Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 11:03:14 -0700 From: "Mike O'Brien" <obrien@rush.aero.org> To: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Apple Newton MessagePad Message-ID: <199708111803.LAA00954@anpiel.aero.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 11 Aug 1997 02:55:40 PDT." <19970811105540.52314@strand.iii.co.uk>
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I have a MessagePad 2000 and I love it. I think that the high-end Newtons and the PalmPilot have mildly overlapping markets, but both have large areas where the other doesn't compete. The 2K is really a full-fledged computer with a weird operational style. It's not a notebook and it doesn't do what a Notebook would do, but it can compute with the best of them. It serves me well as a general engine that I can carry around easily, and it also does me as a nice-sized notepad. It does everything for me that a PalmPilot would, though it does it mildly less gracefully and with a much larger form factor. But, for instance, it also has all sorts of other packages available for it, including one special-purpose number for data collection on geysers, a favorite subject of mine. The PalmPilot's job is to do a few portable things well, and be really really portable. Period. It does this brilliantly, and this is what most people prefer, so PalmPilot outsells Newton at least 10-to-1, maybe 100-to-1. I have no complaints. Well, one. Apple and their (^(*&^*(& closed architecture. They publish (binary) libraries to allow people to write applications for Windows and the Mac that interface to a Newton. However, if you're on a UNIX box, forget it. Someone's managed to reverse-engineer enough to get a package installer working under Linux but that's about it. Boy, if I had the Connection Utilities and a programming library under FreeBSD, I'd be a happy man. One more reason not to run Windows. Mike O'Brien
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