Here's a third post in a series of reposts of interests from the NewtonTalk list. My commends are in Code format

Joe Riley Wrote:
This is a continuation of the iPod touch talk from the "[NTLK] [ADMIN] This is only a test" thread.

I just got a 1st Gen refurb iPod Touch from apple (looked brand new!) and I've been very amazed with it. I'm not a newton power user in terms of the calendar/contacts and the info linking the newt can do so I could see me using the touch as its replacement for those functions. I also can do without the HWR since I usually end up using the onscreen keyboard on my newt because most of my data to enter doesn't like the HWR (gear charts for race cars, web addresses, etc.). If you use blackberry, treo, winmo, etc, getting the hang of the touch's keyboard shouldn't be too hard. The first data entry might be a pain if you do it manually but the touch can sync with address book and ical.

I synced everything with my MobileMe account and al info was there. I found the only problem to be the iPod's auto-correct. I write in Greeklish (Greek in latin characters) on twitter and it keeps wanting to correct everything. English typing was no problem, even from the get-go.

Someone also mentioned the small screen, which I do agree is a little annoying but scrolling is easy with the touch screen and it keeps the device small. The multimedia and web on the touch is awesome compared to the newt. Some of the interface touches even remind me of the newt, like how the keyboard and some other boxes glide on/off the display and the clicky sounds it makes when you type (although it doesn't have the overall interface sounds the newt has).

It does have some serious flaws though. First and most important to me is the lack of a good notes app. The built-in notes app looks similar to the newts but lacks folders. I'm going to try some 3rd party apps but reviews I've read so far don't give me hope.

This is a serious problem (as is note sync). I've written about this in a previous post.
Second is battery life. The battery life of the touch really sucks if your punishing it with lots of web surfing, app downloading, or worse online gaming. It seems to do ok if you've got the wifi off but its still no where near the newt, you need to charge it atleast every night if not sooner. Maybe if they made it as thick as the iphone 3g we'd be set.

You know, I don't think that battery life is a problem. Yes if you keep using the web and playing games it's going to drain your battery fast. It's a cost balancing situation. I use my iPod mostly for media playback, and I keep it charged while at work. I never run out of battery. I also don't hop on the net with all the time. I check my email, check my twitter and facebook, and turn the WiFi off. You can't compare the newton battery life-span to that of the iPod. The Newton does not go online, and it doesn't do media playback. I know people have created apps to let you do just that, but if you do this, your battery will drain equally fast as the iPod Touch.


Third is the lack of copy and paste. This one really bugs me because I use C&P on my blackberry and newt all the time. And last it lacks the Agent and overall search funtions of the newt although it does have in-app searches for some apps. Lack of HWR may be a deal breaker depending on if you are really fond of it.


If the notes and copy & paste problems are solved this may be a decent 'new newt' for some. It does the web, multimedia, mail, contacts and calendar, its not a brick, it syncs easily with modern apps and its easy to use IMHO. I do wish it had a green backlight and could be put into greyscale mode, maybe an app could be made to give all the white on screen a green tint and switch the rest of the colors to greyscale? I guess I'm saying it needs theme support too

LOL, a green backlight and a Newton theme would be awesome (maybe the jailbreak community can help out). The fact that the iPod is not a brick and can accomplish so much (despite its limitations) is why I choose it over the newton for my needs. Lets not forget that the newton is 14 years old and it's been more than 10 years without official support!

Do you have an IPod Touch/iPhone? What do you think?

Tags: technology, Newton, NewtonOS, Nokia, N800, ipod, touch

Continuing my series of reposts of mailings that I find interesting about the future of the newton from the NewtonTalk list, here's one from Carlos Santiago. I've added some comments and personal views in code format

Carlo's Post:
I was prompted by the 2010 timeframe barrier I'd heard about but I made the switch after v2.0 of the system software which had abilities much better in regards to email than the earlier version; at 1.x it most mostly an ipod but the 2.0 software brought it close to a pda but 100% and no where, anywhere close near a Newton.But I then sold off my iPAQ and BT GPS unit as we also gotten a Garmin GPS which made the switchover possible.

It took a while for me to make the switch, mentally, everything important I had on my 2100 and PDA. Key apps there I vitally needed and used.

• cut-n-paste! poor man's inter-app messaging
• Newton notes; still no clear replacement
• Newton calendar; Pocket Informant on the PDA made that platform a good transition but the Newton was the gold standard so it'll be tough to replace
• Newton inter-app slip messaging; but things are slowly improving within key apps
• PDA Pocket Informant; a PIM that's coming this month!

