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Apple PDA?
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Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user!
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user!
Apple Hype (Score:1, Interesting)
"Big, even for our standards"
"Count the days, count the minutes, count on being blown away"
"Beyond the rumour sites, way beyond"
"A backstage pass to the future"
Would anyone consider this iWalk thing to match these descriptions?
Big announcement with be OS X for Intel (Score:2, Interesting)
Jobs' NextStep OS, which forms the foundation of OS X, was at one time ported to the Intel platform. Since many of Apple's latest innovations are an extension of failed ambitions at NeXT, it's not a stretch to imagine this product being announced on Monday.
Re:If it stays up is probably a fake (Score:3, Interesting)
"Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond."
yesterday on their website. I dunno - originally, I'd agree with you, but I really don't think Apple wants to tip their hand right now. To put it another way: 2 months ago, I laughed at the iWalk. Now I wouldn't be surprised if it was unveiled soon.
Discussion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Big announcement with be OS X for Intel (Score:2, Interesting)
So why would they release ANY mainstream OS when it could ensure MS being able to wriggle out of such claims? That's like fighting the war against Nazi Germany and handing them the A-bomb (godwin be damnned)...
Re:There's a good chance it's fake... (Score:5, Interesting)
Other problems they have might be entirely overlooked by actual Mac hardware and software makers; the MessagePad doesn't look very much like a Mac at all and the bottom group of buttons was screened on in earlier versions but turned into a floating dock in later versions (that looked the same).
... etc.
I don't know if its a fake or not, but Apple's got to feel stupid for discontinuing the Newton right before Palm did so well (considering Palm wrote Graffiti for the Newton at the time).
People also seem to not realise that the printed text recognition in the Newton OS 2.x devices was almost perfect; so if you could bear to print your text instead of cursively writing it, the recogniser did very well, as well as being able to store the vectors of handwriting to be recognised later when you had more time to turn up the CPU usage.
Re:delightful.....yes, it is (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple's strength (and their current strategy) is that all their stuff works together in ways that cheap commodity crap cannot. Yes, many of the features are Mac-only. Gee, maybe thats because they want more people to buy Macs. Go figure.
Just because they carry a massive boulder of FUD around on their back does not mean they aren't doing some really cool sh!t these days. I'll bet my left testicle that this thing can do sh!t no other PDA can do.
Why?
1) Jobs is one nitpicky SOB, and this (ala the Cube and iMac) looks like one of his pet projects.
2)This is Apple's latest marketing scheme and product strategy. Leveraging the fact that they make the hardware AND software.
3)Apple invented the fscking PDA. There is no question they have been working on this since the Newton got killed.
While you can have fun getting your Visor, Rio, and Heinz 57 box to play nice, life just got a little sweeter for 5% of us. =)
Re:they have a tough NUt to crack (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of the things that I find very useful are as follows:
The ability to mount an nfs drive (the max I have had is 61Gb on my PDA
The ability to log into any of my servers using ssh via an infrared connection to my mobile. I am not sure whether this can be done using a palm.
The Zaurus screen is higher definition than the palm and it should be possible to do a Solaris install via a serial connection once serial cables are available.
Web browsing is much better using opera and is very usable even via a mobile phone.
Compact flash ethernet for mobile connectivity around the office is fantastic
At present I think for a laptop / portable replacement I am missing gpg and imap (though ssh, screen and pine works well)
On the trivial side I have got it playing videoCDs at about 3 frames a second.
Rumors and speculation..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Spend time doing productive things, like volunteering the time you would have spent on such a rumors site in a local charity. Or read something NOT online.
Re:Apple started the PDA (Score:1, Interesting)
The Atari Portfolio came out in 1989.
It was basically an XT that fit in your hand. The PIM functions were good, not great, but it was DOS2.2 and lotus 1-2-3 compatible.
[rant]
The bastard child of this pda was the HPLX series. These were/are the most versatile and fun to hack palmtop ever. They're an 80186, upgradable to 64megs of ram, with a pcmcia slot, a Numberpad (yes! roguelike game players unite), CGA graphics and they run on AAs.
The original Newton, while surely it made people think about the pen interface as a serious option for handhelds, was a joke to people running palmtops with desktop power.
[/rant]
I wish HP would remake this with a more modern cpu. There is a japanese group supposedly working on it with the AMD Elan processor, but we haven't heard anything from them in a while.
I've looked into older pen-based tablet computers, but I'd miss not having an actual keyboard
We can't all afford Librettos or Picturebooks.
