In no particular order:

• No copy/paste. If I want to, say, text message a link to someone, I have to manually type it in. This is a huge pain in the ass. I did discover, however, that you can email a link to someone rather easily.
• Can’t save pictures from emails. If someone sends me an email with a picture in it, all i can do is view it. It would be nice if there were some mechanism to save the picture to the Photos app.
• No custom ringtones. But there is a hack. Haven’t had the guts to try it yet, tho.
• No support for multiple calendars. It just lumps everything together. And you can only sync back to one calendar on your Mac. This is something I hope to see fixed with Leopard and its integrated calendar server.
• Need more BlueTooth services. Like file transfer or tethering. That’s the one feature I really liked about my RAZR. Probably not ever going to happen, but a guy can dream.
• iPhoto. Why must iPhoto open every single time I plug the thing in? I know, it’s so I can sync my photos, but can’t they just add something in iTunes to do it automagically? Update: Fixed
• No password manager. It gets really annoying having to type in my username and password whenever I go to a site that requires it.
• Opening links in a new window. Sometimes I like to follow a link, but at the same time keep the page I’m on available without having to hit the back button 12 times. Update: Fixed
• I need a real PDF reader!!! Seriously. I have two options for reading PDFs on the iPhone: by clicking on a link in the browser or attaching them to an email. Neither of these options is really working for me. If I use the browser, whenever Safari decides it doesn’t want to remember the page I’m viewing, I have to hope I remember what page of the PDF I’m on so I can scroll on back to it. The mail attachment option is worse. If I’m in the middle of reading a PDF that I’ve emailed myself and decide I want to check for any new mail, I have to remember what page I’m on in the PDF, go back to my inbox, check my mail, re-open the email with the PDF, and again hope I remember what page I was on because I’m going to have to scroll all the way back to it. Plus, I can’t view it in landscape mode this way. I’m not asking for Acrobat Pro here, or even Preview. Just a standalone app that will remember what page I’m on if I decide to go do something else on the phone.
• No SDK. ‘Nuff said

Those are my big gripes thus far. There are a couple of small things too, but I’m not really all that concerned about them.

With the advent of the iPhone, the NewtonTalk mailing list has been abuzz with conversation about this new Apple mobile device. Comparisons with the Newton were to be expected [by me at least]. Folks, for the most part, seem to have lined up into two camps: those who think the iPhone is a great device and a reasonable successor to the Newton and those who despise the thing because it is not a Newton. I generally find myself in the former group. Despite my love for my little green friend and everything the Newton community has done, my Newton is beginning to show its age. Getting on the internet is flaky at best. I have error messages popping up at random times. I haven’t even bothered trying to sync it with my MacBook Pro because it’s such a hassle. And I think my battery is shot.

Actually, let’s talk about batteries for a bit. This seems to have spurred the greatest bit of “controversy” on the NewtonTalk list. Yes, if my Newton’s battery has kicked the bucket I can always go on the internet and buy a new one or load up my battery tray with some AAs. J&K Sales sells new Newton batteries for $45. I think that’s quite reasonable and if I should, indeed, have to replace the battery I will buy one from them. Yes, I could never do that with my iPhone. If the battery ever goes on it, I will have to send it to Apple and pay the $30 to rent a replacement until it’s fixed. But here’s the thing to keep in mind: I will be getting AppleCare on my iPhone. That will cover any battery replacement costs for the next three years, excepting the aforementioned rental. And by the time that period is up, I will certainly be ready to buy the latest and greatest iteration of the device. So really, I don’t see what the problem is here….

I suppose that in a very DIY community, such as the Newton has, the closed nature of the iPhone was bound to draw some ire. Despite its lack of handwriting recognition and the fact that you can’t develop real applications for it, the iPhone is an incredible mobile device and I think it’s worth every penny I paid for it. Is it perfect? Of course not and I’ll have more to say about that in a later post. But it’s the best we’re going to get from Apple in the way of non-laptop mobile devices.

There are two things that Steve Jobs will never, ever do. He will never license OS X to run on generic PCs and he will never bring back the Newton, or even something very closely resembling the Newton. I’m sorry my fellow Newtoners, but that’s the reality of the situation.

Update: I thought of something else the Newton can not, and will not ever, be able to do. It can’t do PDFs. At all. There are “workarounds” but they never seem to work for me. It’s a real shame too, because the Newton’s form factor would make it the perfect PDF reader.

- Added a preference panel that allows selecting the default image directory
- Added the ability to delete the current picture
- Added image information (name, size and format).
- Added keyboard shortcuts and menu items for next, previous and delete.
- Changed Open (cmd-O) to Open Folder (shift-cmd-O)
- Changed the UI around a bit
- Fixed a bug where the app would crash on startup if ~/Pictures was empty
- Some general code cleanup

Notice the “we” in the first sentence. Max Williams has contributed a significant amount of code and work to this release.

Enjoy the new release!

The answer, it turns out, was Bluetooth. And thanks to Adriano Angelillis and Eckhart Köppen it works perfectly. Adriano has been graciously providing the Newton community an easy way to purchase compatible PCMCIA Bluetooth cards and Eckhart is the mastermind who implemented the Bluetooth protocol stack on the Newton. It’s fast and, so far, very reliable. It amazes me how the Newton community has managed to do such incredible things with such dated hardware. So until next time, Keep It Green.

This morning I did a test between Python and Ruby. It is, admittedly, contrived.


#!/usr/bin/env python

>>> f = Fucker("Sid", "Nancy")
>>> f.fuck()
"Sid fucked Nancy"



#!/usr/bin/env ruby

end
>>> f = Fucker.new("Sid", "Nancy")
>>> f.fuck
"Sid fucked Nancy"


The two examples do exactly the same thing in very similar ways, but each language’s approach has certain appeal. I really really dislike Ruby’s use of end statements. Python’s required indentation [it's a feature!!] makes them unnecessary and thus makes the Python code shorter. On the other hand, I’ve always despised Python’s class initialisation method. While it’s better”ühan havdng explicit getters and setters, the self thing always bothered me. I think the Ruby way is superior in this regard. Overall I prefer Python because it doesn’t use weird looking syntax like #{variable}, but I realise that’s Ruby’s Perl influence shining through. In the end, I honestly hope I do like Ruby. I think there’s room for it alongside Python in my head.

I downloaded Boot Camp and sacrificed 20GB of my hard drive to Windows XP. Besides the general repugnance I feel whenever installing Windows anywhere, the process was straightforward. Everything seems to work the way it should. I’m going to eventually install Guild Wars on there and see how that works out. More pictures here.