I'm not a twenty something wanting a gaming only device (but not that there's anything wrong with that! - these folks in part fueled Apple in recent months and this platform after all) but needed a PDA which approched Newton status. My iPod isn't a Newton but I'm finding less is more in some areas.

What I like:

• speed; I now juggle 6 email accounts; evan google and yahoo along with work, etc.
• apps availability; I often buy apps I like hoping support will spur further advances; most feature 'free' subset versions which is vital since all sales are final - and tied to you; you can't resell.
• web browsing - full screen and fast; however in recent months some sites take to dumming down their site when then see an iPOD; wrong approach; some offer a choice of classic or iPod site view; much better
• GREAT - f-n-GREAT (so far) app s/w provider support; I think they see the future ahead of most users and are running in droves to the unit; I can only hope some exNewton titles make it here.

I have all of my email accounts (except for my Hotmail account) on my iPod Touch and it's great! On my N800 I don't have everything. The again, I purchased the device for web browsing, not email handling. I only have my mobile me account on the N800 since I can't use the browser to check the mail. Hotmail, yahoo and gmail are all easily accessible on the maemo browser.

What I dis-like

• small sceen resolution with BIG UI interface controls means display real estate is an absolute premium; most apps either waste space or feature too much whitespace. There are some PDA style apps which try to cram too much info but I think within the next year the UI and developers will come to terms and deliver great apps - my hope anyway.
• poor apps sometimes crash the unit; recent I took to emailing one developer on their latest update and was totally floored at the response; *GREAT* had a new, fixed, app in a few days. Oh, and this app was *FREE*

I really would like to see some category for gag apps. I don't care that people are making fart or bouncing boob apps, but it really makes it hard to look for good apps when the gag apps are taking up so much space.

And neutral items...

• it's not a PDA let alone Newton. In the 2.1 s/w release Apple heard first hand that some folks actualy rely on their units for something other than on demand music purchase and play. Given the wider, non-game app availability, I suggested they spend a bit more time in QA; they appear to be.
• yes there's no stylus; it's up to the app the make the UI transition to gesture based input. it's funny to see HWR attempts etc. on this unit. IMHO those apps just don't get it (aka those don't dogs won't hunt It's hard but you do need to rethink things from scratch.

Would like to see items

• Newton notes; folders, outlines, todo, style sheets, etc. partridge in a pear tree...
• universal platform issues; cut-n-paste, messaging, 'back' ability. Each app execution replaces rather than pushes current apps. You can return to the former app after pressing the home button and navigating to it but I'd like to see a 'go back' button or gesture to do this. That would go a long way to addressing inter-app slip passing as app design all feature a fast save state ability you pick up just where you left off.
• built-in camera
• speaker (2nd gen unit already has this)
• dump AT&T in favor of generic provider support; this is part of larger soap box to have all cell phone carriers compete by using a U.S. then world-wide cell phone network topology and technology; we'd then see real competition vs. the fiefdoms we have now.
• overall h/w improvements; 3rd party storage & batter upgrades - don't try this yourself

Overall I'm happy I made the switch; but miss my 2100.

I agree. I still have my 2100, I don't use it and I miss it. But I am happy to be using an iPod Touch and N800 instead

Tags: technology, Newton, NewtonOS, N800, Nokia, ipod, touch

Well, along with the Y2K10 issues, there's been a lot of discussion about redefining the Newton. I came across this post by Michael, and I have to say I agree with a lof of his comments.

This is very interesting because this is exactly what I have been thinking for a while.I have long thought, the future of the Newton was in becoming a series of enhancements and applications to assist a chosen platform to provide those features which the Newton had (and differentiated it) which no longer seem to exist. (Keep in mind that different users will see this as a different mix of items)

I agree. The features that the Newton had that differentiated it for me (beyond the Apple Geek factor) were the addressbook, calendar, mobile office suite and my multilingual dictionaries. Oh, the large screen too.

In my case, I have recently purchased an iPod Touch to use as my basis for this.

I went with a Nokia Internet Tablet (N800 Model), plus an iPod Touch more recently.

My reasoning for this is pretty simple:1. The iPhone / iPod Touch SDK is FREE!

I don't care about developing, so this isn't a factor for me

2. The Developer community is alive and kicking and considering the size of the user base I have a good chance that something will be developed which may deliver what I am after or that something I develop will be useful for other users and therefore make the development effort pay off.

This is true for both maemo on N800 and the Mobile OS X on the iPod Touch. I have almost more functionality than I had on my Newton!

