It's not "pedantic." I was confused by "ten years old" written more times. But mentioning the community etc it appeared to be about something that I maybe don't know. The Newton was discontinuited in 1998 so now it's more like "20 years old device." Just "2011" makes the text clearer.
also helps explain why the author would refer to smartphones taking 3-4 hours to charge, which is no longer the case. I was initially confused by this claim and thought he was stacking the deck in his comparison.
Handwriting recognition - I can recognize my own handwriting.
Document centric workflow - The document is definitely front and center.
Share Everything - in the paper notebook, everything is shareable, and shared in the same way. Either take a picture of the pages, type them in somewhere else (and edit while you do so), or make a photocopy. Optical Character Recognition may be possible but would arguably be adding unnecessary complexity.
Expandability - either purchase more notebooks, or use the 3-Ring Binder (tm) model to expand the capacity of your existing device.
Community - the paper notebook is no wonder device. The spiral notebook was patented in 1935 and has a large community of nearly all of western civilization.
Searching through it isn't the best, but at least the ergonomics of flipping through pages is way more comfortable than waiting to scroll through an ebook.
Hmmm... I fear the bookmark-based search index is far from scalable and limited to ~10 terms. Compare this to the prospect of having every word indexed, and you'll have to agree that the digital version if far superior if reasonably fast searching is one of your requirements.
You know the best thing about a paper notebook is that it is compatible with every human being in the world (at least it has the potential to be). Just look at the note and you can understand it pretty much straight away. Not need for some tool to parse it into human readable format.
It's not compatible with blind people or people who don't speak the language of the notebook.
One of the wonderful things that computers have done is to vastly improve the ability of people with disabilities and speakers of any language to access vastly more information than they could before.
:) Actually Ford Shorthand was made in part for this purpose (loose obfuscation) and is much easier to learn since you can write out full words instead of learning abbreviations.
Wacom has a digitizing pen that looks cool, a good trade off it looks like; but I'm with you, you'll have to pry my moleskin from me before I lug around some crap. Now if that moleskin just happened to be digital...
Speaking as a huge fan of the Newton MP 2000 (which I kept using for years after the Newton was cancelled):
1) You can search your meeting notes. I had four or five years of meeting notes that could be instantly (well, by late 90s standards of "instantly") searched.
2) You could point it at any IRDA printer and just print stuff. (I was astonished by this when I discovered it worked, because the first IRDA printer I got was made long after the Newton was cancelled.)
In contrast to this, most of my paper notes (and I've gone back to paper) end up being lost, and those that aren't lost are horribly disorganized. Generally, the half life of paper notes -- for me -- is perhaps a month.
> most of my paper notes (and I've gone back to paper) end up being lost, and those that aren't lost are horribly disorganized
I agree that this happens, but it is your own decision. Until the 20th century, scientists had to maintain notes of everything they did in notebooks. They kept them organized and accessible, despite having to use handwritten notes.
Countering the usefulness of free text search of one's notes with "you can do it manually" doesn't even rise to the level of a cheap shot -- it's ridiculous. Which is my point.
I never face this issue, very simply because after you use a real notebook for a while, you learn to organize information. Indexing information by date, topic etc is common for seasoned notebook users.
Not only that, but the shape of my own handwriting conveys to me the emotional state I was in when I wrote the note. I know whether I was in a hurry, stressed, relaxing, or whether I had nothing to do and was daydreaming. This distracts me from actually reading the contents of my notes. Sometimes it stresses me to read notes I wrote in a hurry.
Search - How do you grep or Ctrl-F your notebook to find out that one command you ran three weeks ago to fix your dev environment?
Copy/Paste - If I ask you for a copy of your notes, you have to retype it out. I can yank and paste into my e-mail client.
In addition, I have to quibble with expandability. Yes, I can buy additional notebooks, but I have finite desk and drawer space. Moreover, the cost of searching increases nonlinearly as the number of notebooks increases. Meanwile, grep runs approximately as quickly on 1kb of notes as it does on 100kb of notes.
I use Org for my lesson notes, and all other notes, but I always capture with pen and paper. It's way more straightforward and there are no distractions and no limitations, I can write, draw, etc. Then I type them, after the fact, into the relevant org file, so that I can edit and share more easily. So, I capture on paper, and store and manipulate on the computer.
That's a good strategy, but as a programmer, I'm at the computer 90% of the time anyway. It's much easier for me to have another vim window open or whatever than it is for me to have a physical notebook sitting alongside my keyboard.
I concur, though note that I am talking about taking notes during an activity like a lecture or a meeting. While on the computer I'd never bother myself writing stuff on paper.
Something in the water? Why does everybody think that one can not transfer from notebook to the computer, or have to carry all their corpus of notes with them? Paper is easier to use when listening to a lecturer, or drawing some spontaneous idea.
Photographs of handwriting are good enough, millions of students use such method. It is so good that even Google Books uses it, no?
I've taken plenty of paper notes, but I would never scan handwritten text into a computer and call that good.
Sometimes a canvas is better than text, and sometimes text is better than a canvas. Paper is cheap, but it's not inherently better at these tasks. A computer can much more effectively organize your notes while being as compact as the situation calls for.
