[NTLK] Newton is dead, long live Newton.

my kids and i sat through the live iphone demo today at macworld. i
was in the front row, directly in front of the podium where the young
woman was giving the demo. she had the iphone in her hand and there
was a presentation video hookup so it was also shown up on the big
screen as she used it as well.
it is everything my newton was, and everything it would have become
had it been allowed to evolve. the only thing missing is the
sketchpad function. hwr is not necessary for full utility in this
form factor. yes, this is a handheld computer.

she used it deftly but was obviously not well-practiced or slick.
she went through every function in detail. it's something most folks
will be able to use without learning it first. the newt os,
brilliant as it is, doesn't hold a candle to it. there's definitely
a family resemblance, though.

sure, we still don't know about the 3rd-party apps and external
keyboards and storage, but you can bet folks will jump right on that
(sanctioned by apple or not).

seriously, we can finally lay the newt to rest. newton is now a
hobby; its rightful descendent and heir is in place. and for a
whole lot less money! folks, make all the remarks you want about eye
candy and slickness, but this device is a solid, well-designed laptop/
phone/entertainment/contacts/calendar unit with a gui that is just as
clever (if not more so) than newton os.

i wore my newtontalk shirt to the show today in honor of the passing
of the baton, and a few (mostly older) folks made remarks in
recognition. i'd stopped using mine at least 4 years ago now, but
still read this list religiously because it's interesting, and the
newt still has a warm spot in my heart for lots of reasons.

but i guess it's time to shift the thought of "we'll keep making good
ole newton compatible with the newest technologies because there's
nothing to take its place" to "let's have fun using a clever but
obsolete device."

here's something sweet about all this: i like the idea that quite a
few of the contacts which are now in my Mac's address book were first
put into digital form by me writing them into a newton, then passed
through several other newtons, and eventually migrated into some
prior Mac's address book. This was by some crazy sync scheme using
that damfool microsnot Entourage as a middleman (what was the sync
tool called, Newtourage?) then exporting that to Address Book .app.
Some of them still have HWR errors that i never bothered to correct.

what's sweet about it is that those same little newt artifacts will
sync over to my iphone, and i'll leave them there. so a little spark
of newt will live within iphone...

On Jan 10, 2007, at 1:32 PM, Adriano wrote:

> Hi Marty,
>
> Mr. Grossman from the Time Magazine agrees with you,
> please take a look http://tinyurl.com/yy27y8
>
> (The link points at the 2nd page of the article,
> where Newton is mentioned at the half of the page)
>
> Cheers,
> Adriano
>
> http://notwen.com
>
> 10/jan/07 Martin wrote:
>
>> It's actually a full blown personal computer just like newton was.
>
> --
> 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/
>

-- Peter
pjfraser@mac.com

-- 
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/