Re:logo there for a reason (Score:1, Interesting)
os x on a newton (Score:2, Interesting)
What's Woz playing with? (Score:4, Interesting)
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What convinced me.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple is very good about trademarking their brands. If this product even exists, it's a sure bet it's not called the "iWalk." And there's nothing else (aside from "Gigawire", which seems unlikely) that even suggests a PDA among the Apple trademarks.
Thank God.
no PalmOS? (Score:1, Interesting)
Reasons there will never be an OS X for x86. (Score:2, Interesting)
There will never be an OS X for x86, for all the reasons explained here [macedition.com].
Movies seem fishy. (Score:3, Interesting)
-Okay, about 7 seconds into bootup.mov, the guy starts turning the jog dial... for about 4-5 frames, his finger is turning the jog dial, but the Apple logo on the dial *ISN'T TURNING* as well. Then all of a sudden on frame 6, the Apple logo appears rotated 20 degrees. At first I thought it could be a simple glitch in the compressed video, but the guys hand which should be moving in sync with the jog dial does not suffer the same glitch. It seems like somebody spliced to pieces of video together. Why?
-There's a video of the guy handling the device(picking it up, flipping it over, etc..) and videos of him using the device (turning it on, writing on the screen), but no videos of him handling *and* moving the device. Bluescreening would be a pain in the ass if the device were moving.
-This point is purely an ergonomic issue, but wouldn't you constantly be moving the jog dial if you were holding the thing in your left hand and writing with the stylus with your right hand?
If it is a hoax, spymac.com definitely had their hand in it.. but why would a rumor site cash in credibility in the future for 15 minutes of fame? I guess we'll all find out in a few days.
Let's add to the rumor pile... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the iPad! You may have seen this baby before, but it is definately something I personally would love to see, except for the fact that it might just break easily, you can find pictures and specs here:
The iPad with specs. [mac.com]
True? Doubtfully, but it would definately be excellant.
1GHz, 133 MHz bus, 256 MB to 1 GB RAM
38 to 80 GB hard drive, DVD/CD-R combo drive
Touch-sensitive pen-driven 14" TFT
nVidia AGP 4X [not with ATI anymore?] with 32MB
2 FireWire, 4 USB, Gigabit Ethernet
[here's a hell of a kicker] Integrated Webcam and Microsoft
Airport and BlueTooth included.
As they say, Your home, wherever.
Is this real? Is it the new Newton? (Score:3, Interesting)
I had a Newton MessagePad back in the mid '90s and it got killed by a falling phone (screen smashed). At that point, I went to Palm. After a while using Palm, I switched to Windows CE. It still didn't seem right. Then I bought a full pen-based PC last year and ran Linux+xscribble on it. These other PDAs and pen-based computers were all just wrong.
When it came right down to it, the Newton *software* and NewtonOS was what I was missing. Nothing else yet manufactured comes close for the PDA paradigm. The hardware is a little bulky, and is expensive for its age, but I finally just broke down and bought a Newton 2100 last year to see if the Newton magic was still there...
And it was like a revelation. I hadn't really appreciated my early Newton as well as I could have... It was my first PDA, it was early technology, and all I could do at the time was see things wrong with it. It's only after using other PDA devices for a while that I realized just how important and wonderful NewtonOS was and just how sad that it was discontinued.
If Apple DOES ever release another PDA, I pray that it will use NewtonOS technology. If instead Apple goes with Palm or some such nonsense, I hope to God that they release the NewtonOS code for StrongARM as open-source so that we don't have to try to copy [sourceforge.net] it ourselves. Imagine a modern, open PDA hardware platform running open-source NewtonOS!
As for right now... I've stocked up on several Newton 2100 machines which will hopefully last me well into the century. I've taken to hand-replacing their dimming backlights and manually repacking their rechargeable battery packs just to get them running well again. At least for the next few years, it looks like we will be dominated by weak software like Palm and Windows CE -- only the few lucky (like me) who are aware of what has gone before and can maintain the machines will be able to depend on something as advanced as NewtonOS for our information.
GUI Standard (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Do you seriously think that with all the effort Apple has been putting into GUI conformity in OSX that they would at least try and keep the GUI at least similar (if this thing is indeed real - which it isn't) to the OSX look-n-feel.
2. Also, I severely doubt that they would make their own browser - that looks like a whole lot like iTunes... If they had gone to the trouble of producing such a browser - why isn't it included with OSX now?
3. Also the widgets at the bottom of the screen look much to similar to those used by the linux Sharp Zaurus.
4. Apple would never put a big cheesey logo on the front of the thing. Does the iPod have a huge logo on the front?
Think Different, Think Minimalist.