3. It's from Apple and syncs well with my iTunes Library on my Mac ( and the Address book and iCal and MobileMe).

This was, and is, the most important thing to me. My Media syncs perfectly with my iPod Touch, and all my calendars and contacts are synced. Yes, even the ones in Greek! My major problem with the Newton was the lack of Greek support, even though the OS was fully unicode. Initially this was not a problem since most of my contacts were non-Greek. I could literally count on two hands who my Greek contacts were. With the rise of the internet and social networks I've reconnected with many of my old friends, and it is easier to keep in contact with new ones making Greek support all that much more important.

4. It already had FMTouch which is a 3rd party Filemaker Database Engine so I can take my existing Databases and Sync them to "MyTouch" ( yes I was lame enough to call it that and you can guess my iMac is called) and carry them with me. Something I always wanted for my Newton but never quite had

.

Now, I am far from 100% satisfied with the platform.I have some minor annoyances with the following:1. Address book:  It doesn't support Custom Fields ( which I'm not sure was a Newton feature out of the box or an extension ) so all my Custom Fields from the Newton were lost

The iTouch does not fully support Greek, so even though I can get my contacts on there, I can't easily get to them! The system is built for latin based alphabets
Custom fields don't bother me as much as I don't use them

2. Calendar: Seems to be missing a few things as well. I'm not sure I actually need them but I guess time will tell.

Having used iCal for the last 3 years, whatever is missing, I haven't missed

3. Notes:  This has to be the most useless Notes App ever made! You cannot set the title of the Note it is simply the first line of your Note so I am forever having to put the title there. There is no Landscape Mode. It doesn't support Checklists or allow you to put them in Folders ( or at least Groups like in Address book ) and I cannot seem to Sync them only Email them!

This IS a major annoyance. The Notes app is useless. I used my newton to take many, many notes. In meetings, in the classroom, at work. It was great! My iPod Touch is awful at taking notes. The N800 has a program that is somewhat comparable to the Notes app on the Newton, but it's slow.

There are of course features missing:1. HWR - There is a program called WritePad which gives you HWR via finger which works really well and I would love to work out if they are using Inkwell or a Home-spun HWR Engine; they are producing apps for this as well and their Notes App looks interesting but it is missing Checklists which I feel is a must.

You know, I would love HWR on the iPod Touch, but truth be told, I almost never used it. Initially I used it a lot, and it was great on the Newton. However as I met and recommended with my friends from Greece, I started taking notes in a mixture of Greek, English and something in between. The Newton did not recognize this. In class, I would take notes of words in German and Italian, but the dictionaries would not always recognize the words. The notes app on the newton worked well for monolingual people, but in my case it didn't fit my needs. Ink-notes were more useful.

2. Find - There is no Search feature so I can't simply search on a Clients Name and get a list of all my Visits from the Calendar and the Address book entry which I used quite a lot on the Newton.

Ditto!

3. Copy and Paste - Such a simply feature which could be implemented just like the Newton is missing. But I have yet to have missed it.There is probably a lot more that could be said.

I have missed copy/paste on the iPod Touch, but I always have my N800 to fall back on, so if I need to copy something to/from the web browser into/from another app, I use the N800

At this point I have gotten the touch to the point that for the first time since I owned a Newton it is actually sitting on my desk at home and not being carried to and from work each day. I think the potential is there but it will need some Apps built to provide the "missing" bits. For me, the first step will be the Notes App. I hope to start working on building such an App in the next few months.

One thing that I really miss from the notes app on the Newton, that I wish were implemented on the iPod Touch OS is the different kinds of notes. I want to-do lists (and have the synced with mail/ical). I was graph paper. I want plain paper to draw on. I want shapes and different size marker tips. Yes I can get all those in three separate apps (kinda), but the notes app on the Newton did all this.

Tags: technology, apple, Newton, opinion

Along with the Y2K10 bug I saw a lot of people playing the blame game concerning the cancellation of the Newton platform, and thus leaving this Y2K10 time bomb unfixed.

People are quick to blame Steve Jobs because the Newton was not his creation. Valerio Mitritsakis has a great answer to the steve-blame (and I agree with it):

A bit off topic here, still I've had a thought I want to share with  
you. Most people attribute the decision to kill the Newton to a  
revenge of Steve Jobs against Sculley.