IMO photographs of handwriting don't get you anything other than not having to carry multiple old notebooks around. If you want to make handwritten notes more useful than they are on paper, you will have to type them in (which is what I do).
Ugh. Why do some techies feel the need to show off their bigger/better "tool"?
There is almost never one tool to use in every situation. Fluidity is key: Use the right tool for the job. Solo and need to take quick notes you can search on? Newton. Love a keyboard? PC/Mac w/ Evernote or OneNote. Want to stand up in front of a bunch of people and show them an idea in real-time? A white board.
I personally have a notebook I write in when taking notes on a computer would be just plain rude (in front of prospects and clients) and at other times, I organize my thoughts in Workflowy. Some of my meeting notes go directly into our CRM. The right tool, for the right job, at the right time.
Totally agree. Some people think low tech works for them, some like high tech....
At the end of the day it's whatever works for that particular person at a particular time. I wouldn't say that people shouldn't try different things for a week just to see how it works, because you don't know what you don't know, and don't know you don't know it until you see a blog post like this, but there is no one-size-fits all solution to transferring info from your brain to a medium.
I have two of these on my desk, bought by one or both of my parents during the PDA craze.
For the time and technology, their handwriting detection is extremely impressive - I have fond memories of doodling on them and watching it transcribe my (childish) handwriting into neat type. It's awesome to hear that someone is still (well, as of 2011) still using a Newton regularly.
I used to have a Newton, also long after they were "obsolete" (as in, years ago, but I sold my Playsation Portable to buy it.) It was a fantastic little device. I had a MessagePad 2100, which had two PCMCIA slots and an awesome green-backlit screen. WiFi worked. Handwriting input was not great, but it worked to a degree that was pretty impressive - I've tried text input on modern devices, and I can't really say that they're any better.
I wouldn't mind having a device like that again, if it were easily hackable (something that was my main issue with the Newton).
I still have my 2000. I bought it in 1999, second-hand on Craigslist. It's still a brilliant device. I really wish I had something in EXACTLY the same form factor that had a modern screen.
There is one aspect of the Newton that I feel is still unrivaled in all the pen-based systems: It has a little stylus caddy for when you're using the device on a flat surface. Not only can you store the stylus inside the device, when it's out, it's got a little place to put it in between siblings.
Another thing that is unique about the Newton is its heat dissipation. It never gets hot. When you pull the stylus out, it's frequently cold to the touch, even....
> I really wish I had something in EXACTLY the same form factor that had a modern screen.
Yeah, totally. It's a chunky device, but that's really not a problem... And you could have one hell of a device in that form factor now. Multi-day battery life, a pair of PCIe card slots, a nice screen, and lots of RAM and storage. That would be neat!
Why specifically a Newton, and not a PalmPilot or any other PDA? Especially since Graffiti, while making the user learn a handwriting script, reduced the difficulty of dealing with '90s-era handwriting recognition.
The handwriting recognition was the Newton's oversold aspect, leading to (in my opinion) many to overlook some unique system-wide architecture decisions for data representation; the data soup [1].
That technical description doesn't easily convey the benefits for those who have never seen data soups before, but this blog post [2] gives some idea.
This was very helpful. Thanks. The second link made it sound very smalltalkish to me -- it sounded like an OODBMS that real world users could relate to. So I followed the link at the Wikipedia article and was surprised to learn that NewtonScript was a prototype-based inheritance language modelled on Self.
If the secret sauce is a user-accessible OODBMS written in a prototype-based scripting language, would it not be possible to build a Data Soup system in JavaScript? No need to bring the device back -- just replicate what people liked about it.
You totally can re-implement the data soup in JavaScript. At the same time, revamp the data soup for a default-untrusted environment (with accompanying management UI/CLI/API), and extend it to multi-user contexts, and I think it's worthwhile to explore for use in groupware. I'm not entirely convinced the way we're currently sharing referential data in groupware is sustainable, though I don't know large-scale data structure design well enough to know if a new kind of data soups approach would be any better for a global scale. My gut reaction is data soups are not extensible to the global Net, but groupware-oriented applications would likely benefit since there is so much back- and cross-referencing in groupware transactions. The data soup's union capability would be ideal for helping manage mobile "islands" of data, as consumer/employee mobile devices add ever-greater capacity and synchronization to the data on those devices is introducing unacceptable latencies to live, accurate data representation.
I've honestly considered going back to a simple PalmPilot. Simple, well designed apps that are lightning fast. Graffiti works flawlessly once you learn it. Battery life measured in weeks just like Newtons... as far as just keeping your life organized, it's honestly pretty compelling.
Has a Messagepad 100 back in the day; hated it, sold it and bought a Psion 3MX. (Alas, Psion shrieked and ran away when Microsoft announced a competitor to their micro-laptop-esque palmtops, which eventuated as vapourware.)
Some of us just don't get on with handwriting.
