seems to me that one could do a lot better by getting a used mini-laptop. Mine didn't cost me a huge amount, and it was a lot more productive than any handheld.

    It seems that handhelds are often just used as toys, with a cheap notebook at least you can run linux or do some programming
    • One can do pretty much anything you'd do on that junked Acer laptop on a Newton 2100. Including programming. Why would a person, with the Newton OS option available, want to settle for something substandard like Win 2k or Linux in a handheld device?
      • a) Acer laptop wasn't a handheld, hence I used linux. I said nothing about trying to run linux on the Newton, I don't think that would work overly well.

        b) The laptop worked great as a mini-mirror for my website, so that I could test all my scripts while on the road. etc. Can a new run Apache+PhP+Mysql and allow me to connect to it through a standard ethernet or serial connection?
        c) 4MB of RAM... greaaaat

        "People stick with the Newton because the community is so strong," Muniz said d) This is probably the reason. Apple users love other Apple, and each other. It's a nice community, but no reason not to look at other solutions.

        I'm surprised none of the Mac lovers haven't gone so far as to love their mac this much [sleeplessknights.com]. Or perhaps they have

        • Re:Just another toy (Score:3, Interesting)

          by RevAaron ( 125240 )
          4 MB of RAM is enough for a Newton. On a computer with a non-traditional architecture, RAM doesn't mean the same thing as on your Win2k box. You don't need 80 MB of RAM on a Newton just to be able to connect to the net.

          Nope, can't run Apache+PHP+mySQL. Someone could work on a port, but there wouldn't be much use in it. There does exist a web server for the Newton, including a framework for the creation of web applications; the NewtonScript language is built in; and there is an object database at the heart of Newton OS.

          Yes, you can connect to/from the Newton using standard ethernet, serial (PPP/SLIP) or wireless connections.

          I agree, no reason to look to other solutions, and I myself recently switched from the Newton to another platform. But, there's also no need to ignore the strengths of other solutions.

    • Re:Just another toy (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sphealey ( 2855 )
      If a comic strip could "doom" something, then MS/Windows would be dead a long time ago. It seems that slashdot alone has a large amount of these linked from user comments.
      Doonesbury may not be what it was in the 1970s, but it still has a slightly larger readership than Slashdot. By about 3 orders of magnitude!

      The Newton was marketed as a "hip" device (as was the Palm) primarily for the "in" crowd. That one cartoon made the whole thing seem terminally absurd, and did in fact kill the entire product line.

      sPh

      • Doonesbury may not be what it was in the 1970s, but it still has a slightly larger readership than Slashdot. By about 3 orders of magnitude!

        Um, that's dubious. Do you have figures for it? Slashdot serves (on average) about 4 million pages a day, even if the average reader reads 10 pages then Doonesbury would need 400 million readers a day to satisfy that readership number. I doubt most registered posters read 10 /. pages a day (I don't), and the vast majority of /. readers aren't registered at all.

        To put that in perspective, Sunday paper readership is higher than weekday readership and yet only 89 million Americans (on average) read the paper each Sunday (as of 2001). And certainly not everyone who gets a paper reads Doonesbury; sure, UK and other international sales will add something to the total, but I'd be surprised if Doonesbury readership reached 2 orders of magnitude higher, let alone 3.

        Larger, yes, but not as large as you intimate.

        Sumner

        (and /. has 6.6 million unique visitors in total; DB would need 6.6 billion unique readers in total to make your figure accurate on a historical scale)

    • Re:Just another toy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DdJ ( 10790 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:34PM (#4166526) Homepage Journal
      Seems to me that one could do a lot better by getting a used mini-laptop. Mine didn't cost me a huge amount, and it was a lot more productive than any handheld.
      Depends on what you want. I have an eMate, which is a Newton that's shaped like a laptop. I've charged it up, taken it with me to a 3-day conference, and used it to take notes at the conference for the full 3 days without ever having to charge it. I took it on a business trip to Europe, and didn't have to worry about getting an AC converter because I didn't have to plug it in the entire time I was there. Can you do that with your used mini-laptop?
      • Heh. Might be a bit hard to do on his mini-laptop with its 45 minutes of battery life. :P
      • I can with mine, but I might have had to buy some more batteries at the corner store.

