512 Pixels

Anyone who has been following technology since before the Dawn of the Smartphone should remember the Apple Newton. The handheld device was sold from 1993 to 1998, and is regarded as being ahead of its time.

The family of devices all came equipped with (eventually) decent battery life, handwriting recognition and a pen-based UI, and all ran the Newton OS.

Apple didn’t just keep Newton OS confined to glowing green handheld devices, however. In November 1997, just four months before the entire project would be shut down, Apple shipped the eMate 300.

With the same 480 x 320 16-bit greyscale display as the Newton 2000 and 2100, the eMate 300 supported pen input and ran all the same programs as its handheld brethren. (Sadly, the eMate was woefully underpowered at a mere 25 MHz. The Newton 2100 ran at a blistering 162 MHz.)

Instead of being a tablet-like device, however, the eMate 300 resembled a small laptop. At 4 pounds and 12.0“x11.4”x 2.1", the eMate 300 was only a little larger than the downright tiny PowerBook Duos. It rocked a nicely-sized keyboard on the lower half of its semi-transparent green clamshell. Apple even included several places to store the stylus.

(The eMate’s design came back around with the iBook G3.)

The eMate housed an infrared port, and standard Macintosh serial/LocalTalk ports, making it easy to connect to a Macintosh.

That’s the genius of the eMate, really, as Apple built it with education in mind.

Here’s the first paragraph from the original product specification announcement:

It is designed to take the rugged lifestyle of a student’s computer in K–12 secondary education. For example the keyboard has no circuitry hidden under it and thus avoids and potential ‘Pepsi syndromes’ that might result from drinks spilling on it. In addition, the shell incasing it is designed to survive spills of the drop and bounce type. If the screen or keyboard is damaged, both are designed for easy removal and replacement. The software inside it is also designed to adapt to the classroom environment and use wireless IR and client-server approaches to fit in and adapt to the high school environment.

(Don’t miss the Pepsi/Scully reference in there.)

Here’s Allen Pepper, in an interview at Low End Mac:

I set each student up with their own account and password. On each cart, I have an Apple StyleWriter and LaserWriter, so they can print whenever they want. They use them when we go to the library to take notes for any project that they may have. They are able to make charts and graphs on them to include in their assignments. When they are finished with their work, they like to use the beaming function as an instant messaging tool. This feature really attracts them to the device - especially when they use it to print a document.

The iPad’s success in education really feels like an echo after reading about the eMate 300.

Like its Newton cousins, the eMate can still be used today. While it isn’t as powerful as portable as the Newton, it holds a special place in my heart, and in any conversation about the history of mobile computing.

Rebecca Greenfield:

Not all of Musk’s data is entirely convincing and the parts that are don’t point to a malicious plot. In the end, it looks like Broder made some compromises to get from the Newark charging station to the Milford one, in both speed and temperature. Broder may not have used Musk’s car the way Musk would like, but Musk is, for now, overhyping his case for a breach of journalism ethics.

Update: The Times chimes in here and here.

Elon Musk:

When Tesla first approached The New York Times about doing this story, it was supposed to be focused on future advancements in our Supercharger technology. There was no need to write a story about existing Superchargers on the East Coast, as that had already been done by Consumer Reports with no problems! We assumed that the reporter would be fair and impartial, as has been our experience with The New York Times, an organization that prides itself on journalistic integrity. As a result, we did not think to read his past articles and were unaware of his outright disdain for electric cars. We were played for a fool and as a result, let down the cause of electric vehicles. For that, I am deeply sorry.

If that weren’t damning enough, Tesla has posted numerous graphs and tables outlining the car’s performance while in the hands of The New York Times.

This week, Lil’ Mikey DJ and I discuss gdgt being bought by Aol, Apple’s slight refresh to its MacBook line and the iPad 4.

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Viticci:

Last Monday, 445 days after my first scan, my PET scan came back negative. This doesn’t mean my journey is over: it means the treatments I have received, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, have been very effective. I will likely get more treatments to “consolidate” – e.g. “wrap up” – everything, but, overall, this is great news. It means I have kicked cancer’s ass.

This is not a post about the lessons I’ve learned. I am still learning. There’s an old saying in Italy that goes like this: “life is a continuous exam”. I believe that’s true. How can I write about life when I’m still learning how to deal with it?

Almost four years into my son’s fight with cancer, I’m still learning, too.

Apple continues to grow more aggressive with its pricing this time around. The price of the Air has fallen, while the Retina machines have gotten faster.

Interestingly, the non-Retina MacBook Pro is still around after today’s updates. I would have guessed that wouldn’t have been the case, but I’m glad my machine isn’t a dinosaur quite yet.

I think this bit really sums up the whole thing nicely:

The only thing we’ll never do is make a crappy product. We’re going to make a great product. That’s the only religion that we have. We must do something great, something bold, something ambitious. We want the customer to be the center of it. We want to enrich people’s lives. And all of this other stuff, we sweat the details on those, in hopes that we’ve proven over the years that this is something we can do.

Benj Edwards:

At a time when it seemed that compact Macs would forever be saddled with 9-inch monochrome displays, the Color Classic burst forth with a glorious, ultra-sharp 10-inch Sony Trinitron tube that handily displayed 256 colors—although it did so at a 512 by 384 resolution that almost matched its compact ancestors.

I own a Color Classic, and enjoyed Benj’s article about the machine. It was a great little machine in its day.

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Adam Savage:

I’ve learned over decades of building that a deadline is a potent tool for problem-solving. This is counterintuitive, because complaining about deadlines is a near-universal pastime.

[…]

We’re conditioned to believe that the deadline is working against us. But I’m not so sure.

Kyle Hill:

You’ll hear any reputable Star Wars fan point it out eventually: Han Solo’s famous boast that the Millennium Falcon “made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs” may have sounded impressive, but from an astronomical perspective, it made no sense. A parsec is a unit of distance, not time, so why would Solo use it to explain how quickly his ship could travel?

There are two stories going on here. The first is that Solo’s famous line of dialog was simply a mistake of terminology. The second — the one I choose believe — is far more interesting, because it means that when Obi-Wan sat down across from the wryly smiling Han Solo in that cramped cantina, he met a time-traveling smuggler born at least 40 years before the events of The Phantom Menace ever took place.

Sadly, @JayRay is probably right about Han just wanting to sound impressive.

Well, I’ll be spending some money on Lego’s website tonight.