NewtonTalk.net June 2009 archive: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iP

From: Ed Kummel <tech_ed_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Mon Jun 15 2009 - 17:08:04 EDT

Many, Many years ago...it seems a millennia ago, back when I was a mere lad starting in Highschool, my grandmother, through a loss in translation, purchased and gave me an HP67 calculator...this LED, single line readout card reader calculator had more buttons than I knew what to do with...It had a cool looking leatherette vinyl case that was plush with gold shag on the inside, with a pocket that held a spiral notebook that held all the programming cards. I think that this was 1976 or 77? I still don't do well with dates...I learned early in life that the inability to organize my life was going to be my downfall...so I wrote a program that loaded on one card, and stored data onto a second card. I had one card for dates, one card for phone numbers (no alphabet, but you could fake it with numbers that looked like letters...hmmm, perhaps I *did* invent l33t speak!
Anyway, I used this system for many years until the card reader motor finally gave out...but by then I was going to college and so got an HP27 clamshell with a 4 line LCD. This was alpha-numeric so it was an easy task to write my organizer program for this device. I used this for 2-3 years as well. I worked part time at a local Radio Shack and used various portable computers that Radio Shack sold. But they were all too bulky...including the famous Model 100. One day I observed the manager demonstrate this clamshell organizer that RS made. It was a sleek device, black and inconspicuous...He pulled out his personal device, and showed a customer how robust it was by smacking it on the counter top...needless to say, it stopped working after that demo. He tossed it in the trash (being the manager, he could just grab another device and chalk that damaged one as shop worn...)
Anyway, I grabbed the organizer out of the trash and replaced the crystal and it worked. I loved this device and used it constantly for years...(I guess it's the late 80s now) But one day at a local McDonald's, I accidental left it on a table when I went to throw my trash away and it grew legs and walked off to a car in the parking lot and drove away, never to be seen again..My only consolation was the fact that this thing was password protected...RS didn't sell the device any longer (I had tried other RS devices, but none that worked as nicely as this thing did). I was looking at my most recent DAK catalog...I purchased a lot of stuff from these guys! Heck, I still own and use my DAK bread machine! And they were selling this really cool Casio Boss 9000 (I believe it was called) A bit bigger than my RS device, but it did so much more, had a much larger screen and was more intuitive!. That's when I started my Man-bag carry. Being German, I could get away
with doing this..unfortunately, I was in the United States, so it was still a weird thing to see. I went through 4 sets of batteries on this thing (the batteries last almost a year, so that will give you an idea on how long I had this thing) Then I got a job that offered me the ability to play with these devices professionally! I started out with the HP95L. Loved this thing. used it extensively! Then I got the AT&T EO 440. This was the best thing in the world at the time...It's notebook idea was genius. Create a book, and populate that book with documents created by other applications. It didn't matter what applications, the documents they create were cataloged inside that book you created and the applications opened seamlessly as if they were part of that book!. I had the OKI 900 cellphone attachment and felt that there was nothing I couldn't do with this thing! Sure it was bulky, But compared to what alternative? A Kaypro transportable? Then came the
BellSouth Simon (you really need to google this device...this was the first "smartphone" ever created! It was amazing!) This thing was so good, I made it a requirement that whoever was on pager duty had to also take a Simon!
At about the same time, I got my first glimpse of a Newton...well, not exactly a Newton, but it was a Motorola Marco (we never played with an OMP...too new, no direction at the time) With the Ardis Packet radio built in, this was the perfect device to connect to a newly burgeoning Internet. From there, the floodgates seemed to open up. I had a new toy every week, sometimes two at once. Devices from Motorola like the Envoy and Marco; HP with the Omni-go and 100 and 200 LX devices. Sony with the PIC 1000 and PIC 2000. And then things from this new company called Nokia..was it a Nokia 9000? I can't remember that well...we didn't really like it too much. The UI was really clunky and wasn't very intuitive either...Apple sent us a couple of devices too...The brand-new MP120 running OS1.2
The first one was just a mock-up and didn't work....it had everything inside it, but it didn't work...I found out that it didn't have a ROM board...Apple also sent out some "loaner" devices as well...in total, we had 5 MP120s. 4 that worked which we had to send back to Apple, and one crippled unit that we were allowed to keep to show at tradeshows.
Through my connections at Apple, I managed to get an engineer to talk to another engineer in the Newton group to send me a replacement ROM board...I popped this in and fired up the device...It had the newer OS on it (was this OS2.0b? I cant' remember too well) Needless to say, I retired my old (6 months old) Marco and started using my new 120 full time! Coupled with my AllPoints card, and the DTS mobile system, I was unwired and living large! And because I was so knowledgeable in these things, my boss started taking me around the country to tradeshows....Vegas, Atlanta, Chicago. We made the circuit and picked up devices everywhere we went. I skipped the 130 ...there was no real point in my eyes. Then we got a MP2000. WOW was all I could say...resolution was incredible...better than anything on the market! Not even the net HP320LX could match it! The PIC2000 from Sony looked pale in comparison! I had to have one. So I adopted one from loaner stock and
used it as my own personal device with the understanding that if we needed to send to a customer for rent, I would relinquish my 2000....This happened twice...Once to the South Pole and once to Planet One to figure out how to make it talk to a satellite phone! (which I had already done with the south pole expedition!). Unfortunately, I got offered a job making tons more money so I had to leave that circus and take on a real job...I was married and had a house and responsibilities...I gave my boss a thousand dollars and walked out the door with *MY* MP2000! Later that year, I sent it to Apple to upgrade to a 2100 ($20 for this upgrade!) and shortly there after Apple declared that the Newton was to be no longer...sad really! I was still doing consulting work for my old boss, and wrote a eulogy for the Newton on the company website...
I played with other devices...as I could afford them, A few palms here, some BlackBerrys there. I even played with a horrible device called an iPaq...this thing kept me in constant fear that I would loose all me data when I most needed it! In all these experiments, I always had my trusty Newton...It was my safety blanket...dependable and infinitely usable...
I still have most of those devices I mentioned above...somewhere! In fact, i found my EO just the other day, in a box in the basement...the rechargeable batteries are dead, but they look easily rebuildable...just a bunch of stacked "C" cells...I would never spend the time to do this, but it did bring up the nostalgia of the hey-day of when the world wanted something, but didn't know what it was.
As long as I have my Newton. My wife has grown to accept that I will always carry a Newton with me...In fact, she refers to the newton as if it's an entity in and of its self. We were looking to see if there was a full moon one time we were on vacation, and she say, "ask the Newton. Let's see what it says?". Another time we were trying to figure out a tim for a party of 8 people...nobody could agree, so my wife pipes up and says, "Let the Newton decide" I fire up a tip app, enter in the numbers and easily give the amount everybody needs to pay!
Yeah...I have an HTC tilt and love the thing...it does a ton of stuff that my Newton just doesn't do...but still....it's not a Newton. Nothing is, and that's why it can't be replaced in my life. I still carry a Man-bag and the Newton occupies a prominent pocket...In fact, I purchase the man-bag only after I make sure that the Newton will fit!
Ed
web/gadget guru
http://newton.tek-ed.com (download Newton packages)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Richard Feynman, Physicist, Nobel winner (1918-1988)