Having said that? If you have a smartphone but the list of benefits from the Newton appeal to you, you might want to try a Livescribe+ smartpen. Syncs with your phone or tablet, works like a pen on notepad or paper, the sync app takes care of handwriting recognition, and you can sync through it to Dropbox or Evernote. So you can leave your phone in your pocket and just use a pen and a notepad, and still have the benefits of everything being transcribed automagically and available online. (Yes, it needs special paper, but the dot pattern is available as a PDF if you want to print your own.)
That's Microsoft's general new-product market strategy.
1. See a potential game-changer in the marketplace.
2. Announce new product that would compete. ("Real soon now")
3. ?? (bring sub-par product to market, eventually)
4. Watch as the non-early adopters patiently wait for Microsoft product to arrive and competitor's potential market disappear.
Why do you think it took so long for decent tablets to get to market?
A: "Pen windows"
Toward the end of my college career I fell in love with my LiveScribe. You might hear an aside in a lecture about X, and you could simply write X in your notebook. Later on, you could search your notes for X, and if you were wondering what exactly was said about X, you can tap on that note to hear what was happening in the lecture at that point in time.
Later on, Y might be brought up in relation to X. Write Y in the notebook, and draw a line to X, and so on.
I am not much of a note taker nowadays, but I highly recommend trying out the LiveScribe. I am considering buying a new one just to see how things have progressed.
The original model was positioned as an app platform -- the OLED screen, the downloadable extras. It was a bit clumsy and annoying (and had a steep learning curve).
I recently bought the Livescribe+. It cut back on features but made the core functionality work a lot better. Charges over micro-USB (like everything else these days), can run on generic pen refils. No apps, but realtime streaming to your phone (iOS or Android) over Bluetooth. It can still do pencasts/audio recording (but doesn't give you a headset so you can replay audio notes on the pen itself -- it's not a true dictation machine).
In other words, it does more by doing less (but doing it better).
You can select a difficult small amount of memory for code and storage with slow CPU and slow access to bulk storage with an arduino, or somewhat complicated I/O and software stacks with high power use on a RaspPi.
There's a hole in the market around many megs of storage and a tenth of a watt or so of power and 10 MIPS of non DSP or so. Below there's tons of offerings, and above there's tons of offerings, but in between theres not much. Probably because there's not many applications. The world's full of engine computers and toasters, and tablets and phones, but in between not so much.
I've been able to play with one of those in the past year. It's still an attractive device even today, a bit like a form factor and OS variant on the TI graphing calculators.
If someone announced a new version with small updates(e.g. backlit screen) I'd be interested.
Edit: that said it would be competing with tablet + keyboard + battery pack combos now.
I had a Model 100 for a while, purchased at a flea market. It had a hardware glitch that I could never solve, despite scouring the circuit board for problems, so I gave it to a friend who wanted it more than me.
As I understand it, the Model 100 was a favorite among journalists. At the time, I was impressed with being able to just turn it on and go. That was also why I liked my Palm Pilot.
Why exactly does the Newton, a 90s PDA, have better battery life than a 2011 smartphone? There's almost certainly a trade-off, so what is it? Lack of constant connectivity through wireless radios?
But the size of the software is also one. An Android image is easily hundreds of megabytes. And to go through all that code in reasonable time, you need a fast processor and fast memory. But as you crank up the frequencies you also need higher voltages to drive the gates faster and higher voltage leads to a higher leakage current...
For my LG G2 phone the Cell Data is the worst offender (unless I start watching videos or playing games). I was on vacation out of the country over Christmas and left the data roaming off. The phone went from ~ 1 day to ~4 days with wifi on syncing Mail/ twitter/ whatsapp etc. 3G/4G/LTE are really heavy on the phone battery as they use a lot of power to talk to the tower on a lot of channels at the same time.
Sure, but did the Newton have much better battery life because it was larger? That is, did it use that extra space to hold a much higher-capacity battery?
The Newton doesn't have an advantage in battery capacity, despite being bigger. They used 4xAA NiMH batteries in series, so 1800mAh-ish. Two points of comparison: The iPhone 6 Plus has about the same capacity, and a Samsung Galaxy S6 has 2500mAh capacity.
Kinda like saying "why is that muzzle loading soldier able to maintain constant fire for 3 hours when the guy holding the machine gun runs out in 10 minutes"
The two main factors from my point of view are:
1) Modern phones are more capable and allow you to drain the battery faster. (better radios, larger/brighter screens, LED vs LCD, massively more powerful processors/GPUs). An iphone 5 has a standby battery life of ~9 days[0].
2) Cell phone manufactures target 10-24 hours of battery life when they design phones (smaller is better). I've found that my e-reader runs out of battery more often than my phone. Remembering to plug it in once every week or two is harder to do than getting in the habit of plugging in my phone every night.
The Newton aggressively sleeps. It runs like hell when it needs to, then spends the rest of its time consuming as little power as possible.
It kind of helps that the Newt doesn't have any kind of built-in wireless. No radio means no networky stuff that it has to periodically wake up for.
The number of threads the thing runs (20-30) also spend most of their time utterly asleep. (Back in the day, a threading, message-passing OS in a small form factor was considered pretty high tech).
CPU technology got faster, software more complex, battery technology didn't improve that much.
