From: Brian McMillan (brianmcmillan_at_mac.com)
Date: Fri Jan 31 2003 - 19:07:55 PST
The Dynapad is a great idea. I think that all of this talk of
duplicating the Newton is off base. The continued popularity of the
platform is based on a number of factors, First, is emotional. It
represents the best thing our favorite company has ever killed. I don't
think you can underestimate the "useful rarity" factor. Second, is the
physical. Compared with the Palm form factor and a small tablet PC, the
VCR / paperback sized Newton is the correct balance of size, weight,
and screen resolution. The third and most importantly however, and the
real reason we started and still use the Newton is that it works so
well.
We may never see another Apple Newton. Personally, I don't care *too
much* ;_-(. What I would really miss are the applications that just
work better. The key is that the Newton OS and the applications that
run on it are truly unique. The idea that the proper way to do things
is to store everything in a OODB, the idea that all applications have
access to each other and can easily share information, is still ground
breaking. Oh, don't forget the HWR it is still and perhaps will always
be the best.
What I would suggest is an concerted effort to recreate the "Newton"
experience. I'm not sure on the details but I would start with XML as a
data store, and a wide variety of front ends (platform native, java,
html, svg, quicktime, squeak, etc.). The critical point is that we
already have the requirements defined. If the presentation layer was
flexible, and the data store was XML, the only complex development
would be the middle-ware. I would argue that something based upon
XML-RPC would be a good start.
Imagine a Newton like application residing on your desktop, iPaq, web
page. The core application would have a web server interface to provide
nHTTPd like access to your data from anywhere, as well as a native OS
interface. You could back up and move your data by copying the XML data
store to another location. This can include text based data as well as
binary data that is encoded as base-64 like a mail attachment. See the
Apple .plist DTD for a suggested format. Oh yea, just like nSync's
soup extract. Don't forget that this should still sync perfectly with a
2100.
Some issues would be Infringing on Apple patents. Does anyone know what
patents are associated with the Newton? Infringing on the "look and
feel" of Apple software. Developing a good development and business
model. Should this be open source or private?
Anyone interested?
~ Brian McMillan
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