        My used mini-laptop is a Tandy Model 100.

        Bryan
      • No, nobody can. I wish I'd grabbed one while they were still up for grabs. Back when the Newton was dropped, I figured "hey - someone's going to make a replacement. I mean ... the concept is so neat, the usefulness so obvious ...".
        Boo-yah. Years down the line - there's nothing like it in the marketplace, your device is still unsurpassed. There is not one OS I can think of that adheres to the "KISS" principle (erm, that's "Keep It Simple, Stupid", for the acronym-disadvantaged). The magical thing about the Newton / emate is exactly the lack of processing power: and it performs just fine. What kind of hardware is required to run even a "slimmed-down" version of OS-X? What exactly is anyone doing with a computer that absolutely requires it to have a 1600 x 1400 screen in 65 million eye-watering colours displaying semi-transparent windows powered by an appreciable part of a gigaflop? (OK, that was rhetorical - CAD, gaming etc. But *not* just for reading, taking notes, browsing, emailing, messaging or even number-crunching, word processing form-filling and the other 95% of work performed with a computer.)
        (Anyway - "whaa - I wanna Newton" is about all I have to say.)
    • The acer laptop had hand writing recognition?

    • First generation PDA (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      It's easy to condemn something with 20-20 hindsight; but nobody had done anything like the Newton before.

      How big exactly should the screen be? What resolution? How powerful a processor do people want? What things make a PDA succesful for day to day users?

      There is no combination of answers that is right for every user. The Newton combination worked well for certain people. However, there were many other people who didn't need that much screen or processing power.

      It did get a lot of things right, like superb battery life. On the other hand, one thing it got resoundingly wrong was connectivity. Connectivity worked OK on the Mac, but Windows utilities were always buggy and unreliable, and Apple had an indifferent attitude towards Windows users. So, you either had to be a Mac user or a tolerant Windows user to be pleased with the Newton's basic out of the box connectivity options.

      The Newton screen size is a dividing point for users. Either you love it or you hate it. Most people prefer something you can slip into a shirt pocket and feels comfortable in one hand. Witness the move from clamshell PDAs to palm style form factors in WinCE. I know trying to sell users on my PDA apps, it was always a struggle with Newtons, but put a Palm in their hand and they immediately wanted it.

      The Palm was a rare, perfect combination. Good battery life, large enough screen to do what most people wanted but not any larger; and excellent connectivity. By being less ambitious in the screen department than the Newton, and less ambitious in the connectivity department than WinCE, it could be smaller, simpler, more reliable and cheaper.

  • Display upgrades (Score:5, Interesting)

    by seanmeister ( 156224 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:17PM (#4166413)
    You don't have to listen to your wireless MP3's on a Newton with a dim, old, scratched-up screen - a pal of mine has put together a display upgrade kit [adago.net] and is currently taking orders!

    (sorry buddy!)
  • I thought it was oddly appropriate that this story was posted at 4:04pm ;).

  • I'm not trolling (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wompser ( 165008 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:22PM (#4166447)
    but seriously, if there is "news" that is remotely Apple related, Wired, is all over it. They love to report Apple news and culture, it tends to be of this type: Gee, Apple stopped doing X long ago, but look, these hip trendy, user groups are doing it themselves!!!! Yay Apple!

    Don't believe me? Try this story [wired.com] or this story [wired.com] or this story [wired.com]

    Or maybe I'm just missing something? Is there really a well dresses, over educated, hip Apple underground that I have never seen? Wired just tends to report these user groups and people as trendy, San Fran artist types. They have swallowed more than just a bite of Apple's marketing message. (bad pun, I know)

    Kind of like Slashdot reports on Linux types... Think about it, it is easy to come up with stereotypes of Wired readers. And slashdot readers for that matter.

    but I digress, I do think the Newtons are cool.

    • Re:I'm not trolling (Score:3, Informative)

      by RevAaron ( 125240 )
      I've been a longtime computer nerd and a Mac user for the last 3 years. I used to BBS a lot, and have been to a goodly amount of runs and meets, meeting up with people I've known over the ether.

