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Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

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Re: Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

#31

Post by projektfu »

gumby wrote: post #29
Maursault wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always amazed by it. Other PDAs used a special alphabet one had to memorize, but Newton learned and recognized natural handwriting. And while Newton didn't last long, the handwriting recognition did, reincarnated as Inkwell. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkwell_(Macintosh)

> Other PDAs used a special alphabet one had to memorize, Graffiti was so easy to use that you would see people write with it on whiteboards.

This has always baffled me. Graffiti was generally less than 20 characters per minute for me and I was an early palmpilot adopter. Eventually better options came out resembling the smartphone keyboards we have today.

I never used a Newton but the Microsoft handwriting recognition was pretty good on the iPAQ. Maybe the Palm graffiti approach is ok for people who don't care about feedback and can edit tiny characters on a tiny device.

Re: Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

#32

Post by projektfu »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #5
abruzzi wrote: post #3

still have a 2000 upgraded to 2100 in a closet somewhere. At some level the iPhone was such a disappoinment after having owned a Newton, becuase the early iPhone, even after the introduction of the app store, felt like a bunch of siloed apps, where the Newton "soup" allowed fairly seamless extensibility and interoperability. (well, at least it felt like that in the 90's.)

I always wonder how a Newton would perform on modern hardware. Considering how well the handwriting recognition worked on 90s hardware it should be pretty great by now. I definitely miss it. The iPhone feels like a step backwards in terms of user and developer friendliness.

Part of the issue is the move from resistive screens to capacitive screens. The iPhone is just not accurate enough for handwriting.

The iPad with pencil is frustrating for handwriting. But the iPad pro with pencil 2 is likely better, but I've not had a chance to try it.

The tablet PC era computers were pretty good with handwriting but the os didn't make enough drastic changes in user interface to make them work well. Choices were using the on screen keyboard a lot or getting a clunky unit that included a keyboard.

Chromebooks with pen are quite frustrating, and I recommend against them. The pens also tend to use disposable AAAA batteries.

Re: Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

#33

Post by macstainless »

linguae wrote: post #26
Apocryphon wrote: post #14

One of the most fascinating things about the Newton is that its systems and applications were written in Dylan, a LISP-like language, though that seems to have been replaced by NewtonScript. https://opendylan.org/_static/dylanwwdc94brochure.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20160328123939/http://opendylan.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22398899

One of the things that fascinates me about the history of the Newton is that if it weren't for complaints from those advocating C++ that escalated to John Sculley (who ruled in their favor), we may have ended up with mass-market machines that ran a Lisp operating system. There's a wonderful interview between lispm and Mikel Evins, two regular contributors on Hacker News, that can be found at http://lispm.de/lisp-base…

Apple in the mid-to-late 90s was fascinating. You could see they were trying but had little to no direction. Not that Jobs was the best person ever to run a company, but I believe it was only him who could've saved Apple.

If Apple didn't buy NeXT or if Jobs didn't want to come back, it's an interesting "what if" to determine who would've led them and what they would have done. I could totally see MS _STILL_ investing heavily in them in order to help with their own antitrust issues at the time.

Re: Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

#34

Post by macstainless »

projektfu wrote: post #31
gumby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other PDAs used a special alphabet one had to memorize, Graffiti was so easy to use that you would see people write with it on whiteboards.

This has always baffled me. Graffiti was generally less than 20 characters per minute for me and I was an early palmpilot adopter. Eventually better options came out resembling the smartphone keyboards we have today. I never used a Newton but the Microsoft handwriting recognition was pretty good on the iPAQ. Maybe the Palm graffiti approach is ok for people who don't care about feedback and can edit tiny characters o…

Graffiti was great to use, but felt like a step down because it required memorizing the input method whereas the Newton's promise was to have full handwriting recognition. Granted I was on as MP 1200 but I don't think the 2000 series improvements were enough.

Re: Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

#35

Post by macstainless »

jmbwell wrote: post #18

Something that strikes me, using a Newton today, is just how little has changed in the fundamental things people want to do with a mobile device: messaging, contacts, calendars, and notes. For all that modern devices can do, these four essentials seem more or less the same in concept and function between my MessagePad 120 and my iPad Pro, despite 30 years between them.

