Category: newton

Who wants a file archive?

I started this thing, which I called UNNA, back in September of 2000. At the time, there had been a great collection of Newton software called NewtonMAD – however, some of it was warez and so it needed to be ‘cleaned up’. Some Newties, including myself, started doing this, and out of it came UNNA, the goal of which was to compile, amass, and categorize as much Newton software and as many file archives as we possibly could, in one place.

Back in 2000 I was still living in a dorm in University, and I was only a few weeks away from meeting my future wife. I was using an old DEC Alpha workstation ($50 surplus from the U of G CompSci department) running NetBSD as the server, and my residence internet connection for bandwidth.

UNNA grew and grew and I kept on finding and mirroring files, tirelessly moving them around, extracting them, whatever whatever. I realized it would be a good think to store file information in a database. Paul and I came up with a database schema, and JB Hemlock wrote a PHP based management system for it, for free (which was frickin awesome). I kept adding files. I added the ability for people to submit files. I started a network of mirror sites. Redesigned the website a few times.

Where the hell am I going with this? Basicially out of all of the things I’ve done, UNNA is the longest-running and probably the most successful. That said, I still have a love/hate relationship with it. Since about 2002 my time for all things Newton-related has been in decline. The past few months it has been quite close to zero. I feel like shit because of this, I feel like I’ve been letting the community down by not updating and not adding new files.

I’ve false-started, dropped, or quit so many ideas and projects in the last 5 years I probably couldn’t remember them all. Now I’m going to be 25 and I’m finally starting to feel focused: I’m finally going to be working in my field, software development, I have a wife who loves me and a house to work on. I didn’t have any of these things when I was just a geek in my dorm room. Now I do and they’re more important than my geeky exploits.

I’ve had tons of cool site ideas, code ideas, but I don’t have time to put them down on paper or in code. Little things I sometimes finish, like the time I figured out how to find a PICT image in a Newton package and convert it to a GIF, but by and large my Newton and my hard drive is full of half-finished code and stuff.

I want to get rid of UNNA, but there’s no place to put it. I’ve let it stagnate and people have called me on it numerous times, but no one has offered to take it over. The maintainer would have to have an intimate knowledge of PHP, MySQL, Apache, and Linux, not to mention the Newton. I still love using my Newton and do so every day, but as far as accomplishing things in code, I have a feeling I’m going to be able to fulfill those aspirations at my job. I am really starting to like my company, warts and all, and since I walked in the door I knew that it was full of great code and smart people. I’m finally going to be developing code instead of support, and I am looking forward to working hard and focusing on it.

Because I have old hardware, I need weird networking devices.

• PCI 2.1 (not 2.2) and Linux compatible 802.11b network card. Almost all cards are PCI 2.2, and the motherboard in my home server freezes when I try to use a PCI 2.2 card.
• 5V 16-bit PCMCIA 802.11b card – must be based on Lucent/Agere or Prism/Prism2 chipsets – basicially any card on this list.
• Some kind of 802.11b <-> Ethernet bridge, so I can extend the home network into the basement where the PPC Mac and other things will live.

Anyone got this stuff kicking around? Let me know.

The Newton community is attracting a lot of attention in the media again. Since the upcoming World-Wide Newton Conference has attracted ex-Newton engineers as well as enthusiasts, and former Apple CEO John Sculley is the honorary president of the Worldwide Newton Association, we’re getting press in places like Wired and Slashdot, and hopefully a few other publications too.

I didn’t really write about this yet, but two weeks ago we got two Apple eMate 300s. They were quite a steal so I couldn’t pass them up. The eMate makes a great little word processing machine, and is quite usable with the memory upgrade. Sandy’s came with one already installed and I got one for mine shortly thereafter. It’s still an eye-catcher, when I pull it out on the train to tap out my thoughts I get lots of looks and sometimes a few stares.

The Stanford Newton User Group held it’s 10th anniversary meeting the other day! Without a doubt they are the longest-running NUG. Hats off to SNUG!

photo by Adam Tow

I’ve just released InPath, a Newton driver for the InPath MW-400 serial barcode scanner. It’s a cool little scanner that was made especially for PDAs, and now it will act just like a keyboard with this driver. Thanks to Daniel Padilla for helping me out with this.