      In the Mac people I've known, a lot of them tend to have much less full of the anti-social nerd in them than do the Windows and Linux communities. The Mac tends to draw people that are more "hip." They tend to be people with a real life and real jobs (often not computer related) that happen to really love their Mac, whereas a lot of Windows and Linux geeks moreso tend to be people that seem to have lost sight of anything other than getting their computer to crash once less a week, or in compiling some package that no one else has, so they can namedrop later in IRC.

      A lot of Mac users are these artist types. They are people who love the Mac because it does what they want, as a tool, and because they are more emotionally-driven people, who value aspects of the Mac hardware and the Mac OS that are lost on people with no artistic sense.

      That said, I'm completely outside these types. I'm far from hip, and definately not interested in being it. I did ramble off many stereotypes, and I've known all kinds- you just definately do see more of these artsy hipster types in the Mac community than in the PC world.
      • In the Mac people I've known, a lot of them tend to have much less full of the anti-social nerd in them than do the Windows and Linux communities.

        I concur - a "typical" mac user (if there be such a thing) uses the mac as a tool for certain jobs, often unrelated to computing, whereas a "typical" win / *nux user is far more concentrated on the tech: computing for the sake of computing (this is the group I belong to, BTW).

        However, I do have an additional point: these "sub-cultures" are not distinct. The biggest thing that comes to mind is OS-X: based on BSD, in turn made by some of the geekiest geeks out there (i.e., my hat goes off to them). So: Apple's OS is based on the fruits of the work of people who use computers for the sake of computers, and probably wouldn't touch OS-X with a bargepole.

        Not good, not bad - but kind of neat.

        PS: I dropped Newton when Apple dropped it. If I use something, I like to have the feeling it will still be around in a couple of years. And apple not licensing Newton tech so at least someone else could keep this fantastic machine alive is one of my main gripes with Apple / Steve Jobs / market economy / the concept of "intellectual property" / the universe. But I digress ... right back onto the topic, it seems :)

    • Re:I'm not trolling (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Dryth ( 544014 )

      The "problem", if we're to treat it as such, is less Wired than Leander Kahney the individual. If there's old Mac hardware and software being used by anyone, anywhere, and made vocal online, I wouldn't put it past Leander to report on it.

      That isn't to say Newtons and Hypercard aren't worth note. However, there's a bit of disproportionate tracking of Mac "cult" interests over at Wired as a result.

      Doesn't help that articles such as this [wired.com] made an appearance on Wired's front page with a description along the lines of "iPod users giving up their Palms". It's a little bit of pleasant hyperbole, but justified in that it no doubt pleases the iPod owners in the crowd.

    • Kind of like Slashdot reports on Linux types... Think about it, it is easy to come up with stereotypes of Wired readers. And slashdot readers for that matter.


      Yes, but you forget something:


      Slashdot was made by Linux users, for Linux users. Anything else is secondary, and we don't try to hide behind a mask of being a "hip counter-culture 'mag". What do you think "News for Nerds" means, anywhow?

  • This sounds cool, but can you connect it to a PC? I don't have money for a Newton and a Mac.

    • Re:Connect to a PC (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes, you can. There's a version of the Newton Connection Kit for Windows--I have it, but I've never used it.

      Before the Newton was Steved, Apple kept track of whether Newton buyers had Macs or PCs... as I recall, 40-50% were PC users.
    • For example, there's no way to sync with Apple's new operating system, Mac OS X, except through the clunky Classic compatibility environment. Ironically, the Windows version still works with Microsoft's latest operating systems, 2000 or XP.

    • Re:Connect to a PC (Score:2, Informative)

      by MaxSterling ( 30597 )
      Yes, it can be connected to a PC via serial cable. Last I tried the Newton Connection Utilities (NCU), it was still working on Win2k.

  • Any chance of someone else building them? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06@@@email...com> on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:27PM (#4166486)
    Now that Apple has stopped development, is there any shot that they'd license them to be built by someone else?

    Which begs the question, who'd be interested in building it?

  • I just don't understand how/why Apple has yet to create a new PDA. I am 90% sure they will though.

