A Guide to the Apple Newton | Hacker News Reader

A Guide to the Apple Newton

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50 pointsingve20 comments

One of those machines I wish had survived. The prototype base language combined with a neat way to handle data made it fun to program. I still cannot find anything that has contacts and other base data used as well.

One of these days I'm going to write a soup implementation like the Newton had. SQLite is cool, but I crave something else.

I also think that with today's CPUs, memory and displays the Newton would be a fantastic device. I sometimes play with my old MessagePad 2000 and really like using it.

A book on NewtonScript is what made OOP click for me. It was so clean.

I remember the sequence for me: "ok, create frame (?) - add variable, add methods, clone - oh cool - oh wow add variable to parent and everyone sees it, change on child and its local, wow buttons work cool - no new classes needed, wait - I just create a soup in a store to save objects?!?! just add a new variable to Contacts to associate new information to people?!!!! this is awesome"

the newton books were awesome. the UI guidelines one is also great.

Are there any open source Newton codebases around? I would like to get a feel for what working with them actually looked like.

I belatedly open-sourced Dash Board for Newton, my popular 1997 UI enhancement app:

https://github.com/masonmark/Dash-Board-for-Newton-OS

The README there also walks through the process of getting all the emulators and whatnot running on a modern machine so that you can build it (or other Newton software).

Because Newton software source code was composed of many small NewtonScript files in a proprietary binary format (with resource forks!), I also exported t he source code into a text format that can be read more easily:

https://github.com/masonmark/Dash-Board-for-Newton-OS/blob/m...

> And just to be ridiculous, Minspector features a Newton version of a Mac OS 8-style window, complete with zoom, resize, and minimize, so Mac-based Newton programmers will feel right at home.

Man, that threw me for a loop. I saw that window and for a moment thought the Newton was way more than I ever realized.

[edit] Just finished reading the whole README. What an awesome story. I'm really glad you took the time to share your project and it's history.

Great post I enjoyed reading your github on your newton code

That was an amazing story, thanks for sharing it! It's great to see more and more computing history saved for the future.

there is an emulator called Einstein. It supports mac os x and android among others. you still need a ROM to run it.

The newton platform is amazing and the community is great. check out newtontalk.net mailing list and the UNNA (united newton archives).

Thanks to some amazing homebrew developers the newton got support for Wifi, SATA and Bluetooth. Not bad for a machine from 1994.

The newton is the road not taken. I always wonder how the world would look today if instead of if Apple focused on the newton instwad of iMacs and iPods... would love to see a modern successor.

I wished that Dylan had survived Newton.

There is now OpenDylan, but it isn't the same thing as if Newton had been a success and it was the official language.

Dylan never really shipped with the Newton. I do love NewtonScript for its interaction with the Soups and how easy it was.

I know, but it was related to its development.

That would be an idea I guess. Porting NewtonScript to modern systems.

Imagine if someone took the old Newton hardware and got a working implementation of Dylan onto it.

Dylan changed a lot after the early Newton days. The language changed a lot, but so did the execution environment. That evolution continues today as we're now working on moving to an LLVM-based compiler back-end over at http://opendylan.org/ (or chat with us in #dylan on Freenode).

Does anybody know what happened to DecisionLab from Camas, Inc.? That was the last thing I kept my Newton running for but eventually it died and I've never seen another decision analysis tool like it.

Damn, you're now the first Google hit for it. Can you tell a bit more about it, what it did etc? Very intrigued!

After a little more Binging (seriously, it returned better results than Google this time), I found out that it was a product of Bruce D'Ambrosio of Oregon State University.

I believe it was based on this: http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~dambrosi/bayesian/frame.htm...

My memory isn't great, but you basically entered your goal, your different options, constraints and resources along with information about your confidence in each and it would suggest a course of action.

I had an MP2100, way after it was obsolete (but still ten years ago.) What a neat device. Two PCMCIA slots in a handheld device was pretty cool, and I really liked the notetaking app it had. It was like onenote, but far before its time.

I wish I could get an LCD like the one it had, but made with a modern process to perhaps provide better contrast. Monochrome, electroluminescent backlit, fairly large. It would be fun to make a device in the same style but with improved parts.

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