Tag: Technology

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Apple Newton – 10 year old technology lives on

I received my Newton MP2100 last week and it is everything that I had remembered (for the most part). The handwriting recognition works well and everything seems so elegant about this 10 year old technology. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting at the beach watching my wife surf (I’ll post it when I get home). People have developed WiFi and Bluetooth drivers for it (the Newton I purchased had both a WiFi and a Bluetooth card) and there are tons of programs for it. In addition, I know many in the old Newton developer community, so I have a wider access to free programs (free is always good). In addition, I loaded the HP IRDA printers drivers for it and was able to print from any application to my LaserJet 2100MP; a feat that still cannot be accomplished on Palm OS. I found a few email programs out there including MailV so that I can send my notes and such to myself via email. People are working on or have written apps to communicate with OS X. There are a few down sides to the Newton. It has always had a heap problem so you have to be careful with how many programs you install. I’m using NewtCase to “freeze” stuff I’m not using. The device doesn’t have USB so transferring stuff over the serial port (while doable) is slow. It doesn’t have color, but I’m not sure I mind that. I’m still wading through the hundreds of programs available to see what I want to install. SO far, I have a ToDo list program and I’m using Notes and Calls.

I don’t really remember how to program NewtonScript so it’s hard to hack away at programs (I want to bypass the registration code for the WiFi driver as the author is no longer accepting registrations for it and it delays for 10 seconds each time I insert the card). The Newton was so flexible in terms of modifying virtually any application (good from a hacker point of view, bad from the point of view of selling software) and it was very extensible. The soup method of storing information allowed other programs to add fields to say the Names application while still remaining compatible with the rest of the OS (everything is integrated so if you use the Calls application, you can look up a phone number). Palm OS isn’t this flexible and it hasn’t been until Palm, Inc. wrote their own Contacts application that the concept of extensible fields came to be; however the format is not compatible with older devices.

Did I mention flash memory? If the batteries die on this device, nothing is lost. Something that the Palm OS only got recently.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with my new acquisition. I still have more to remember and more to play with; this is the most excited I’ve been about technology in a long time.

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TiVo needs to get a clue

I called TiVo and after 20 minutes, go to speak to a support rep. When I mentioned that I had a Pioneer box, the rep said to call TiVo. I said, no, it is a software issue and it happened after the upgrade this past weekend. Then she said that the issue will be resolved in the next update, but didn’t know when that would be available. So why did she tell me it was a Pioneer problem? Today I hate TiVo.

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Nice job, TiVo!

We got back from our trip on Sunday and found that the TiVo (Pioneer 810H) was stuck. I yanked the power cord and rebooted it. It came back up and said it had done an upgrade. OK, fine, I like the TiVo upgrades as they add new features. However, this time TiVo made a royal mess. First off, the unit needed a kick start to get running after the update meaning we didn’t record shows for 2 days. Second off, navigating the menus is extremely slow. Third off, one of the shows we recorded after the upgrade (Saved on TNT which my wife really likes) had some hiccups where the picture was pixelated and it stuttered during playback. Reading the forums shows that I’m not the only person with this problem.

I’m on hold now waiting for TiVo after calling once and mentioning Pioneer which gave me the Pioneer number and disconnected me. Pioneer said to call TiVo and not mention Pioneer (I kind of figured that, but thought I’d play by the rules). We’ll see what TiVo has to say when they’ll fix this mess. Uggh.

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Geeks unite!

This morning, I got up early (couldn’t sleep) and got down to Moscone Center West to pick up my badge for Apple’s WWDC. I got there around 7 am and people were lined up for the 10 am keynote. After I got my badge, I went back to the hotel and then met people for breakfast. Maybe I’m just an old fart, but I don’t see the big deal in waiting in line for 3 hours to get a good seat to see Steve Jobs speak. I did get a seat and could see the keynote clearly on a large screen (I could see the stage a little bit, but who cares). Others must be more fanatical than I am to want to sit in the front; last year I got VIP seating which meant I was closer to the stage. My world didn’t change because I could see the stage.

To me, the keynote was uneventful. I saw the new machines coming and the key features of Leopard had some nice eye candy, but not a whole lot of meat. One feature I really like (as an end user) is the Time Machine backup. While I’m one of the 4% that does backup, any easier backup strategy is music to my ears.

Other than that, I can’t talk about the rest of the week as all the content is covered under NDA; however, I’m sure there will be leaks. The leaks won’t come from me.

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Learning new computer technologies

There are so many computer technologies that I need to/want to learn, that I have no idea where to start. I learn all the time, but never really have the time to spend to sit down and learn something new unless I’m going to use it immediately. My current list of technologies/programs/whatever I want to learn include:

  • MySQL (how to make queries, create new databases, etc.)
  • Core Data
  • Sync Services (actually how to program it)
  • php
  • perl

I’m sure there are other things I want to learn, but I can’t think of them now. If I had tons of time and didn’t have to move forward developing with what I already know, I’d have plenty of time.

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Updated car kit photos

In a recent post, I wrote about the Bluetooth car kit I installed. Well, I finally finished installing it with a little bit of a twist. I ended up getting a 4″ external speaker for a CB radio and installing it under my center console and I cleaned up the routing of the wires a bit. It works quite well and am extremely pleased with the setup.

