New Newt 

Well, I'm rejoining the world of Newton owners. I use to own an old MP 120, but the main use I put it to was playing an Othello-type game on it. I would occassionally use it to make journal entries while I was on the road. I put the calendar to very little use and the address book to next to none, as that I wasn't sufficiently organized to use either. Lain used it to do a great adaptation of the Aliens movie trilogy, but that's neither here nor there. The darned thing was very cool, and had an awesome interface, I just wasn't really able to take advantage of it.
But an interesting thing has happened. In the 6 years since the last Newton rolled off the line, technology has begun to catch up with the MP. Back then, you could, for example, check e-mail on a Newton, but you either had to use a landline (which tied you in place) or a cell phone equipped to be used with a computer (which, back in 98, was a real investment). Either way, you had to have a dial-in account and were limited by the speed of your modem.
Today, however, you can just plug a PC wireless card into the Newton, and you're online at blazing WiFi speeds.
An article 2 years ago in Wired summed it up nicely:
In January, Jonathan Wise's Handspring Visor organizer died, so he decided to get a different handheld.
After shopping around, he found a machine that did it all: Web, e-mail, calendar and address book, but it could also recognize ordinary, cursive handwriting that wasn't as awkward as graffiti.
Wise, a Web developer from Ontario, Canada, was impressed by the handheld's hardware: a big, clear screen; two PC card slots; external memory support; and long battery life.
can connect to Macs, PCs and Unix machines, as well as all kinds of networks, from wireless Wi-Fi networks to the new, always-on GPRS cell-phone nets.
It streams MP3s off the Net and can read headlines aloud that have been automatically fetched from online news sites.
What is this amazing machine? The latest sleek Clié from Sony, or a skunkworks Pocket PC yet to hit the market?
No, it's the granddaddy of them all: Apple's Newton, which is still going strong despite being discontinued by Apple in 1998.
The more I've been reading about the Newton world today, the more I wanted to start playing with my Newton again.
Unfortunately, I can't find my MP120 any more. I realized this weekend that there's a box full of computer stuff, including a variety of USB peripherals, that I haven't seen since Indianola. I fear the Newton is among this stuff (I'm hoping I may know where in Mississippi it might be, but getting it back could take a while).
But, the more I read, the more I realized I wanted a newer model, which, unlike mine, would be capable of participating in the wireless world.
So I've ordered an MP2100, the top-end model that was the last version produced; 6 years old, but with a little extra hardware here, a little extra software there, competitive with any thing being produced today (with the exception, of course, of its ideal-for-self-defense form factor).
I've joined a Newton mailing list to tap the expertise of the modern Newton community, who are impressive in their devotion. The Newton community makes the Mac community look kinda halfhearted in their love of the Mac, which is saying a lot. They've managed to keep the platform alive through sheer force of will, homebrewing the software needed to keep going in a OS X world that no company will write.
Thanks to its unique architecture, the Newton is amazingly flexible. I'll definitely use mine as a portable organizer, able to sync information with my Macs at home. I'm looking forward to being able to check my e-mail with it, and think the idea of blogging from a Newton is very cool. Since I've already got an iPod, I'll doubt I would do this, but it's nice to know that with some extra hardware, I could turn the thing into a 10GB iTunes-compatible mp3 player if I ever wanted to.
And, yeah, this is more than a little motivated by the fact that it's a Newton. There are plenty of other PDAs out there, and some of them can do all the same stuff (though they'd probably cost more to do it). But, since long before I got my original MP120, I've always thought the Newton was very cool. The poor thing was a victim of a bad first impression--most people still think of the Newton the way it was presented in those Doonesbury strips, with a user interface that was literally a joke. The thing is, the problem was quickly fixed, and the handwriting recognition of the later MPs is still unmatched. No special alphabet, no character-by-character input. You just write.
So, in a PDA-intensive world, I look forward to being able to stand out. I can't out high-tech the people I work around, but I can out-hip them with a bit of retro old-schoolery. I look forward to a bit of mockery, 'cause I look forward to being able to show off what the thing can really do.
Anyway, all of this is kinda premature--my new Newt hasn't even shipped yet. I'll let you know how it goes.

:: :: 12:09 :: David :: [permalink] ::