From Thomas Brand:

Consistency is the recipe for good blogging. Interesting thought provoking topics are the ingredients. A unique writing style develops the flavor, a diversified niche determines the cuisine.

Blogging is about giving your readers a lot of what they expect, and a little of what they don’t. They return for more because your content is familiar, but also because it is unique. They know what kind of posts will be on your daily menu just as any diner know what kind of entrees to expect from an Italian restaurant.

Newton Poetry will be under construction for the next few days, so mind your head, wear your hard hat, and hang on.

Sorry for the interruption – I’ll be back with you soon!

Happy National Bring Your Mac To Work Day, everyone.

Wait, what? You’ve never heard of NBYMTWD?

Here’s how it started. I have some video projects to do at work, and Microsoft Movie Maker just isn’t cutting it. First, I’m new to video editing and codecs and file types. Second, Movie Maker will only let you edit movies in a certain format.

My solution? Bring my iBook to work. The MPEG files I have will work fine with iMovie (I think), and I can do some translating with VLC.

Plus, I can set aside the Dell and work with a real computer.

I almost brought my PowerMac G4, just so I could use my work LCD and keyboard, but the G4’s video card isn’t up to snuff – I got a warning that said transitions and the Ken Burns Effect might not work without a Quartz Extreme-compatible video card. Oh well.

January 9. Let this be a day we can revisit every year: bring your Mac to work to get things done. Make it a good one!

For history buffs, Apple is a natural attraction for how modern technology companies evolve, behave, and operate. Since its founding, Apple has attracted pirate programmers and designers, a dedicated fan following, and tons of media attention. In just 30 years, the company has ridden a roller coaster of success and near-death – multiple times – has today lives on as a super-successful electronics company.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Mac, and as Wired’s Steven Levy puts it, Apple will look forward instead of back.

Which is just as well. While doing research on some design work for my day job, in the design archives of AIGA, I stumbled upon Jeff Goodell’s Rolling Stone article, “The Rise and Fall of Apple, Inc” (part two is here). Goodell writes in 1996:

The story of Apple’s decline is a morality tale for the Information Age. It is not, as one might expect, a story about how quickly the technology moves, or about how unforgiving and brutal business has become in Silicon Valley. In fact, Apple had many, many chances to save itself. But it didn’t. It was the company of the future that failed to see what was right in front of its nose. And while Apple will no doubt reinvent itself in the years to come, the central idea that animated the company for so long – that Apple is a revolutionary force, that it could change the world – is dead.

Not any more, it’s not. But there is a weird feeling of dread and uncertainty, not unlike what a lot of people are feeling about the economy, or about Steve Jobs’s succession plan, and a lot of it stems from what we don’t know about Apple. What’s the “next big thing?” What effect will the economy have on Mac, iPod, and iPhone sales?

“There is no happy ending here,” Goodell writes. At the time, it must have seen certain. But soon after Rolling Stone published that article, Steve Jobs returned, and things turned around. Taking the long view, Apple has been in far worse situations (coincidentally, mostly when Jobs was absent).

One thing hasn’t changed, with or without Jobs. The theme struck me, after I watched an interview with Bill Atkinson during the launch of Apple’s HyperCard “erector set” programming application, was that Apple truly puts the power to create in peoples’ hands. As in “for the rest of us.”

Think about it. HyperCard was designed as a application builder for non-hackers. As Atkinson put it in the interview:

A whole new body of people who have creative ideas, but aren’t programmers, will be able to express their ideas – or their expertise in a certain subject.

The original Macintosh was designed to be intuitive. Its design and interface has functioned as the standard since 1984. VisiCalc, on the Apple II, gave people the power to create spreadsheets. Apps like Garage Band and iMovie and iWeb give users a simple way to be creative (actual talent helps, of course). PageMaker was the app that launched an industry, and my very profession. iTunes and iPods give us the ability to manage and enjoy our music library like never before. It’s music, or design, or information, or programming “for the rest of us.”

Even the Newton was a product ahead of its time, giving business professionals and regular folks the ability to manage their day-to-day data in a simple and intuitive way.

As a history buff, I like reading about Apple’s early successes and tribulations. It shows a company constantly growing, constantly in flux, and – for the most part – learning from its mistakes. The common thread that runs through Apple’s story is a company setting out to make machines and applications that make our lives easier.

I almost typed “better” there, but I don’t think that’s true: if we didn’t have the iPod, we may not miss it.

But simple. Easy. More intuitive. Even fun. That’s what Apple has given us the past 30 years. The success of the Mac is a testament to that ideal.