A Vintage Palmtop Holds Users in Thrall (GIF Image, 1326×906 pixels) – article about the Newton with my photo in it from the March 27, 2003 edition of the New York Times. Thanks to Al Muniz for mailing me a copy of that paper!

In addition, Al says that the article was also reprinted in some other large US newspapers – I can’t remember which ones. So far, a total of zero people have recognized me on the street 🙂

A Vintage Palmtop Holds Users in Thrall – Ahh, more Newton publicity! Bring it on! Apparently yes, they did publish my photo but I haven’t gotten to pick up the paper yet today as I’m feeling somewhat under the weather and stayed home.

State Of The Newton Address

by Victor Rehorst (who is the “king of NewtonTalk”, but doesn’t need to be worshipped) victoratnewtontalk.net – http://www.chuma.org/

Today marks the five year anniversary of the cancellation of the Newton. Around this time in 2001, I wasn’t sure if the Newton and its followers would last the year: Palm and Pocket PC were making strong showings at the expense of the smaller PDA players such as Psion. It seemed like Newton software development was at a total standstill, with a small handful of exceptions. NewtonTalk was losing subscribers because of mismanagement at the hands of IdeaCast.

Today, some key developers have joined those few and created applications that we only dreamed of: MP3 players, ATA support, desktop synchronization, and TCP/IP and IR connectivity, to name a few. NewtonTalk has grown by 60% since June 2001. The Newton still gets positive press coverage from publications such as Wired and MacAddict. There’s been an explosion of Newton-based Websites. People want to use their Newtons and seem willing to do so through any means necessary. I believe that we are in the midst of the Newton’s renaissance, five years after it all seemed like the end was nigh.

In my opinion, the Newton platform is as healthy as a five-year-old platform can get. Used hardware is plentiful, mostly because the large number of units that were in the vertical market are now being liquidated. This drove prices on 2×00 models down from $400 US to $150 and below. Suddenly, people could purchase a PDA for less than a Palm or Win CE machine, and it had a huge screen and great battery life! This coupled with some press coverage and much evangelism by the community actually caused the number of personal Newton users to increase as business users decreased.

This influx of users has fueled many important software developments as well. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, but here’s a short list of new software developments for the Newton that have come about since 2001:

• SimpleMail 4.3 with APOP/SMTP authentication, IMAP and vCard support

  • http://www.simple.dial.pipex.com/

• WaveLAN 802.11b wireless network card driver

  • http://www.ff.iij4u.or.jp/~ngc/eng/newtwave.htm

• Newtourage, information syncing with Entourage 2001/X

  • http://www.delcannsoftware.com/

• NewtSync, information sync system with extensible plug-ins

  • http://www.everchanging.com/newton/

• DIL Tester, first desktop connection app to support TCP/IP connections

  • http://www.tempel.org/newton/#DILplugin

• MAD Max, native MP3 player (with iTunes plugin)

  • http://40hz.org/MADNewton/

• Waba VM, bringing a whole new programming language to the Newton

  • http://www.tempel.org/newton/#DILtester

• many updates to NPDS, the Newton’s very own open source web server

  • http://npds.free.fr/

• Nitro, a free TinyTP / IrCOMM implementation

  • http://40hz.org/Nitro/

• NaPalm, the forthcoming (we hope) PalmOS emulator

  • http://www.sealiecomputing.com/Napalm4.GIF

• the Desktop Connection Library

  • (you’ll be hearing about this soon I think…)

Many of these pieces of software wouldn’t exist without the growth of the community in the past two years.

The Newton seems to attract a certain niche of supporters: people who have found things in the platform that haven’t been duplicated anywhere else. The screen size, the feeling of writing on paper, the intuitive OS, the unique system architecture, the dual PC Card slots even! We are people for whom Palms and PocketPCs are either flashy or underpowered. The Newton is still serving as an actually usable handheld computer five years after the last system was sold.

I’m rambling on now, and I’m way too tired to be writing this right now. So let me say this: the Newton is alive and well. It’s pretty rare for a user community to actually grow after the cancellation of a product line, but here we are, growing and extending our Newtons, and gaining more and more dedicated users. We eep on writing software, finding and making hardware fixes, and dreaming up new things to do with our Newtons. It’s just great. Of course, you all know that already. But maybe today, you should find someone who doesn’t, and show them how useful the Newton could be for them. How after five years, the Newton is still the most intelligent handheld computer.