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers."

--- On Sat, 6/13/09, Reilly001os@aol.com <Reilly001os@aol.com> wrote:

From: Reilly001os@aol.com <Reilly001os@aol.com>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iPhone OS 3.0
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Date: Saturday, June 13, 2009, 1:55 PM

[snip]
There were PDAs before the Newton, just without much of the functionality of the Newton.

In fact, in ~1978, a patent was filed for a very primitive PDA. It was basically a calculator with the ability to log in some dates. Anyway, the concept was already in place long before the Newton. And then there were some devices already on the market as well like the EO 440 (very functional, but slow...), but that was only just a few months earlier to market than the Newton. Before this there was the Psion Organiser I (1984), and in 1991 the HP Jaguar (95LX)... to mention a few.
[snip]

Ryan and friends,
To me basic features equals a basic electronic organizer not a PDA. There's a difference between a paper organizer/planner notebook and a live personal assistant just as there's a difference between an electronic organizer and a PDA. The difference to me is the newtons search and assist functions which modern "PDA"s and smartphones mostly still lack. I'm sure there's more intelligent features that really make it a PDA and not just an electronic organizer but those two are the stand outs for me. I look at my blackberry and iPod touch as electronic organizers because they lack some or all of these intelligent features for personally assisting me.
Basic features = electronic organizer
Intelligent features = PDA

That's my humble view :-)

Joe Reilly
------Original Message------
From: Ryan Vetter
Sender: newtontalk-bounce@newtontalk.net
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
ReplyTo: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Subject: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iPhone OS 3.0
Sent: Jun 13, 2009 11:29

Wow the list is touchy this past week!

There were PDAs before the Newton, just without much of the functionality of the Newton.

"The Jaguar had superior specs with a massive 1mb ROM, 512kb RAM, PCMCIA II expansion slot, 4,8″ screen and a resolution of 240 x 128 against the Psion’s 1mb ROM, 256kb RAM, 4,3″ screen with 240×80, both on monochrome and with QWERTY keyboards. In 1992 HP launched a new Jaguar with double the RAM."

These products had "small keyboards, small displays, and basic features such as an alarm clock, calendar, telephone pad and calculator"

Regardless, the Newton took from these concepts, and then sprung out from others with lots of new features not previously predicated on earlier PDAs. So in reality, the Newton was not the first PDA, just the first modern PDA.

All the best,

Ryan

----- Original Message ----
From: James Fraser <wheresthatistanbul-newtontalk@yahoo.com>
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 3:52:11 AM
Subject: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iPhone OS 3.0

Hello,

--- On Sat, 6/13/09, Steven Scotten <splicer@paroxysm.com> wrote:

> You wrote that the Newton was "groundbreaking" and almost
> in the same breath claimed that Apple doesn't get "honor" for that.

This is what I said:

>Again, I'm not arguing that what Apple did with the PDA was not >groundbreaking. Merely that they were not first to market with a PDA >device and that honor lies with another company.

Can you kindly not put words into my mouth? I would appreciate that.

I said the above because, as near as I can make out, the Newton was not, in fact, the first PDA to market. Of course, if you have evidence to the contrary, I'm perfectly willing to listen to it.

But if you'll pardon my saying so, I don't appreciate someone taking two words out of two complete sentences of a total of thirty-three words, quoting those two words out of context, and attempting to make me appear to say something that I never actually said.

> I'm playing Devils Advocate to some degree here,

Yes, I rather noticed that. ¬_¬

I think we might be able to agree that the Newton was the first *practical* PDA to be made available. The same could be argued for the iPod: it was the first MP3 player that caught the imagination of the public at large.

But the iPod's runaway success doesn't change the fact that Apple did not invent the MP3 player. And the historical record seems to indicate that Apple was not the first to market a PDA, either, but that they are very closely associated with the PDA concept (and rightly so).

Best,

James Fraser

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