So while Steve Jobs and Apple in general may not celebrate the Macintosh’s birthday this month, us Mac fans can in our own way. We do, everyday, when we wake our iMac up from sleep, or scroll through our music library on our iPhone, and live our lives a little easier.

Tons of books and all. I wish my own office were that clean and tidy.

Happy Macworld Keynote Day. I’ll probably be catching the live blog feed somewhere (Gizmodo usually does a nice job) and hoping for some kind of cool announcement. I actually thought about going to Macworld this year, and just as I was about to hit the “purchase tickets” button, the news hit that Steve Jobs wasn’t going to be there.

Much like Apple, my decision was financially-based: can I really afford a trip out to California?

So I may have missed my chance to see Steve Jobs deliver a “one more thing” announcement forever. But hey, there’s always WWNC.


[Courtesy Remodelista.]

I’ll admit: I don’t give Newton-to-Windows syncing its proper attention because I don’t have a XP/Vista PC to try it out.

But there is an NCX/NewtSync-like program out there called Newton Connection Tools that will help Windows users connect their MessagePad with a modern version of Microsoft’s OS. NCT helps with all the usual sync needs, like package installation, data backup, and Microsoft Outlook syncing, plus Newton Protocol tools that allow for further Newton software development. Pretty cool stuff for the Windows crowd.

You need to send $45 to Andrés Galluzzi to get the full NCT license code.

Any Windows users out there: I’d love to hear from you about how this works.


[Thanks to the My Apple Newton blog.]

My Apple Newton’s Tony Kan has a roundup of Newton-related developments from 2008.

Included are Paul Guyot’s release of the Einstein project as open source, the Mozilla/Firefox Newton eBook reader extension, and Grant Hutchinson (aka, Splorp) taking over Newtontalk admin duties, with a pretty spiffy site makeover to boot.

A nice Newton news post in time for the New Year.


[Thanks to Grant for the tip.]

What’s up with the personal digital assistant (PDA) these days?

Says one blogger, they may be obsolete already.

Over at Charlie’s Diary, author Charlie Stross says even his HP iPAQ is on its last legs in terms of usefulness:

Yet despite delivering the initial promise of the Newton — yes, you can scribble anywhere on the screen and it will decode your notes; yes, it does the agenda and contacts and notepad stuff well; it also takes voice memos; it’s got a decent word processor and spreadsheet on board; it’s a desert topping and a floor wax — it’s fundamentally obsolete.

It turns out that people don’t want that stuff in a notepad-shaped machine. What they want is a mobile phone that does the address book/agenda stuff — and is an entertainment gadget besides, with a camera and music player built in.

Kind of like what the iPhone offers, right?

Now that most smart phones, the iPhone included, come with contact and appointment applications, is there a need for a dedicated machine to handle day-to-day business tasks? The numbers seem to say “no,” and the popularity of the iPhone and RIM’s own BlackBerry back that up. Even as far back as 2006, the outlook for PDAs looked grim.

Shucks, even my 30 GB iPod video comes with some of the functionality, at least in terms of reference data, of a PDA. What do you think? Is the PDA idea extinct?

Dan Knight over at Low End Mac posted a great article on how to make a G3 iMac useful. It’s no surprise that I’ve used Dan’s site as a tool ever since I got my own second-hand Bondi Blue iMac, complete with original keyboard and puck mouse, at a recycling e-waste drive.

This happened right after I got my first Mac, my iBook G4, and it gave me a chance to play around with OS 9 and the original Mac interface. It also kick-started my love of classic Macs. The Bondi and I go way back.

Mostly, it’s just nice to look at. The sloping curves, the aqua-green shading, the gum-drop shape – sometimes it’s hard to resist waking it up out of sleep to log on and play around with the OS.

In fact, it’s the one classic Mac I use on a regular basis. At least once a week I fire it up to do several things, both for business and pleasure.




Personal finance accounting
My iMac came pre-installed with a copy of Quicken 2000, a comprehensive record-keeping software package. The interface is a bit crude, and a lot of the online stuff doesn’t work like it used to, but it serves my purposes just fine.

I use Quicken as mainly a month-in-review system. Every month, I get my credit union statement and log all the transactions for the month. I have one “checking” account, two “savings” accounts, a few club accounts, and all my loans tracked through Quicken. Quicken gives me a big-picture view of my finances, handy graphs and charts to track my spending, and the most comprehensive record of my accounts since 2006 – which is why I make sure to backup my file every time I use it.

Each month, I take the 15 or 20 minutes it takes to log all my transactions into the system, and check through the pie chart that tells me where my money goes each month. Then I peek at the bar graph that shoes my income vs. spending, and I hope the “income” bar is higher.