    Why?
    • A PDA needs a good os, good applications AND a good physical shape much more than a PC. Apple is hands-down the best at this. (For a PC, expandability is often very important. Apple isn't so hot at this IMO.)
    • .Mac and the digital hub are crying out for way to TAKE your information with you. How awkward did Palms V5 look in the demonstration unvailing .Mac
    • A PDA is (was) a new platform and doesn't (didn't anyway) need the existing software so much. It was a level playing field that Apple had a natural gift at competing on.
    • It's F**ing hardware. I thought you ran a hardware company Jobs! ;-)
    Frankly I can't come up with a many good reasons not to.
    • The market already has fantastic products is highly competitive. Palm might have been, but it looks aging. Win CE? It's microsoft on try 3 and the market is still Palms. There is room here
    • Afraid of a second failure
    • Waiting for the next BIG thing. Bluetooth? Cheaper color screens? G5s...
    Ok so everyone else here probably just made this list, but it was fun speculating! ;-)

    Thanks for moding me redundant! It was a pleasure
    • A PDA needs a good os, good applications AND a good physical shape much more than a PC. Apple is hands-down the best at this.

      This first reason is a reason why you want Apple to make a PDA, not really a reason why Apple themselves would or should.
      .Mac and the digital hub are crying out for way to TAKE your information with you. How awkward did Palms V5 look in the demonstration unvailing .Mac

      I can listen to my MP3s and view my contacts in my iPod right now, and come September I'll have a calendar that will work with iCal as well. So I'd say carrying around is already possible (and there will probably be more features integrated).
      It's F**ing hardware. I thought you ran a hardware company Jobs!

      Yeah, and they don't make a calculator, garage door opener, or video camera either. They don't make all possible hardware (thankfully, or they would be gone by now).
      Frankly I can't come up with a many good reasons not to.

      How about because Palm is tanking and Steve Jobs specifically said it was a bad idea? =]
      • Let me rephrase my first point then. There is no doubt, apple could make better product than what's on the market now and make it competitively priced. If that's not a reason to make a product, I don't know what is.

        Your Ipod can carry that data, but data entry is difficult. It's not a balanced approach to a PDA product. It's a fantastic MP3 player.

        big wink on third point ;-)

        And your last points. Palm is tanking, but it's tanking because they haven't significantly improved their products. Very little "inovation". And sure jobs said that. I just don't understand why ;-). Hence the post
        • Indeed, Palm is tanking because it's the same product that they released back in '97. The first Newton, back in 1993, did more than the Palm does today, not to mention the Newton OS 2.1 on the 2100 in 1997.

          The PocketPC does more, making it more Newton like in some ways, but it still doesn't do it all in an integreated, seamless way. You also have to put up with that piddly 320x240 screen.
        • It is a bad idea because (in SJ's view) it is a market that will boom every couple of years and then drop out entirely unless you are putting oodles of cash behind it. Palm started off with a bang because they started small and made an organizer that could do more than just store information. Then the internet bubble expanded and several million Silicon Valley, Houston, Seattle, and New York business types picked them up to manage stuff. Once they had them though they didn't need new ones and that is where Palm is now. If you bought a Palm Vx you do not need an m500 unless you feel the need to waste money. It is a small easily saturated market.

          There's also the issue of profitability. The Newton was one of Apple's least profitable products ever. Even if sales had been outrageous at the best of times for the Newton right before it was dropped the margins were horrible. Newton's were badass systems but expensive to produce due to their included functionality. Even if the PIE division had been spun off, which I wish would have happened, it might not even be around today. The ability to sell units doesn't mean much if you don't make any money off those sales.

    • Two words... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by artemis67 ( 93453 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @10:53PM (#4168017)
      John Sculley. It's no secret that a) Steve Jobs has a tremendous vindictive streak, and b) most of the changes SJ made at Apple immeditaely upon his return were to cut or scale back JS's initiatives.

      Yes, Newton was ahead of its time. It was too big. It was too expensive. It was poorly marketing. It was too __________ (fill in the blank). And, the Newton division was always in the red. That is, it was in the red until right before SJ axed it. Yes, friends, Newton was making a profit for the first time when SJ lowered the boom (two consecutive quarters, I believe); that more than anything tells me that killing it was an act of vindictiveness.

