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Karel Jansens's Avatar
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#1
For those who are looking for alternatives, a new one might be just around the corner. Remember the old Newton? Check this out:

http://www.kallisys.com/newton/einstein/

Click on the "slides" button under the picture to get a resume.

Some background: "Newton" was Apple's operating system for the "MessagePad" series, discontinued in 1998 (ironically, just when Apple started doing it right). Since then, a community of users has kept the Newton platform not only alive, but evolving, including stuff such as (wireless) networking, support for newer memory cards, Bluetooth and much more.

Paul Guyot, author of "Einstein", has set his goal to transport the Newton operating system to modern hardware, using Linux as a bootstrap loader and underbelly.

Why Newton then? Well, I've used MessagePads and the Newton operating system is still the only OS that is not only easy, but actually intuitive to use with a pen. It also has one of the best (cursive and printed) handwriting recognition engines in existence: it is in fact the only HWR that has ever allowed me to take notes in meetings without being more cumbersome than pen and paper, or even a keyboard. Add to that a fairly intelligent parser that will transpose most natural questions into the equivalent computer commands (imagine writing "lunch with bill friday" in a window and have your PDA look up bill in your contacts list and write the appointment in your diary application. Newton really does that sort of stuff!) and you might get the inkling of the idea.

So, Einstein is still not finished, but it might be smart to keep an eye on it. If Paul gets the speed optimized and if he can finish his elusive "Relativity" middleware layer (he won't say much about that), Einstein could become the equivalent of KDE or Gnome on the Linux PDA platform.
 
Posts: 95 | Thanked: 1 time | Joined on Sep 2005
#2
I had a Newton (first version) which I finally sold for a few Euros at ebay to one of these Newton believers. And since the 770 was delayed a little bit, I could not take a picture of both...
Having said that: I do prefer the 770 over the Newton (but I don't use handwriting recognition, so I'm biased - like everyone)
 
Karel Jansens's Avatar
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#3
I bought a Newton MessagePad 2100 (the last model ever made) in 2001 and subsequently used it, a.o., in staff meetings at work, on construction sites and just about anywhere I needed something to take notes but had no actual room to take them on, so to speak.

I also tried Palms (with and without keyboards), tablet pcs, notebook pcs and paper notebooks. Nothing, and I mean nothing beat my Newton in terms of handiness, speed, keeping-uppiness and after-meeting finetuning. Most of my Newton notes could be mailed or printed out (OK, I admit I have a PostScript printer) as they were.

The handwriting recognition of the latter day Newtons is truly amazing: I get 95+% correct recognition of cursive Dutch and 99+% of cursive English (the Dutch libraries are a freeware non-Apple addon).

To get an idea of what Newton HWR was, I suggest people to try out PenOffice on a Windows tablet: it is the same HWR engine (actually only half: Newton has a separate HWR engine for printed text, called Rosetta, which is even more impressive). Only PenOffice advises a 500 mhz Pentium and 64 MB RAM as minimal hardware; the Newton has a 160mhz ARM and 4 MB RAM.
 
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#4
 
Posts: 949 | Thanked: 14 times | Joined on Jul 2005
#5
Live via 770 Bluetooth keyboard:

The Newt was a wiz, still unequaled in many ways today. I never owned one, but I did a lot of reading about it. It'lll be interesting to see if they can add color to it (Relativity?).

Newt's HWR was The Best. The closest thing to it today is Calligrapher (now exclusively for PPC).
 
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#6
 
Posts: 949 | Thanked: 14 times | Joined on Jul 2005
#7
LVBTKB:

Holy bleep! I might have to go *buy* a 770 now, just to have one as a Newt!
 
Karel Jansens's Avatar
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#8
The most amazing thing about Einstein is its pace of development. I saw the first public demo of Einstein (on an Apple) at the WWNC in Paris in september 2004. Then it was an awfully slow emulator running in Mac OSX; today it is running 7 times faster on a last-generation PDA! And all basically done by just one guy!

[Waynes_world_mode]

(bowing towards Paul Guyot)
We're not worthy!! We're not worthy!!

[/Waynes_world_mode]
 
frethop's Avatar
Posts: 283 | Thanked: 60 times | Joined on Nov 2005 @ It's dark in here. I hear laughing.
#9
I too had a Newton when they were introduced. And I was blown awy by the handwriting recognition.

For me, the 770 can be the next Newton -- only if the HWR works. Right now, it's terrible. We are still talking about HWR on the Newton years after it was discontinued. The only way we will talk about the 770's years from now is how the HWR pulled the unit down.

-F
 
Posts: 949 | Thanked: 14 times | Joined on Jul 2005
#10
@ desktop:

You cite Wayne's World here. I've done Sprockets 2x in my "blog." I wonder if they know about SNL in Finland. Ari & Co. must think we're nuts...
 
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