It has changed somewhat, but the biggest thing is connectivity. If ubiquitious connections were around then, like they are now, the Newton may have had a very different story.

Re: Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

#36

Post by gumby »

projektfu wrote: post #31
gumby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other PDAs used a special alphabet one had to memorize, Graffiti was so easy to use that you would see people write with it on whiteboards.

This has always baffled me. Graffiti was generally less than 20 characters per minute for me and I was an early palmpilot adopter. Eventually better options came out resembling the smartphone keyboards we have today. I never used a Newton but the Microsoft handwriting recognition was pretty good on the iPAQ. Maybe the Palm graffiti approach is ok for people who don't care about feedback and can edit tiny characters o…

The motivation for Graffiti was it could be recognized by a small microprocessor meaning the palm devices could be quite inexpensive.

Re: Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

#37

Post by linguae »

macstainless wrote: post #33
linguae wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things that fascinates me about the history of the Newton is that if it weren't for complaints from those advocating C++ that escalated to John Sculley (who ruled in their favor), we may have ended up with mass-market machines that ran a Lisp operating system. There's a wonderful interview between lispm and Mikel Evins, two regular contributors on Hacker News, that can be found at http://lispm.de/lisp-base…

Apple in the mid-to-late 90s was fascinating. You could see they were trying but had little to no direction. Not that Jobs was the best person ever to run a company, but I believe it was only him who could've saved Apple. If Apple didn't buy NeXT or if Jobs didn't want to come back, it's an interesting "what if" to determine who would've led them and what they would have done. I could totally see MS _STILL_ investing…

In my opinion, the most interesting alternative timeline of Apple's history would have been had Pink/Taligent been released sometime around 1993 or early 1994, coinciding with the release of the original Power Macintosh lineup and thus beating Windows 95 to the punch by well over a year. In fact, it would have been quite revolutionary: a workstation-grade OS with protected memory, cooperative memory, etc. but installed on consumer-grade hardware; in our real-world timeline, this wouldn't happen until 2001 when Windows XP and Mac OS X were released (yes, I'm aware that the Amiga had protected memory, and yes Windows NT was around, though it was marketed to workstation users). Imagine everyday users having a rock-solid OS in 1993. Pink/Taligent would have also stolen NeXT's thunder since Pink/Taligent also provided an object-oriented development framework, but unlike NeXT, Pink/Taligent would have had a much larger install base. NeXT probably would have either pivoted or folded, and Steve Jobs would've probably been more well known for Pixar.

Then again, pre-1997 Apple courted larger companies like IBM and Sun for mergers. Apple under John Sculley almost merged with IBM; given the AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola) alliance and also the fact that Taligent and was jointly developed with IBM, I can see a timeline where Apple and IBM merged as a way for IBM to take back control of the personal computer business from Microsoft and Intel. There are all sorts of fascinating possibilities.

Re: Egg Freckles: The Newton at 30

#38

Post by macstainless »

linguae wrote: post #37
macstainless wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple in the mid-to-late 90s was fascinating. You could see they were trying but had little to no direction. Not that Jobs was the best person ever to run a company, but I believe it was only him who could've saved Apple. If Apple didn't buy NeXT or if Jobs didn't want to come back, it's an interesting "what if" to determine who would've led them and what they would have done. I could totally see MS _STILL_ investing…

In my opinion, the most interesting alternative timeline of Apple's history would have been had Pink/Taligent been released sometime around 1993 or early 1994, coinciding with the release of the original Power Macintosh lineup and thus beating Windows 95 to the punch by well over a year. In fact, it would have been quite revolutionary: a workstation-grade OS with protected memory, cooperative memory, etc. but install…

Oh for sure. The possibilities are endless. Even with OS2/Warp and BeOS, there was a lot of competition brewing that could've either acquired Apple, Apple acquiring them, or some sort of merger.

I completely forgot about the AIM thing until you mentioned it! Damn those were the wild west days of computing.

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