Besides everyone seems to want to buy flat things... because... yeah I don't know why. "-Look! My MacBook Air is as thin as a piece of paper. -Ok cool, I guess..." Which means there isn't much space for a decent enough battery to power the 2 GHz octacore monster in there. So everyone is walking around like zombies looking for wall plugs all the time to charge their expensive $600 ultra high tech phones and tablets.
It's the hipster passive-aggressive rebuke: go around in public places using an old-ass typewriter, get offended at people that point out you are weird.
Do you ever 'roll your eyes' at anything? Because I (metaphorically) 'rolled my eyes' as I was reading the post. Couldn't help it. Here was a grown man seriously espousing the benefits of the Newton over modern smartphones. I mean, come on. Don't get me wrong, I say that with all the gravity and seriousness that this issue deserves. He's welcome to do it. But again, come on, be serious.
On a tangent, what's wrong with shaming people into conformity as a general concept. Is it wrong everytime and every circumstance?
> On a tangent, what's wrong with shaming people into conformity as a general concept. Is it wrong every time and every circumstance?
No. Not always. But often. If someone goes around doing things that might hurt others, shaming them into conformity may be a good idea. Example: smoking in a crowded movie theater deserves some shaming. (How could you do such a thing!? The person next to you might have asthma for all you know!)
But mocking someone for their fashion choices (clothing fashion, tech fashion, slang fashion, etc.) is not helpful.
You're being down voted for the shaming part but I thought I'd expand on your other points. Speaking as someone who is interested in vintage computing, I find it futile to try to justify that interest to others. Hell, my friends think I'm a bit off-kilter for even trying to run my website on Internet Explorer 4 [1]. That doesn't bother me. People find me weird already, so if I'm not going to conform I should embrace the weird instead of trying to convert "the mainstream".
The norms around computers are funny. While we accept the enthusiast who might show off a 1959 El Camino or vintage Les Paul guitar, we needlessly question one who cherishes an Amiga 3000 [2]. Rather than espouse the technical merits of a piece of vintage computing (which will inevitably be obsolete), we should be able to articulate our appreciation for the aesthetic and historical qualities of that technology as well. As computers are judged almost entirely by utilitarian value, this is not easy to do without sounding pretentious.
>You're being down voted for the shaming part but I thought I'd expand on your other points.
I figured, but in my defense, it's supposed to be a benign statement. We're a social species and being 'shamed' and 'pressured' into conforming is part of the contract (obviously within reason). Nobody runs around naked yelling obscenities partly because of social 'shaming'. That's all I meant, and I thought I qualified it sufficiently. Guess not.
>I find it futile to try to justify that interest to others.
I don't think you need to justify it. It's a quirky hobby but completely benign and seems fun and interesting. I don't have a problem with OP loving his Newton either, though if you put up a blog post extolling the virtues of the Newton over modern smartphones you HAVE to expect some eye-rolls.
>this is not easy to do without sounding pretentious.
Yeah, though that's subject to individual interpretation. For some, someone using certain words will be pretentious.
And what's wrong with that? As long as the attention-seeking is not hurting anyone, then this is probably a great way to find and meet like-minded people. He's not hurting anyone. If he truly enjoys the Newton, then he's not even hurting himself.
The universe is terribly lonely as is. I'm not going to fault anyone for their harmless attempts to reduce the loneliness.
... because it perfectly compliments my Macintosh LC III.
... because I'm a hipster doofus who also carries a rotary phone for some reason.
... because I fear change even when it makes perfect sense to do so.
Do you make 100% of your decisions based on what is the most efficient/utilitarian, or are there some inefficient things you do just because you enjoy them?
Some common examples are buying a brand new car, using loose-leaf tea, buying wine that costs more than $8[1], eating at a restaurant that isn't the cheapest around, etc.
People do lots of "irrational" things for emotional reasons, and there's evidence that doing something the "hard" (in some cases inefficient) way makes the end result objectively more pleasurable.
I wouldn't really make the judgement of "hipster doofus." But surely the author gets some kind of kick out of using retro tech. I don't find anything wrong with that at all but I would at least have admitted that I like the old gear partially for the novelty.
I've got old PDAs laying around and when you use them, it can be maddening how slow they are compared to our current expectations. But they do often have some interesting feature that is missing on our modern smartphones. It's fun to play around with them, but when it's time to get to work I put them away.
I agree with the handwriting component of this, especially during sales meetings. I have found the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 really fantastic for sales meetings. Battery life is all day, but not "measured in weeks" (alas). Handwriting recog is about as good as Newton ever was but I never really use it -- I like sharing notes as PDFs in Drive then linking to them from todo lists (I use Highrise so my workflow is to create a PDF in Drive from the S-Note app then share the link via email to Highrise or someone else on my team).
Unfortunately Samsung stopped making the Note in a tablet -- the new Tab A or whatever that has a stylus is a bit underpowered.
Surprised he'd stick with a Newton and not a PalmOne device - they had the better community.
That said, I have a Pebble and it has reminded me of the simple effiency of black-and-white LCD and lightweight processors. The battery lasts all week.
Perhaps PalmOne had the better community, but Newton has had an incredible afterlife that has extended to this day. It somehow got the attention of lots and lots of hobbyists who have modernized it in unbelievable ways.
