About

MessagePad Jabberwocky. The stylus less traveled. PDA unbound.

This is Newton Poetry, a blog of Newton history, tips, and hacks, along with a few classical poems filtered through an Apple MessagePad 110 – the second in a series of Apple’s digital assistant, running the Newton software.

Newton Poetry also covers Apple and Mac history, news, and projects on classic Mac hardware.

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What’s a ‘Newton Poem?’
I find a poem, or take something someone suggests, and write it – by hand, with the Newton’s stylus – into the Newton’s notes. Newton uses its Rosetta handwriting-recognition software to translate what I spell out, and *BAM* – Newton Poetry.

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What is a Newton?
Apple’s MessagePad was the first PDA, a small book-sized digital organizer that collections notes, contacts, documents, and more. Think of a brick-size Palm Treo or Blackberry, except without a QWERTY keyboard built in.  Everything on the MessagePad is controlled by its dongle.  “Newton” is actually the operating system (OS) that governs the MessagePad (like Mac OS on Apples, or Windows on PCs). In the popular lexicon, however, “Newton” is used interchangeably with the MessagePad and the OS that runs it. Here’s a good Wikipedia article on the MessagePad.

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Why do I have a Newton?
I first learned about Newtons when I started collecting Macs a few years ago. I surfed around on eBay until I found a MessagePad 110 that fit my price range (cheap). The more advanced Newtons, the 200-series, costs more. The eMate is a laptop-style Newton that’s very cool, too, but a bit more than what I was looking for.  I intended to use the Newton as a PDA: to keep my contacts and calendar and to-do list and carry it with me. The Newton requires older Macs to govern it, however, and so any sort of data entry is impractical.  These days I mainly use my iPhone 3G for data management. But for now, my MessagePad 110 is the star of this show.

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What inspired this blog?
This comic (click to see it):



I took part of the name from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem, which is half gibberish and contains words Carroll made up.

The rest of Newton Poetry is simply a love letter to the Newton community – a great group of people that are passionate about this abandoned gadget. Day after day, people from all over the world are using their Newtons to manage their calendar and contacts and to-do lists, despite the fact that Apple discontinued support for the Newton in 1998. Now that’s dedication.

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How to reach me
Leave a comment – that’s the easiest way. The other way is to e-mail me at:

newtonpoetry [at] gmail [dot] com

I’d love to hear from MessagePad users out there. Thanks!

- Dave