[NTLK] I miss the Newton

[B]

Doc Clu wrote:
> Surprised no comments.   Let me ask this:
> 
> How do you all with the Newton make it relevant to use in today’s world that tends to be more USB/Micro SD/Bluetooth oriented.

OK, this long-extinct dinosaur will bite:

Newton has what I need when I leave home: contacts, appointments, bills to pay (I pay quite a few in cash, don’t trust banks, etc.)

I have a simple cell phone, but mainly for emergencies or occasional-to-rare unexpected stuff since there are no pay phones anywhere. Plus I don’t like getting radiated.

I have an iPad for when I’m stuck somewhere and want to check news or so. I’m retired and very few emails happen, but I check out of hope. Plus I live outside the wireless network so can’t text most of the time. (Texters assume one is always plugged in. Plus I don’t like getting interrupted by something like Messages when I’m focused on some task or project, especially trying to think how best to phrase or express a thought that wants to get written but is reluctant to show itself.)

It’s so rare I radiate myself with iPad WiFi I’m not worried about it, especially ’cause I’m over 2/3 century old, unlikely a new cancer from such seldom EMR will take me out, or have some other significant mal effect.

It’s always such a delight to push Newtie’s switch and even if after weeks without use: Instantly there’s exactly what I want and need, no keyboard nor voice recognition needed. A notepad with book capacity that doesn’t crumple or bend, plus I don’t see an end in sight to its empty pages. Appointments one tap away. Contacts another tap. No separate paper calendar nor address book.

And I can WRITE ON IT like a notepad! HELLOOOOO and HALLELUJAH!

And so simple to edit! To move stuff around! Redo heaven! No keyboard! No crazy QWERTY layout to remember, nor looking down from where one is focusing on what one is writing.

Since it doesn’t get that much use, no worries about battery for weeks to months.

SOOOO simple to use! No endless hoops to jump through, no impenetrable thicket of menus to decipher.

In one word: Divine.

In a universe by itself.

I’ll never forgive Jobs. (Actually, I let that go long ago: no help being burdened by it. But it helped teach me to think of them all as corpoRapions. Would Jurassic Park be worse? Especially Wall Street and its vermin Trumpsters. Boy does that need extinction bad! —— Flame suit on!) 

B

> On Feb 15, 2019, at 10:33 PM, Clu <drclu at swbell.net> wrote:
>> 
>> The Newton was a cool thing.  It was a tablet before tablets were a thing.   Sure there was a Palm Pilots, and Zoomers and iPaqs but it was still for the techie person.  Not like today where EVERYONE has a tablet.
>> 
>> Newton OS was compact and I really wish I could see its version in 2019.  So streamline and friendly.
>> 
>> I pick up the Newton now, it is comparatively heavy.  The batteries barely hold a charge if they work at all.  Information is not easily transmitted from or to the Newton.   These days there are many devices easier to work with.
>> 
>> But damn I miss the Newton and the fun it brought me sometimes.  Really made the mid to late nineties a fun place.
>> 
>> And when people became addicted to their phones I just look at them and say “I was done with my tablet addiction in 2005.”  :P
>> 
>> Newbies.  
>>