NewtonTalk.net September 2009 archive: Re: [NTLK] FW: If only I

From: Ed Kummel <tech_ed_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Mon Sep 21 2009 - 16:24:13 EDT

I remember back in the day, I was traveling to several communications tradeshows every year...Comdex, CTIA, stuff like that. Managed to talk Apple into sending us a couple of demo Newtons (120s at the time). They sent 2 working units, and 5 non-working units. Out of the 5 non-working units, 3 were just shells and 2 were fully functional, except they didn't have ROMs in them. I had a contact in Apple who worked in a capacity that was able to get me two ROM cards (under the radar) so I could make the other 2 120s functional. Lucky for me, these new ROM cards were OS2 (acquired about a month before Apple made the upgrade available to the general public) Took those to trade shows and rented the 120 OS1.3s. Almost got in trouble though when an Apple person showed up at our booth and recognize the Newtons on display, and started playing around with the 120s with OS2 and started frowning...He walked away and I never saw him except he was talking to another
Apple dude and they were having a heated discussion...nothing came of it, but I did put those Newt under the table for the rest of the trade show!
To this day, I still have one of those 120s. Apple never asked for any of our Newts back...not the shells, or the supposedly non-working units...
ed
web/gadget guru
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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 Sun, 9/20/09, Frank Gruendel <newtontalk@pda-soft.de> wrote:

From: Frank Gruendel <newtontalk@pda-soft.de>
Subject: [NTLK] FW: If only I had the money...
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Date: Sunday, September 20, 2009, 2:26 PM

> Maybe Apple has (had in the Sculley era) the same kind
> of "loose tracking" policy about prototypes they send for
> review.

Very probably. I still have in my basement what must have been the first Power-Mac in Europe. Apple
developers looked enviously at me back then because it had by some unplanned accident twice the
video memory their development machines had. On my way to the London airport I almost lost this
machine because this stupid shuttle driver drove away with my luggage, but without me.

Up to today Apple hasn't asked to get this unit back...

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de

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Re: [NTLK] FW: If only I had the money...