* Paul Nuernberger <pen1_at_spiff.net> on Mon, 13 Aug 2001
| For some, maybe.
For many, definitely. For lefties, absolutely.
| My OMP recognized my writing from about day two with enough accuracy to
| make it very useable. Printing ... well that came in NOS2.0 and later.
And even that gives me trouble some times. My printing is attrocious, my
cursive is worse.
[...]
| I can't speak for those who are left-handed. That Grafitti was created
| specifically to address the needs of left-handers (or even for that matter,
| specifically for the Newton) is news to me. At that time in history there
| were more than two true 'written input' recognizers. Paragraph & Grafitti
| were just the 'best of the lot' in many ways (mainly they worked, mostly).
Grafitti was originally a third party product for the 1.x Newtons, before
there were any other PDAs available (I am not counting the relatively cheap
electronic organizers in that). This is going back to about the time the
MP110 came out.
Some of the people who created Grafitti went on to form Palm.
| Obviously, you knew the difference, eh ?? Odd how the recognizer that
| worked the best was written by Apple, in house.
Did it? There is no doubt that Newton is technically superior to anything
else even remotely like it. Every Palm user I've asked about it has said
something like, "Grafitti wasn't hard to learn." Grafitti is showing up in
embedable systems all over the map. Rosetta is showing up... in some WinCE
machines.
Survival of the fittest.
| "Common knowledge equates to mass stupidity" - can't attribute any better
| than to one of my professors, first I heard it at least.
Common knowledge begets common usage. Common usage begets definition. And
fact does not equal truth.
[...]
| Yeah, and according to all the experts, Apple has been dead for ten years
| now - its just that nobody noticed the stink yet. I remember plenty being
| said by Apple about the new, improved recognition.
Preaching to the choir does not count.
Apple failed to convince more than a relatively small number of people that
the new recognizer was a Good Thing. Case in point, many still remember
Garry Trudeau's first Newton strip, but few remember the second-hand report
that he had no problems with the MP120 that Apple gave him.
| You still can't prove (or disprove) a negative - like that old gag "so
| are you still beating your wife?". Once again mass stupidity (sheep
| mentality, intellectual laziness, call it what you like) wins out.
What negative? Apple's original handwriting recognizer failed to work well
or at all for many who tried to use it. That is not a negative, it is a
fact for a statistical sample of at least two: myself and Garry Trudeau. I
had to write very slowly and carefully to make my old MP110 recognize
anything I wrote, even after spending weeks training it. Garry's
experience is well-publicized.
What negative? Apple failed to change a significant fraction of anyone's
mind about Newton's bad HWR. The original post is proof of that.
-- Rat <ratinox_at_peorth.gweep.net> \ Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ which, if exposed due to rupture, should PGP Key: at a key server near you! \ not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.-- This is the Newtontalk mailinglist - http://www.newtontalk.net To unsubscribe or manage: visit the above link or mailto:newtontalk-request_at_newtontalk.net?Subject=unsubscribe
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sun Sep 09 2001 - 19:47:06 EDT