The more modern Kindle devices don't have a physical keyboard (I've tried typing on my wife's Kindle Paperwhite, it's not a pleasant experience) and are harder to mod. What you're looking for is a Kindle 2 or Kindle 3 (AKA "Kindle Keyboard") which can boot a light version of Ubuntu[1], or you can just add a SSH client to the existing Kindle software[2]. Get the 3G version and you have a SSH client that works practically anywhere.
Treo Centro user here. Really hard to find comparable Contact apps on iOS/Android, regarding efficiency. Why there are no apps today can let you start the job within 3 keystrokes/swipes (including screen unlock)?
Honestly, the fact that I can only erase the whole board and not a small section is a deal breaker for me. As is the form factor.
Make them as big as a small whiteboard, add local erase features and they've got a winner.
While we're at that, they could manufacture boogie board whiteboard replacements. That would be a hit in all teaching institutions. Imagine: No more markers or chalk. One click erase.
I went through high school in the mid 00s, and just recently graduated from college. Every classroom I've been in for the past 10 years has had a "smart board", which is basically a giant whiteboard with touch recognition. They have "markers" you can pick up and write on the screen with, and an eraser that lets you erase what you've written. They were very successful, and incredibly useful- plus teachers could save the images they drew and then put them up for the class to access later.
Where I work now we have one as well- except instead of a projector it's just a big LCD touchscreen.
There are really salient points in the article about how the general purpose smartphone/tablet adds small friction to simple tasks that end up being large distractions.
I have a huge collection of print books and that is my preferred way to learn because I can step away from the computer and digest what I am trying to learn. An epaper reader would be a semi-acceptable compromise, but the tactile feedback of page flipping and bookmarks are also very gratifying. A physical book also has the tangible affect of being physically present; not something to just purchase and file away. Generally I don't want to search books as I'm trying to understand overall concepts, or perhaps quickly consult the ToC to zip to a specific concept. When I want to search I want to search a code base, API docs, or something like stackoverflow/mailing lists/newsgroups so I've never missed that from ebooks.
For note taking, I can use either pen/paper, or a laptop with a simple vim session. The paper is most useful if there are non-text things that need to be quickly noted, and can be turned into charts/graphs or whatever later on if needed.
> I have a huge collection of print books and that is my preferred way to learn
because I can step away from the computer and digest what I am trying to
learn.
Paper has different profile of use friction than computer or tablet.
You can't easily search it for words, and paper book forces you to use its
index and table of contents, so you have to actually think about what you're
looking for. This is stark contrast with how digital text works.
You can make notes in a book, you can put shims and bookmarks, you can bend
a page corner. How it works in a computer is not as seamless as with paper;
you have to spend some attention to make a mark, and the mark will be limited
in one way or another.
And you can flick through a paper book. This is an important way of working
with a textbook, and no software can render that.
> An epaper reader would be a semi-acceptable compromise, but the tactile
feedback of page flipping and bookmarks are also very gratifying.
Page flipping is an unimportant detail, and you can have markers in digital
text, too. What is important is how much and how cheaply (in terms of
attention) can you put in your notes, and -- much less tangible thing -- how
the medium inclines your mind for its content.
> For note taking, I can use either pen/paper, or a laptop with a simple vim
session. The paper is most useful if there are non-text things that need to be
quickly noted, and can be turned into charts/graphs or whatever later on if
needed.
I actually design my code on paper. And I'm not talking about UML diagrams,
which I hate. I'm talking about rough sketches on programming interfaces
(which covers pretty much everything, since I build my systems out of
libraries written specifically for the system I'm building). I'm taking
advantage of the friction that paper gives. It forces me to think in different
way than when I'm writing on a computer, and that different way works very
well for me.
I've gone back and forth between paper and various gadgets. I kinda like paper better most of the time - all of the things that the usual gadgets can do makes them distracting, and you tend to miss more of what's going in the meeting/discussion trying to get stuff down right. There's nothing to go wrong and distract or delay you further either.
It's true that you can't share and search handwritten stuff as easily, but I often find it better overall to sit down after and type up the notes into something. I have more time to get all of the details typed up while they're still fresh in my mind. It makes me reconsider things and think about them more carefully too.
I still own a Newton. Used it heavily back in the 90's. At MacWorld in '97 or '98 I was in an Adobe presentation where John Knoll was demonstrating how he did special effects for a Star Trek movie. At one point, he offered to give away a copy of After Effects for whoever had the best drawing of Bill Gates -- on a Newton. I jumped up and hurried to the front, drawing a smiley face as I walked up the aisle. Just as he saw the screen, the handwriting recognition converted the drawing to "Owwh". He still gave me the software.
I keep the Newton in my desk drawer. It still works great, but I am writing this on an iPad, sitting on a plane. I wouldn't go back.
143 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadPlease (mods) add it to the title.
Battery life - infinite
Handwriting recognition - I can recognize my own handwriting.
Document centric workflow - The document is definitely front and center.
