From: Ed Kummel (tech_ed_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Mar 21 2004 - 21:50:04 PST
WEll...try it for your self here!
http://newton.tek-ed.com/magic_cap.zip
It is a very slick OS. Totally and completly GUI!!! In
fact, it's so GUI, it makes a direct corolation to the
real world!
You start off on an office at a desk. The desk has
drawers and stuff that you normally would find on a
desk of a technophobe.
To do something else, you need to leave the office by
tapping on the door. This leads you to the hallway.
You travel down the hallway, changing hanging pictures
if you like. There is a control panel built into a
wall you can modify and various other offices you can
enter. One door is a library. This holds files that
you download. You leave the building and walk outside.
Flying just above the horizon is a jet. You can
reposition the jet if you like (if you go to the
control panel, you can add other dynamic objects that
appear on all screens...I personally like the
ladybug...it crawls everywhere. As you walk down the
street, you have other buildings you can enter, such
as AOL...It is so intuitive, anyone's grandmother can
use it! My wife was able to send and receive a fax
using a Sony PIC1000 in less than 5 minutes of use.
But...I heard that the OS was buggy and crapped out
alot causing people to loose a lot of data...it was
scrapped because nobody could trust it...I remember
that the Woz was even in on it at the beginning...
What makes the Newton able to kick other PDA's a$$?
Well, for one thing it's more "P" than "DA". Unlike
other devices which are more "DA" and not very "P"
Additionally, the Newton is more than "just a PDA".
It's an autonomous handheld computer that can live
life completly seperate from any desktop. Most
existing PDAs today survive as a "window" to the
world...an extension of the desktop, so to say. My own
Newt can attest to that. I haven't connected my Newt
to my desktop since I sent it to Dr Newt to get it
upgraded to a 2100!
Ed
web/gadget guru
--- Vaguely Radio <vradio_at_maine.rr.com> wrote:
> Hey everyone... since getting my Newton, and being
> the owner of a HP
> 200LX palmtop computer ("Wow! I can run DOS on this
> thing!"), it seems
> I've begun a sort of personal gadget-collecting
> renaissance. I've
> heard rumblings about Magic Cap devices, and I'm
> sure at least one of
> you out there has one or many. I've found I can get
> a pretty
> reasonable-seeming deal on a DataRover 840 and I'm
> wondering what
> others may think of this particular device or others
> of its ilk. A few
> specific questions just for ease-of-reply:
>
> - Is Magic Cap fairly Newton-like? If so, how -
> graphical interface,
> object-oriented data soup structure?
>
> - Is it slower than dirt or is it responsive?
>
> - Are there better devices to consider than the
> DataRover, or is that
> the "top of the line" as my limited research
> findings would indicate?
>
> - Is it expansible or is it hard to find packages on
> the net? Is there
> a fairly useful backcatalogue of software available?
> How are the
> built-in applications in terms of functionality, and
> are they usable in
> the modern world (i.e. is its e-mail system
> proprietary and therefore
> unusable as an e-mailer now that there are more
> clear standards)?
>
> - any other caveats or encouragements?
>
> - What makes the Newton kick Magic Cap's
> metaphorical ass? It
> definitely seems to have won the battle of the PDAs
> of that time
> period, so I'm wondering what the Newton does right
> that Magic Cap
> apparently did wrong (apart maybe from bad
> marketing)?
>
> Thanks for any and all input,
> Dan
=====
"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese."
- Charles De Gaulle, former French President
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