However "colorful" (to put it mildly) Steve\s character is (from what  
we read here and there) he is no fool. What I believe happened with  
the Newton was that when Apple faced bankruptcy and called back
Steve Jobs in 1997 as a CEO it needed a few things in order to move on.
1st and foremost to focus on the key areas it was best at which were Creative
Pros (DTP, Design. Prepress) and Education. The next important thing it
needed was a commitment for the development of one of the most
renown application suites, Microsoft Office.

However the deal was something more than that as it included a patent
cross licensing plus some serious cash and more stuff.

This brings us to what I think happened with the Newton. Apple agreed  
with Microsoft to kill the Newton so that they would have the handheld  
marked to them selves.

In the light of saving the company, killing the Newton was a small  
price to pay and kept Apple out of the market for a decade until 2007  
when they introduced the
iPhone...

Of course it is totally possible that all of this exists only in my  
mind as I do not have any connection whatsoever to Apple and I could  
not have any insight on this matter.

Tags: apple, technology, Newton

Well, the NewtonTalk list has been buzzing lately about the Y2K10 bug that is going to plague Newtons come next year. So what is it? It's similar to the Y2K bug (or oversight depending how you look at it) that was a headache on our computers not so long ago.

Here is an explanation from Andrei:



The basic issue is that the time calculations that deal with time containing
seconds work with integers, and as of January 5th, 2010 the number of
secondsthat have gone by since January 1, 1993 is greater than an integer
canhandle.

The Newton uses two formats for dates, number of minutes since January 1,
1904 and the number of seconds since 1993. It appears that the problem lies
with the functions dealing with the date in seconds, the date functions that
deal with years, months, and days have plenty of space left.  It looks like
the value is stored in a 29 bit value. All hell should break loose at second
2**29 which would be January 5, 2010 at 18:48:31.

The system routine TimeInSecondsToTime() returns an unexpected value.
If you give it the largest 29 bit value it gives a correct answer, but if you give
it a 30 bit number it screws up.
But the routines that handle date conversions handle the later dates.

Tags: technology, Newton, NewtonOS, bug

Earlier this month I went to visit my dad, and per chance I picked up a box with old memorabilia which included old apple ads from magazines like MacUser, MacWorld and MacAddict (as well as a few full issues!)

I found this ad for an Apple Newton 2100 which is awesome (and it made me want a Newton even more, even though as a high school students I could not afford one).




for a larger image click here

Tags: technology, ads, Newton, apple, PDA, macaddict

Thinking of retro operating systems, I had a bizarre realization the other day: out of all of the original PDA operating systems, Windows CE is the only one still evolving! If you think about it, the original PDA operating systems were these:


Apple's NewtonOS
Palm's PalmOS
Sharp's Synergy OS
Sony's MagicCap OS
Microsoft's Windows CE


Now Apple, Sony and Sharp came out of the PDA market and killed off their operating systems. Now I know that the Newton community still keeps the Newton current, but there is only so much enthusiasts can do with what they are given as building blocks. Palm is pulling a Commodore on us and keeps messing with the release dates and updates to the PalmOS. For all intents and purposes the PalmOS is dead.


Now Windows CE is really the only one that has endured! Sure the first versions were awful, but ten years later, it doesn't stink as much, and some people like it! (well some people like S&M too but anyway).


I find it interesting that Microsoft and Windows CE is the 'old school' that won the "PDA OS wars" and Apple and Google are the new guys entering the market.

Tags: technology, windows, Newton, palm, magiccap, PDA

The laptop-style battery I've had in my vintage Newton 2100 has finally kicked the bucket - it no longer holds a charge! Even though I can send it out and have it re-celled, I don't really know how much longer Newton accessories and services will be available. Despite the active newton community, the device is about ten years old! I searched on eBay last week and I found a functional battery holder, so that I can use regular (or rechargeable) AA batteries with my Newton. I just received it today and it works like a charm!

Now if only there were an X-Port version for MacOS X!

Tags: Newton, battery, purchases

The World Wide Newton Conference for this year takes place in Tokyo next month. Last year Paul Guynot announced updates to his Newton emulator for the MacOS and for Linux devices (Zaurus and Nokia N800). The future of the platform was also discussed, things like getting color for the Newton, getting the OS onto another platform, and so on. This got me really interested, and happy, that the Newton is moving on, despite Apple's abandonment of the platform about ten years ago.

I have not used my Newton regularly for about four years now, however I am considering bringing it back from retirement for day to day note taking, GTD, project management usage. I am eager to download conference presentation notes, powerpoint (or keynote) slides, and to follow developments in the Newton community.

I had thought of selling off my Newton quite a few times...but I am currently more optimistic about platform improvements

Tags: Newton, emulation, NewtonOS, Conference, development