Share Everything - in the paper notebook, everything is shareable, and shared in the same way. Either take a picture of the pages, type them in somewhere else (and edit while you do so), or make a photocopy. Optical Character Recognition may be possible but would arguably be adding unnecessary complexity.
Expandability - either purchase more notebooks, or use the 3-Ring Binder (tm) model to expand the capacity of your existing device.
Community - the paper notebook is no wonder device. The spiral notebook was patented in 1935 and has a large community of nearly all of western civilization.
;-)
It's not compatible with blind people or people who don't speak the language of the notebook.
One of the wonderful things that computers have done is to vastly improve the ability of people with disabilities and speakers of any language to access vastly more information than they could before.
http://www.fordshorthand.com/
I can't do that
Speaking as a huge fan of the Newton MP 2000 (which I kept using for years after the Newton was cancelled):
1) You can search your meeting notes. I had four or five years of meeting notes that could be instantly (well, by late 90s standards of "instantly") searched.
2) You could point it at any IRDA printer and just print stuff. (I was astonished by this when I discovered it worked, because the first IRDA printer I got was made long after the Newton was cancelled.)
In contrast to this, most of my paper notes (and I've gone back to paper) end up being lost, and those that aren't lost are horribly disorganized. Generally, the half life of paper notes -- for me -- is perhaps a month.
I agree that this happens, but it is your own decision. Until the 20th century, scientists had to maintain notes of everything they did in notebooks. They kept them organized and accessible, despite having to use handwritten notes.
Why use word processors? Quill and ink has served us for generations.
I never face this issue, very simply because after you use a real notebook for a while, you learn to organize information. Indexing information by date, topic etc is common for seasoned notebook users.
Conversely, I've had lots of PDAs through the years, and any notes I took on them were lost long ago.
This feature doesn't work for me so often...
Search - How do you grep or Ctrl-F your notebook to find out that one command you ran three weeks ago to fix your dev environment?
Copy/Paste - If I ask you for a copy of your notes, you have to retype it out. I can yank and paste into my e-mail client.
In addition, I have to quibble with expandability. Yes, I can buy additional notebooks, but I have finite desk and drawer space. Moreover, the cost of searching increases nonlinearly as the number of notebooks increases. Meanwile, grep runs approximately as quickly on 1kb of notes as it does on 100kb of notes.
Good luck fitting a dozen three ring binders into a single pocket.
Photographs of handwriting are good enough, millions of students use such method. It is so good that even Google Books uses it, no?
Sometimes a canvas is better than text, and sometimes text is better than a canvas. Paper is cheap, but it's not inherently better at these tasks. A computer can much more effectively organize your notes while being as compact as the situation calls for.
There is almost never one tool to use in every situation. Fluidity is key: Use the right tool for the job. Solo and need to take quick notes you can search on? Newton. Love a keyboard? PC/Mac w/ Evernote or OneNote. Want to stand up in front of a bunch of people and show them an idea in real-time? A white board.
I personally have a notebook I write in when taking notes on a computer would be just plain rude (in front of prospects and clients) and at other times, I organize my thoughts in Workflowy. Some of my meeting notes go directly into our CRM. The right tool, for the right job, at the right time.
At the end of the day it's whatever works for that particular person at a particular time. I wouldn't say that people shouldn't try different things for a week just to see how it works, because you don't know what you don't know, and don't know you don't know it until you see a blog post like this, but there is no one-size-fits all solution to transferring info from your brain to a medium.
For the time and technology, their handwriting detection is extremely impressive - I have fond memories of doodling on them and watching it transcribe my (childish) handwriting into neat type. It's awesome to hear that someone is still (well, as of 2011) still using a Newton regularly.
I used to have a Newton, also long after they were "obsolete" (as in, years ago, but I sold my Playsation Portable to buy it.) It was a fantastic little device. I had a MessagePad 2100, which had two PCMCIA slots and an awesome green-backlit screen. WiFi worked. Handwriting input was not great, but it worked to a degree that was pretty impressive - I've tried text input on modern devices, and I can't really say that they're any better.
I wouldn't mind having a device like that again, if it were easily hackable (something that was my main issue with the Newton).
There is one aspect of the Newton that I feel is still unrivaled in all the pen-based systems: It has a little stylus caddy for when you're using the device on a flat surface. Not only can you store the stylus inside the device, when it's out, it's got a little place to put it in between siblings.
Another thing that is unique about the Newton is its heat dissipation. It never gets hot. When you pull the stylus out, it's frequently cold to the touch, even....
Such a great device.
Yeah, totally. It's a chunky device, but that's really not a problem... And you could have one hell of a device in that form factor now. Multi-day battery life, a pair of PCIe card slots, a nice screen, and lots of RAM and storage. That would be neat!
That technical description doesn't easily convey the benefits for those who have never seen data soups before, but this blog post [2] gives some idea.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_%28Apple%29
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/faaborg/2007/06/29/why-the-iphone-i...
If the secret sauce is a user-accessible OODBMS written in a prototype-based scripting language, would it not be possible to build a Data Soup system in JavaScript? No need to bring the device back -- just replicate what people liked about it.
Some of us just don't get on with handwriting.