My iBook came with a copy of Quicken on it, too, but I like the mouse-and-keyboard combo on the iMac, and it gives me an excuse to turn the Bondi on at least once a month without fail. You can’t beat free, and chances are your OS 9 Mac came with a copy of Quicken, too.




Old-school gaming
This is where my iMac gets the most use.

Let’s start out with “WarCraft II.” I got hooked on “WarCraft II” in high school, and I have fond memories of wasting many hours launching my human and elven hordes against the evil orcs and their dragons. Before “World of WarCraft,” “WarCraft II” was a strategy game that pitted your army versus the forces of good or evil, depending on which side you took and how many resources you could accumulate. It’s a blast, and it’s highly addictive.

I bought a copy of “WarCraft II” on eBay, but after having trouble installing the expansion pack on OS 9, I contacted Blizzard and they sent me a free copy of the most up-to-date software version, “WarCraft II: Battle.net Edition.” Now I can go through the story mode, build my own maps, or head online to battle other players on the still-functioning Battle.net system. There are “WarCraft” players on Battle.net that have far more skills than I do, but it’s still fun to battle against a real human – as opposed to the usually stupid computer.




The other game I play is “SimCity 2000,” another classic that I played a lot in high school. The “Sim” bug first bit me on the Super Nintendo’s version of the original “SimCity,” and I grabbed a demo copy of “SimCity 2000″ when I was a teenager. I was hooked. And now, at long last, I have a full retail version to play on my iMac.

“SimCity 2000″ lets you build a city as big or as small as you want, with varying landscapes, building types, and disasters that can ruin or strengthen your town. It switches to 256-color mode on the iMac, and it runs like a dream.

The one game I still have to find is a copy of “Star Wars: TIE Fighter,” the space shooter that lets you be an Imperial pilot, flying missions for the Empire. Dog fighting, it seems, is in my blood.




Newton syncing and storage
Ah, the real grit here. Since my experiments in syncing my eMate with OS X have been hit and miss (mostly miss in regards to dates and contact syncing), Newton Connection Utilities, for the eMate, and the Newton Connection Kit, for my MessagePad 110, are still my best options for backup, package installation, and data input.

Since the iMac only comes with USB ports, I use a pair of serial-to-USB adapters that let my Newtons talk clearly with OS 9. Both require a driver, but they work great.

I use the iMac as kind of a homebase for my Newton software, too. All my packages are saved in my Newton folder, as are any backups NCK and NCU make. Just in case something happens to my Newton in the wild, I’ll have all my information stored and saved for emergencies.




Play around with the Classic OS
Finally, I use my iMac as an easy way to mess around with the classic Mac operating system. Through the Bondi, I’ve learned what the Apple Menu could have been on OS X, how snappy and elegant the UI is, and where the pioneers of Mac software got their start.

There are some things I don’t miss. Extensions are the big feature I like not thinking about. I wish there was a modern, capable OS 9 web browser.

Speaking of browsers, I have three installed on the G3. The first is Internet Explorer 5.5, which came installed on the system. Since IE has trouble with CSS and rendering a lot of modern web pages, I downloaded iCab and Mozilla, too. iCab gives me mixed results, and I don’t use it very often. Mozilla’s browser (above), however, is my favorite. As the precursor to Firefox, it seems to handle most web sites with ease. It’s not a fast browser, even with broadband, but Mozilla is fast enough that if I need to download a .pkg file off UNNA, it can handle it.

I snagged a copy of Adobe’s old web creation application, PageMill, just to mess around with. I also have a copy of Photoshop Elements that lets me edit screenshots for this blog. The one project I have yet to try is to get my iMac G3 on my home network, with full access to my external hard drive. Is this possible with an Airport Extreme base station? I don’t know, but I’m going to try.

Doing fine with OS 9
Two more iMac G3s, the Rev. C “fruity” versions, came my way after the Bondi. I fixed up both of them and gave them away. For one, I installed every OS X version up to 10.3 Panther, with extra RAM, and it handled them all just fine. The other came with an OS 9 version of Microsoft Office, so I left that one alone.

But my Bondi does just fine with OS 9. It gives me a chance to play some classic games, explore the older Mac operating system, and own a piece of recent Mac history. It would be nice to have more RAM, USB 2.0 hubs, and a modern web browser, but for my projects it gets along just fine.

“The Newton in 1998 looks remarkably unchanged from the Newton in 1993, with the exception that the handwriting now works and the screen is readable. Why wasn’t it miniaturized; cost reduced; why didn’t [Apple] learn from the great success of the Palm Pilot that simple tasks like data synchronization with our desktop PC are really useful; etc.?”

- John Sculley, former Apple CEO and Newton pioneer