NewtonOS Running on Linux PDA 125
Seb Payne writes "At the WWNC 2006, Adam Tow has reported that Einstein, the NewtonOS emulator is now working on a Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA, showing future for our favourite green friend. Although it is not production quality, could this bring a future to the Newton platform?"
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Interesting)
You're absolutely correct. My initial reaction was, "what a waste of time". After thinking about it a little more (sometimes I think before I post, usually when I'm stuffing my face full of cereal) I realized while the outcome is useless, the process wasn't. The guy is now smarter and more experienced for having done the work. Who knows? At some point in his career he may be working on a new product and the experience gained from writing a Newton emulator will mean the difference between success and failure. All work doesn't have to have a point to be useful.
In this case, though, he solved the wrong problem. Instead of asking, "will a Newton run Linux?" he asked, "will Linux run a Newtown?" Maybe he's in Soviet Russia...
yeah, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
the newton OS did some amazing things for a handheld, things others till haven't tried to do with the power of a decent laptop.
i'd love to see what they could do with it updated and with ten more years of evolution in how we think about imfo and OSs
Re:Other Newton Related Advances (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In a word... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't mind, allow me (a former Newton developer, and current computer science professor) to provide a slightly more informed take on the situation.
The reason everyone in the Newton community is excited about the emulator is not that it enables us to revive our Newtons, but that it gives us an easy migration mechanism. Newton owners have been frustrated as hell with the god-awful interfaces running on current PDAs. PalmOS is astonishingly profoundly primitive. And PocketPC is just about the worst interface I have ever seen on a platform. Generally it takes about twice to three times as many pen interactions to get a given action performed on the PocketPC as it does on the Newton.
I've used them all. A lot. And the Newton 2.1 OS is hands down the best PDA interface. And let's not kid ourselves: there still isn't a handwriting recognition system available that's as good as Rosetta. And the Newton UI is built around handwriting as a text entry mechanism along with a keyboard, unlike Palm and WinCE's traditional (and bad) character-entry-only event mechanism. And the Newton is fast. The MessagePad 2000 ran on a 167MHz StrongARM (predecessor to the XScale) in 1997.
So Newton users are stuck with a great but aging OS trapped inside hardware that is breaking down and falling apart. Most of us have FrankenNewtons at this stage. What the emulator will do is allow us to move our environments to a new PDA and still be able to use our old software, data, and UI, while using the new PDA's OS for new things. That's a big deal.
Plus, I might add, Einstein makes for a nice development environment.
Unless you do like BeOS or AmigaOS.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Otherwise, how could an outdated OS come back to life like this? When was the last time that an emulator brought an OS "back to life"? You can argue that such emulators as Mini vMac or Basilisk II or even SheepShaver brought back some interest and even some use to pre-X Mac OS, but did they bring it back to life in the way that people starting developping for that old OS again?
No.
Re:Other Newton Related Advances (Score:3, Interesting)
If Steve decided that the time was ripe to present a modern Newt replacement, and he did it right, I'd be very interested in what he produced. I don't think he'll do it, though. I still have, and use, my Newton 2100 that I purchased four years ago and which was made in the '90s.
Re:In a word... (Score:2, Interesting)
As an electical engineer, I can tell you the Newton was the BEST PDA to have ever been. I managed an entire project from the Newton, and people were astonished I was pretty much a one-man band, because of all I kept up with, and the speed with which I was able to recall information about the most minute of details I had recorded in the Newton. People have often panned the Newton for poor handwriting recognition, but this was because they did not TRAIN the Newton to understand their handwriting, as they write when in a hurry, as in taking notes in a meeting. The Newton died due to the naivity of the users who didn't train it the way they were supposed to, and all the bad press that the people who didn't know (let's call them the agnostics) the proper way to use such an advanced tool.
The "soup" relational database was pure genious! My hat is off to the creative people at Apple who developed the back end, and front-end interfaces. They were easy to use, and consistently provided useful extractions of the data for which I searched.
The Newton was well before its time. I hope Apple will resurrect the Newton, freshened with a color interface (look at the portable Sony Playstation- wouldn't that be a fine platform?). There is not a PDA in current production that holds a candle to the Newton's functionality. If you want a playtoy, by a Palm or a WinCE device. If you want a tool to get work done efficiently, the Newton was and still is, the only way to go.
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Interesting)
By the MessagePad 2000 and 2100, however, handwriting recognition was excellent. I used to use one of these machines to take notes in meetings, and I could write fairly smoothly in my normal handwriting (a mix of cursive and print) and get decent performance.
I have since tried several iterations of PocketPCs and Palms and, still, eight years after the MessagePad 2000 was introduced, I haven't found a handheld that equals it in this respect.
--Pat
Re:In a word... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In a word... (Score:2, Interesting)