Having said that? If you have a smartphone but the list of benefits from the Newton appeal to you, you might want to try a Livescribe+ smartpen. Syncs with your phone or tablet, works like a pen on notepad or paper, the sync app takes care of handwriting recognition, and you can sync through it to Dropbox or Evernote. So you can leave your phone in your pocket and just use a pen and a notepad, and still have the benefits of everything being transcribed automagically and available online. (Yes, it needs special paper, but the dot pattern is available as a PDF if you want to print your own.)
Why do you think it took so long for decent tablets to get to market? A: "Pen windows"
Later on, Y might be brought up in relation to X. Write Y in the notebook, and draw a line to X, and so on.
I am not much of a note taker nowadays, but I highly recommend trying out the LiveScribe. I am considering buying a new one just to see how things have progressed.
The original model was positioned as an app platform -- the OLED screen, the downloadable extras. It was a bit clumsy and annoying (and had a steep learning curve).
I recently bought the Livescribe+. It cut back on features but made the core functionality work a lot better. Charges over micro-USB (like everything else these days), can run on generic pen refils. No apps, but realtime streaming to your phone (iOS or Android) over Bluetooth. It can still do pencasts/audio recording (but doesn't give you a headset so you can replay audio notes on the pen itself -- it's not a true dictation machine).
In other words, it does more by doing less (but doing it better).
EDIT: okay yeah this looks a lot better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKHelCE9QAg
I guess the low power touchscreen would be the least accessible part.
You can select a difficult small amount of memory for code and storage with slow CPU and slow access to bulk storage with an arduino, or somewhat complicated I/O and software stacks with high power use on a RaspPi.
There's a hole in the market around many megs of storage and a tenth of a watt or so of power and 10 MIPS of non DSP or so. Below there's tons of offerings, and above there's tons of offerings, but in between theres not much. Probably because there's not many applications. The world's full of engine computers and toasters, and tablets and phones, but in between not so much.
Just combine an ARM Cortex-M (~50-100 MIPS) and SD card.
I knew a guy who used one regularly, at least up through the year 2000, primarily for testing serial port hardware he was hacking up.
If someone announced a new version with small updates(e.g. backlit screen) I'd be interested.
Edit: that said it would be competing with tablet + keyboard + battery pack combos now.
As I understand it, the Model 100 was a favorite among journalists. At the time, I was impressed with being able to just turn it on and go. That was also why I liked my Palm Pilot.
The two main factors from my point of view are: 1) Modern phones are more capable and allow you to drain the battery faster. (better radios, larger/brighter screens, LED vs LCD, massively more powerful processors/GPUs). An iphone 5 has a standby battery life of ~9 days[0]. 2) Cell phone manufactures target 10-24 hours of battery life when they design phones (smaller is better). I've found that my e-reader runs out of battery more often than my phone. Remembering to plug it in once every week or two is harder to do than getting in the habit of plugging in my phone every night.
[0] https://support.apple.com/kb/SP655?locale=en_US
It kind of helps that the Newt doesn't have any kind of built-in wireless. No radio means no networky stuff that it has to periodically wake up for.
The number of threads the thing runs (20-30) also spend most of their time utterly asleep. (Back in the day, a threading, message-passing OS in a small form factor was considered pretty high tech).
Besides everyone seems to want to buy flat things... because... yeah I don't know why. "-Look! My MacBook Air is as thin as a piece of paper. -Ok cool, I guess..." Which means there isn't much space for a decent enough battery to power the 2 GHz octacore monster in there. So everyone is walking around like zombies looking for wall plugs all the time to charge their expensive $600 ultra high tech phones and tablets.
https://twitter.com/allaboutjake/status/664708492226404353
https://github.com/pguyot/Einstein
On a tangent, what's wrong with shaming people into conformity as a general concept. Is it wrong everytime and every circumstance?
rolls eyes
No. Not always. But often. If someone goes around doing things that might hurt others, shaming them into conformity may be a good idea. Example: smoking in a crowded movie theater deserves some shaming. (How could you do such a thing!? The person next to you might have asthma for all you know!)
But mocking someone for their fashion choices (clothing fashion, tech fashion, slang fashion, etc.) is not helpful.
And that's all I meant. It was just pedantry.
The norms around computers are funny. While we accept the enthusiast who might show off a 1959 El Camino or vintage Les Paul guitar, we needlessly question one who cherishes an Amiga 3000 [2]. Rather than espouse the technical merits of a piece of vintage computing (which will inevitably be obsolete), we should be able to articulate our appreciation for the aesthetic and historical qualities of that technology as well. As computers are judged almost entirely by utilitarian value, this is not easy to do without sounding pretentious.
[1] https://github.com/supernintendo/supernintendo.github.io
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXrM97yhbM8
I figured, but in my defense, it's supposed to be a benign statement. We're a social species and being 'shamed' and 'pressured' into conforming is part of the contract (obviously within reason). Nobody runs around naked yelling obscenities partly because of social 'shaming'. That's all I meant, and I thought I qualified it sufficiently. Guess not.
>I find it futile to try to justify that interest to others.
I don't think you need to justify it. It's a quirky hobby but completely benign and seems fun and interesting. I don't have a problem with OP loving his Newton either, though if you put up a blog post extolling the virtues of the Newton over modern smartphones you HAVE to expect some eye-rolls.
