From: Marcus Andree S. Magalhaes (marcus.magalhaes_at_vlinfo.com.br)
Date: Mon Mar 08 2004 - 07:31:44 PST
<snip>
>>That works. Period. A lot of signatues made, recently, Macromedia
>> release Shockwave to Solaris/Intel.
>
> [How many signatures did this take? How many Newton users are still out
> there, 20.000? How many might be whipped into a frenzy to sign on the
> dotted line?]
>
Several thousands, if I recall correctly. But that's a different situation.
Macromedia already had Shockwave ported to Solaris/Sparc. It's only software
and, when properly coded, a port from Solaris/Sparc to Solaris/Intel is
only a matter of recompiling the source and creating the proper target
files. OK, to "properly code" something, you may have a hell of work, but
that's the idea...
<snip>
> The only question is - what do Newton appreciators actually want and how
> likely are these things to happen? How can we bring it off?
>
<snip>
>
> Launch, License or Liberate - what do you think?
>
<snip>
Well, as I said before, It's a start. Sure, there's a lot of "entertainment"
value on this. Personally, I simply don't believe Apple will "relaunch" a
better Newton. Can't put all the blame onto Steve Jobs, too: he felt Apple
should concentrate on "normal" computers. PDAs were in a gray area back
then. There was no warranty of profit by selling them and there was good
compatition (what doesn't particularly imply in "better" devices).
Now, Apple is too busy in keeping its small, but loyal, niche. The semi-
officially supported PDA is the Palm-based devices.
What do I think about this? What do we need from Apple? IMO, we _need_
software and, maybe, a license to build similar devices. Or a promiss
to "not sue" whomever builds it.
Hardware specs are there and most of them are not build by Apple: ARM
processor, Cyrrus Chipset (as someone posted in another message). We
can certainly get the specs from hardware vendors. They're far more
open to this. After all, they want their hardware USED.
Backwards compatibility would be great. But, if Apple doesn't license or
liberate NOS, it can be emulated or cloned.
But, how can we replace the HWR software? It's not an easy task. We better
keep what's been working for ages. I think this is the main issue to deal.
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
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