Newtons Around the World
By Peter Rojas 
posted December 8th 2004 11:00AM
posted December 8th 2004 11:00AM
Not sure whether this is better or worse than those Apple fanatics who got Duran Duran to pose for a shot with a poseable Steve Jobs action figure, but Wired News has a piece about a Newton lover who is completely obsessed with shlepping his not-quite-dead-yet handheld around the world and documenting it on the Newtons Around the World photo gallery. If people are still this crazed about the Newton, can you imagine what sort of madness we'd have to deal with if Apple discontinued the iPod?
FYI, you have a typo on your headline. I love my Newton though I don't use it anymore.
Why wait for them to be discontinued?
iPods Around the World Gallery:
http://gallery.ipodlounge.com/
As long as it isn't in Paris Hiilton's hands, who cares?
oo! oo! I read it on engadget. Didja hear? Apple is going to discontinue the iPod! ;-)
I can't think of any other platform that has lasted this long after it was discontinued by the manufacturer. I mean this thing was never intended to "do" wifi and yet independent developers have made it so. I own two Newtons (110 and 2100) and though I only pull them out to show to people (whom are always amazed) I am proud to own such a piece of computing history.
The Newton was the red-headed stepchild of Apple for so long. When they finally started getting some traction was when Jobs took over. He HATED the Newton and axed it immediately.
No point in trying to make any money he thought - let's just let Palm do it even though we are already doing it soooo well.
Oh well, it was the final straw in my development efforts for any Apple platform. It was enough to be insulted and denigrated by Apple in the early 90's for writing Mac games and then the Newton was axed for personal reasons.
I just wished Microsoft never gave them that $100 million and just let the f*ckers die. Now that's personal.
What's up with the Duran Duran bashing? Duran Duran are known to be big Apple Macintosh supporters (check out the placement of Nick Rhodes' PowerBook in the "Reach Up For the Sunrise" video) and they've always supported the advancement of tech in aiding music creation since the early days of MIDI keyboards. DD were also the first band to have commercially downloaded songs. And "Astronaut" is a great album, even if the big radio companies won't play it on their stations. So lay off the original Fab Five.
Joe User said "I can't think of any other platform that has lasted this long after it was discontinued by the manufacturer." Try the Atari 2600. People are still making games for it.
I loved the Newton and still do. I used to own a Newton 110, and wanted to upgrade to the 2100 when it came out but back then I didn't have the money.
I'd love to get my hands on a 2100. Awesome machine.
I've got a Newton 2100, and I've had various Palm devices over the years (original Pilot 5000, Handspring Visor Deluxe, now a Tungsten T3). The T3 is the only one that even comes close to the Newton in terms of usefulness -- and the only way it tops the Newton is in its color screen and small form factor.
The Newton OS is intuitive and well-designed, and for 1997 the hardware was outstanding. The two PC card slots on the 2000/2100 make it possible to have a large flash memory card in one slot and a modem card, Ethernet card, or even wireless card in the other slot. I could dial up my ISP or connect to an Ethernet network (via cable or 802.11) and check my email on my Newton long before it was practical to do so with a Palm. (And actually, it's only just recently that a wireless card came out that works with my T3.)
I've been saying for years that I wish Apple would revive the Newton -- or even sell off the technology for someone else to revive. A modernized Newton with a smaller form factor, higher-res color display, Bluetooth, and say one PC card slot and one SD slot or something would easily be the best PDA on the market.