>this is not easy to do without sounding pretentious.
Yeah, though that's subject to individual interpretation. For some, someone using certain words will be pretentious.
The universe is terribly lonely as is. I'm not going to fault anyone for their harmless attempts to reduce the loneliness.
Nothing.
... because it perfectly compliments my Macintosh LC III. ... because I'm a hipster doofus who also carries a rotary phone for some reason. ... because I fear change even when it makes perfect sense to do so.
Some common examples are buying a brand new car, using loose-leaf tea, buying wine that costs more than $8[1], eating at a restaurant that isn't the cheapest around, etc.
People do lots of "irrational" things for emotional reasons, and there's evidence that doing something the "hard" (in some cases inefficient) way makes the end result objectively more pleasurable.
1. http://io9.gizmodo.com/wine-tasting-is-bullshit-heres-why-49...
I've got old PDAs laying around and when you use them, it can be maddening how slow they are compared to our current expectations. But they do often have some interesting feature that is missing on our modern smartphones. It's fun to play around with them, but when it's time to get to work I put them away.
http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/set/24
Unfortunately Samsung stopped making the Note in a tablet -- the new Tab A or whatever that has a stylus is a bit underpowered.
Get a 10.1 on ebay while you still can!
That said, I have a Pebble and it has reminded me of the simple effiency of black-and-white LCD and lightweight processors. The battery lasts all week.
Perhaps PalmOne had the better community, but Newton has had an incredible afterlife that has extended to this day. It somehow got the attention of lots and lots of hobbyists who have modernized it in unbelievable ways.
I wish there was a modern-ish Kindle that supported an SSH client. I'd definitely carry that around instead of a laptop some days.
[1] http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/09/02/photo-and-descripti...
[2] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1220552
http://www.myboogieboard.com/shop/store/original
Heavily writing focused and the newer ones actually sync your notes to an app as needed.
Having used it for a few weeks now, definitely one of my favorite devices of 2016 and I really appreciate the singular focus it has as a device.
These devices are at least 3 years old.
Honestly, the fact that I can only erase the whole board and not a small section is a deal breaker for me. As is the form factor.
Make them as big as a small whiteboard, add local erase features and they've got a winner.
While we're at that, they could manufacture boogie board whiteboard replacements. That would be a hit in all teaching institutions. Imagine: No more markers or chalk. One click erase.
Would love giant size Boogie boards for the office.
Where I work now we have one as well- except instead of a projector it's just a big LCD touchscreen.
I have a huge collection of print books and that is my preferred way to learn because I can step away from the computer and digest what I am trying to learn. An epaper reader would be a semi-acceptable compromise, but the tactile feedback of page flipping and bookmarks are also very gratifying. A physical book also has the tangible affect of being physically present; not something to just purchase and file away. Generally I don't want to search books as I'm trying to understand overall concepts, or perhaps quickly consult the ToC to zip to a specific concept. When I want to search I want to search a code base, API docs, or something like stackoverflow/mailing lists/newsgroups so I've never missed that from ebooks.
For note taking, I can use either pen/paper, or a laptop with a simple vim session. The paper is most useful if there are non-text things that need to be quickly noted, and can be turned into charts/graphs or whatever later on if needed.
Paper has different profile of use friction than computer or tablet.
You can't easily search it for words, and paper book forces you to use its index and table of contents, so you have to actually think about what you're looking for. This is stark contrast with how digital text works.
You can make notes in a book, you can put shims and bookmarks, you can bend a page corner. How it works in a computer is not as seamless as with paper; you have to spend some attention to make a mark, and the mark will be limited in one way or another.
And you can flick through a paper book. This is an important way of working with a textbook, and no software can render that.
> An epaper reader would be a semi-acceptable compromise, but the tactile feedback of page flipping and bookmarks are also very gratifying.
Page flipping is an unimportant detail, and you can have markers in digital text, too. What is important is how much and how cheaply (in terms of attention) can you put in your notes, and -- much less tangible thing -- how the medium inclines your mind for its content.
> For note taking, I can use either pen/paper, or a laptop with a simple vim session. The paper is most useful if there are non-text things that need to be quickly noted, and can be turned into charts/graphs or whatever later on if needed.
I actually design my code on paper. And I'm not talking about UML diagrams, which I hate. I'm talking about rough sketches on programming interfaces (which covers pretty much everything, since I build my systems out of libraries written specifically for the system I'm building). I'm taking advantage of the friction that paper gives. It forces me to think in different way than when I'm writing on a computer, and that different way works very well for me.
It's true that you can't share and search handwritten stuff as easily, but I often find it better overall to sit down after and type up the notes into something. I have more time to get all of the details typed up while they're still fresh in my mind. It makes me reconsider things and think about them more carefully too.
I keep the Newton in my desk drawer. It still works great, but I am writing this on an iPad, sitting on a plane. I wouldn't go back.
Time to go do some research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fzDimBmNgg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2p4RCx9OYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7MuC5ytjec
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drmpohs6iXE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOwqu2gGrb4