      Of course, it didn't take SJ long to realize the error of his ways. About a year later, it came out that Jobs was offering to buy out Palm, but considering that Palm was mostly comprised of ex-Newtonites who were forced out by Steve (successful ones at that), there was no way it was gonna happen.

      What was really crazy was that Palm was wildly successful at the time, but they were only nailing the low-end of the emerging PDA market. Newton was perfectly positioned at the time to nail the mid- to high-end of the market, particularly in vertical applications. I remember a MacWeek article at the time about how the Newton was causing a stir in several vertical markets. Apple had the first mover advantage, and they virtually owned the higher-margin high-end of the market. Killing the Newton was an act of sheer stupidity and short-sightedness.

      Now that Microsoft has entered the market, I would say that the odds of Apple owning a big chunk of the PDA market are virtually nil. Palm has saturated the low and mid-range of the market; Microsoft and their partners are going after the mid to high-end. Once again, Apple set the table and Microsoft is eating the meal.

      Apple might have an opportunity to add PDA features to the iPod; however, that still only gives them a small slice of the low-end consumer market.

      If Jobs had been wise, he would have spun out the Newton division, much as he did the Filemaker Pro division, to create its own brand identity apart from Apple and keep the focus on cross-platform compatibility. Perhaps he might have more shrewdly licensed out the Newton OS and allowed PC manufacturers to build the hardware and sell the systems, thus getting a significant jump on Microsoft.

      Ah well.

  • Manditory Simpson's Quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by Russ Steffen ( 263 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:37PM (#4166543) Homepage

    Nelson: Take a note on my Newton to beat up Martin.
    Kearny: (scribles "Beat up Martin" on Newton's display
    Newton: (converts handwriting to "Eat up Martha")
    Nelson: (grabs Newton and hurls it at Martin's head)

  • Newton Won't Die
    Sir Isaac Newton, interviewed at his London home, had this to say, shortly before eating the reporter:

    "Brrraaaiinnssss..."

  • I'm browsing right now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitalhermit ( 113459 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @05:47PM (#4166595) Homepage
    om my Mew7on. 1 love this cool hamb writing pecognition. 1 think Cndr Taco yses one to post 5lashdot stories.
    • Nice try, but the Newton uses a dictionary as part of the recognition. I once wrote "How many Newtons does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" and it came up with "One many suitors does it take to view in Trinidad."

  • Link to the comic (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Jippy_ ( 564603 )
    a memorable Doonesbury strip by Gary Trudeau effectively doomed the device.

    The Comic [ucomics.com]

    =-Jippy
  • We have a couple Newtons here in our company, and my brother recently resurrected his from the shelf. The handwriting recognition is out of this world. How it recognizes print or cursive is just amazing. Text to speech was actually useful (and used, might I add). The database for contacts was extensible. The cross references between messages/notes/contacts, etc. was very fast and intuitive.

    The only issue we had with it was the synchronization capabilities. Apparently, it syncs quite well with Mac apps; however, that's one thing we don't have here.

    Hell, we were just talking about this yesterday -- we wish they'd bring it back. The Newton platform is really nice. To me, its somewhere between Palm OS and CE (for those that wish to compare).
  • Since they stopped supporting the same PCMCIA cards that my laptop uses -- and relying on grafitti rather than a keyboard.

    I remember my HP 200LX back in the stone age. I could pop the modem out of my laptop and dial up and run telnet sessions and check email -- all the while saving out to the (albeit expensive at the time) 4 meg CF card. I did this all on a regular (albeit small) keyboard. All of this and it rode on my hip -- and the batteries lasted for days. Ever since then PDA's have gone downhill for all I care.

  • I played with Newton development [eskimo.com] and it was a truly great development environment. The NewtonScript Programming Language [apple.com], influenced by Self [sun.com], is a a beautiful, elegant language based on prototypes. The view system, which runs the display, makes it really easy to to customize user interfaces. The Newton Toolkit [mactech.com] in it's day was a ground breaking IDE. Newton supported persistant objects.