Car kit 2Car kit 1

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AOL for free; still costs too much

So after reading that AOL is now offering their service for free, I decided to try it out as I’ve never used it before (that’s right, I’ve never used it). So I went to their website and picked a username; harder than it sounds as the millions of users already have the cool ones, so I managed to get scottgrubyrules. I logged in and must say that I’m underwhelmed. First off, it isn’t a universal binary, so it can’t run natively on my Mac. Second, the interface is straight out of user interface hell. There are modal dialogs everywhere and reminds me of the few times I used eWorld back in 1997. The Mac software doesn’t seem to let me do 2 things at once, so while it is off munching on a web page, I can’t click the other ugly icons on the menu bar. The email interface is poor at best and it wasn’t a great experience for the 10 minutes I played with it. I’m not sure what AOL really has to offer for anyone that already has broadband. I clicked on the Calendar button in the toolbar and got a web page saying that it wasn’t compatible with my browser. Then the fan on my machine came on as the app pegged the CPU. All in all, probably not a product I’ll fire up again. However, I now have a super cool new email address (OK, not really).

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I’m famous!

OK, maybe not, but as I was doing a routine search for my name, I came across an RFC (Request for Comments) based on my “NotifyMail protocol”. I’m not sure why someone bothered to write it up, but it is RFC 4146, title “Simple New Mail Notification”. For a geek, that’s pretty cool.

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Mandating Safety

I’m not a huge fan of the government mandating anything, but now, more than ever, believe that the government needs to start mandating more safety in cars. Specifically, I think that a) all cell phones must come with Bluetooth and b) all cars should come with Bluetooth for handsfree cell phone use. People argue that it isn’t the act of holding a handset that causes accidents, it is the distraction. Well, that may be true, but I’m sure that if people weren’t holding phones, they would have better reaction time in case of an accident and be able to navigate cars better. This won’t solve everything, but the cost is pretty minor; several years ago Jeep/Chrysler announced the UConnect system for many of its newer vehicles at a cost of something like $300 as a dealer installed option. Now if this was standard on all vehicles, the cost would be lower (less labor involved in installing it when the car is open and the number of units purchased would cause the cost to go down). If we say that the kit costs $300 and someone purchases a vehicle over 5 years at 7% interest rate, the extra cost for this would be $5.94 per month. Is that a lot? No, it is the cost of a few cups of coffee.

As for the Bluetooth handsets, many carriers think Bluetooth is a high end phone option instead of a standard item. Again, the cost isn’t all that high and it would be needed to work with the cars. Furthermore, carriers (Verizon and Sprint in particular) need to stop crippling or accepting half baked Bluetooth implementations. The standard handsfree, headset, and OBEX profiles are needed to make car kits and cars with built-in Bluetooth function properly.

Would I write this even if I didn’t put my own handsfree kit in my car? Absolutely. My next car (and my wife’s next car) will definitely have Bluetooth in it for handsfree calling. It definitely won’t solve the problem of distracted drivers, but it really does help keep two hands on the wheel.

On a side note, I received my first call on my handsfree kit while driving today. It was so neat to be able to not have to fumble answering the phone (even with a headset you have to make sure it is in and find the right button and be able to keep my hands on the wheel.

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I miss the Newton

My history with the Apple Newton goes back to the summer before my senior year in college. Apple’s PIE (Personal Interactive Electronics) group (before it got renamed as simply Newton) wanted to license my NotifyMail program and I negotiated a deal that I thought was excellent. I received a Newton MessagePad 110 and the Newton Toolkit (developer tools) which was valued at over $1600 at the time in exchange for a site license. People at school poked fun at me, especially after the Simpson’s episode where one of the characters wrote “Beat up Martin” and it came out as “Eat Up Martha”. I played around writing some programs for it and when I joined Qualcomm full time the following year, I started work on Eudora for Newton (my boss lobbied to let us do it) and over the course of the next year, I got to work with some great people at Apple who were working on their TCP/IP stack. I got early access to Newton 2.0 and was amazed; when Apple killed the Newton, it was a small part of my life (a few years) sort of disappeared. The Newton had so many things that was ahead of its time; handwriting recognition (in the last OS, it was good), flexible data stores (it was easy to expand the address book), flexible applications (I could patch an application in no time flat), and a convenient form factor. I used to travel with the Newton and a keyboard instead of a laptop.

I haven’t thought much about the Newton until I was given an old eMate last year (which I haven’t turned on because I need to find a power supply). Today, a friend sent me a link to a comparison of the Newton (a ten year old product) and the latest UMPC (ultra mobile PC). Despite the age of the Newton, it did quite well which is kind of sad in that 10 years of computing, the handheld hasn’t really been improved. Comparing the Newton to the Palm is also interesting; the Newton OS had flash internal storage meaning that when the batteries died, your data wasn’t lost whereas the Palm OS didn’t get this (NVRAM) until the Tungsten T|X and Treo 650 which was not that long ago. This was one of the main reasons I didn’t think Qualcomm should go with the Palm OS for a smartphone…your battery dies (which most people seem to do with their cell phones) and you’d lose your data. Unfortunately I didn’t succeed in pushing the Newton. (Prior to this, I was offered a job in the Newton group, but for better or worse, I turned it down and stayed at Qualcomm).

After reading that comparison, I started missing the Newton. If the Newton had developer tools that ran under OS X, USB, Bluetooth, and WiFi, I think it would be a killer platform today. Yes, there are WiFi cards for it, so it isn’t a huge stretch. If anyone has a Newton MessagePad 2100 that he or she is willing to sell for a decent price, please let me know.