{"id":187,"date":"2011-01-30T14:14:58","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T19:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/30\/newton-v-air\/"},"modified":"2011-01-30T14:14:58","modified_gmt":"2011-01-30T19:14:58","slug":"newton-v-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/30\/newton-v-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Newton v. Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have long struggled with finding the right way to keep track of
\ncalendars, lists, plans, etc, while on the go.  I was an “early
\nadopter” of the whole “Personal Digital Assistant” (PDA) thing.  I
\nhad one of the early (though not earliest) Apple Newtons, and bought a
\nfinal generation Newton
\nMessagePad 2100<\/a> in 1998, just weeks before Steve Jobs announced
\nthat Apple was dropping the whole product (and screwing over thousands
\nof 3rd party application developers — you’d’ve thought they’d learned
\na lesson? I doubt many of them are writing iPhone apps).  <\/p>\n

The Apple Newton was cool.  It was quite powerful as a digital
\nassistant, and even occasionally useful for things like taking notes in
\nmeetings, when you didn’t want to bring a luggable notebook (if you
\neven had one).    But, it wasn’t a fully-fledged
\ncomputer, and had challenges sync’ing seamlessly with your desktop
\napplications.  The Palm got that part right — drop  your
\ndevice in its cradle and press a button to sync.  <\/p>\n

After the Newton, I went through several generations of Palm devices
\n(only some<\/span> of them died from
\ndeceleration trauma!), and my last one, the Tungsten T3, is still
\nsitting in its cradle, plugged into my computer.  I stopped
\ncarrying it around last year when I finally found an iPhone app that
\ncould do the T3’s last remaining task:  manage my grocery
\nlist.   <\/p>\n

Which is not to say that the iPhone does all the things I used to do
\nwith the Newton.  I suppose I could download a Libertarian quiz
\napp for it.  But, mostly, I gave up on using these small devices
\nto manage my increasingly complex (and possibly indicative of neurotic
\nleanings) ToDo lists, etc.  <\/p>\n

It all kind of felt like reverse progress.<\/p>\n

So — when I saw someone with an 11″ Macbook Air, the week before
\nChristmas, a number of threads wound together in a momentary
\nflash:  here was a device that was not a lot bigger than the
\nNewton, and only fractionally bigger than an iPad, but which could
\nsupport all those new lists and calendars and applications as well as<\/span> be a reasonable sole
\ncompute platform for a week’s business trip.  YMMV, of course, but
\nthis made a lot more sense for me than an iPad, cool though they
\nare.  <\/p>\n

Enough about me — let’s compare the MessagePad 2100 and the 11″ Air,
\nshall we?<\/p>\n

Okay — the Newton has a smaller surface area:<\/p>\n

\"top<\/p>\n

\"top<\/p>\n

\nBut it is at least twice as thick as the Air:<\/p>\n

\"side<\/p>\n

\nThe Newton (sans keyboard) is most of a pound lighter than the Air:<\/p>\n

\"newton<\/p>\n

\"Air<\/p>\n

\nAnd it has genuine PCMCIA slots for expansion!<\/p>\n

\"Newton<\/p>\n

But, when it comes time to set up for work, while the Newton’s keyboard
\nhas a much nicer feel (key travel), frankly the Newton\/keyboard combo
\nis a lot harder to balance in your lap:<\/p>\n

\"open<\/p>\n

Why, yes, the Newton does still work!  (Battery is fried, though):<\/p>\n

\"still<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have long struggled with finding the right way to keep track of calendars, lists, plans, etc, while on the go.  I was an “early adopter” of the whole “Personal Digital Assistant” (PDA) thing.  I had one of the early … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-diversion","category-misc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7dQdt-31","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}