    The Newton group actually thought about and did user testing on their interface, then published interface standards. Unlike most OSes

    Sigh. I spend so much of my professional life dealing with poorly thought out languages/systems that I look back very fondly on the Newton.

    Actually I still use two of them. One is in the kitchen - I use it to keep track of groceries I need. The other sits by my desktop machine for taking notes.

  • I actually chose the MP2000 because of the larger size, though I could do with less weight, because I was interested in note-taking.

    When I went to a startup a few years back, it was our first computer. It sent and recieved faxes, sent and recieved e-mail, and I used the HWR to take the notes of the first Board of Director's meetings. (And yes, they were readable afterwards.)
  • I was just thinking I could get by with a Palm or a Handspring, and you have to go and run a story about the Newton. Thanks a lot.

    *loads up eBay*

    Oh well, here's an older story [slashdot.org] from the last time I was on a Newton trip.
  • and yes it's huge compared to a Palm Pilot/Handspring Visor, but it lets me enter pretty fast, hadnwriting works fine for me once it learned how I write (the reverse of Graffiti, where you get to learn how to write the way it needs you to). I can use the backlighting as an emergency flashlight. What I need to do is figure out how to convert the data from the backups to a format readable by other systems. What I really want to do is export my contact list from my Newton to my iPod, but I haven't taken the time to research the intermediate steps. u
  • The new Sony Vaio U1 ultrasmall notebook machines are the Cat's Ass!

    http://www.dynamism.com/u1/index.shtml

    Real PC Real Small: 29 oz And that's ok because if your PDA doesn't actually fit in your pocket it doesn't matter how large it really is.

  • Run OS/2 on a Newton and load it up with Amiga software.
  • When I was at university in 95 a local Apple dealer was selling off the first gen Newts at a bargain price (they had two huge boxes of them from an auction). They were selling like hot-cakes, and despite being left-handed and with scrappy handwriting, I figured I would give it a try as I could always sell it on to another student at cost.

    I'd tried dozens of PDAs over the years, and they'd all fallen by the wayside. The Newt's OS, however, was so well designed and intergrated that it made it a joy to use. The recognition on that device was about 80-90% on my scrawl, which was enough for it to be usable for entering names, addresses and the like.

    On leaving university and earning some real money, I went and checked out all the latest PDAs - and concluded that none of them were a patch on the Newt in UI terms. So I bought myself a 2100.

    The UI in the later Newts is so well thought out that I still haven't found anything to compare (as a PDA rather than as a portable media player, which seems to be the current trend). The synching software sucks, but the Newton OS is rock solid, and has never lost a single byte of data.

    Every morning my Newt wakes up at 6:30 and a piercing alarm goes off. I hit the power switch and it snoozes. At 6:40 it silently wakes up and picks up my emails and newsgroups before going back to sleep. At 7:00 the alarm clock snooze times out and it wakes me up properly. I then lie in bed reading my emails.

    I go through this every day, yet it only needs about 1 hour's charging every week or two. And if I have to travel, I have the option of using standard AA batteries, or even a solar panel! In fact, they are so efficient that Trevor Bayliss (Mr. Clockwork Radio himself) once demonstrated an eMate modified to run on clockwork.

    It will print to most parallel port printers (via an adaptor) or over IR to a suitable printer. With an extra bit of software you can beam data to and from a Palm. You can even run a web server on it in case you need to view your contacts or diary from elsewhere on your network.

    I really wish they'd released a smaller version as a companion to the 2100. I would have bought both, as the size of the Newt is sometimes a problem. Generally, though, I like the large size as it makes data entry so much more practical.

    With the 2100 (and possibly 2000) the Newt was really starting to deliver on its early promise. If I'd been Steve Jobs, I would have fixed the synch software to make it more intuitive and work better over IR, then offered bundle deals with the original iMac (which also had IR and came out around that time). The iMac would be the "family" computer, the 2100 for Dad, something similar (in translucent) for Mum, and eMates for the kids. All able to beam data between each other and the iMac.
  • This technology saw last light at least a decade ago and still has its fans. Slashdot periodically runs stories about the imminent ressurection of AMiga.

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