ultraorange.net » 1990’s

Meet the iPhone’s Daddy: Apple’s failed Newton

orangeguru — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:59:43 +0000

Click ad for more Apple Newton.

Lang before Smartphones computer vendors tried to sell us Personal Digital Assistants. The vision was there, but the hardware was too big and too slow to make it work.

Apple’s Newton was a brave experiment hardly anyone know anymore. I owned two Newtons, because I though the technology was fantastic. But for daily use it was crap.

Only a black & green display – but already with funky special effects. You could expand the Newton with special cards …

For text input you had to learn to write special characters so Newton could understand what you were trying to say. Apple scrapped that feature completely with the touch screen keyboard in the iPhone. You always needed that special pen to operate all these PDAs, which was pretty stupid. Although I am not a big fan of today’s touch screens, but they are much better than those pens.

The Newton died a quick and miserable dead. Apple didn’t try very hard to make it work.

Graffiti Gestures – bit odd at first, but it really worked after some training.

The Palm Pilot a few years later made the PDA market really fly. This was in a time, when cell phones were too stupid to be used to remember addresses, appointments or be synched with Outlook.

Some of the apps for the Palm (and Newton) were really great! The iPhone still hasn’t the same amount of good office applications and synchronization tools the Newton and the Palm offered. That is why I still consider the iPhone a lifestyle product and not a true mobile business tool.

I owned also a Handspring Edge – a small, but brilliant Palm clone. You could attack a pretty good portable keyboard to it – something the iPhone completely lacks as well.

In the end the Palm died as well. Better cell phones supplanted the address book and time management for which the Palm was mostly used.

And they offered eMail and Internet access the Palm struggled with for a long time. Plus cheap notebooks finally became lighter and affordable, so a bastard device like the PDA no longer made sense: there is no real middle ground between a good cell phone and notebook/netbook.

King Bee – Back By Dope Demand

orangeguru — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:41:18 +0000

Kicking it old school.

Is The Big Lebowski a cultural milestone? Of course it is, Dude!

orangeguru — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:47:08 +0000

BBC News: Is The Big Lebowski a cultural milestone?

Well, it’s a bloody great movie if you ask me and thankfully it has developed quite a following over the years (read the BBC article for all the details and many great comments).

The Big Lebowki has this rare kind of humor that is rooted in reality and surrealism at the same time. Most of all it’s not the usual slapstick kind of humor.

And all of it’s characters are very trivial as well, that makes them so endearing and loveable.

Pizzaman – Sex on the Streets (1995)

orangeguru — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:07:56 +0000

One of the many great songs by Fatboy Slim. I just love the groove – it just makes me want to dance and have sex …

The Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds 1991

orangeguru — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:06:38 +0000

Don’t we all love little fluffy clouds? Especially 5 am in the morning, still drugged and excited from a whole night of clubbing and dancing? That was the good unhealthy life back then …

James Burke – After the Warming

orangeguru — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:54:15 +0000

Documentary / Fiction – 1hour 46minutes – 1990 – the sound is a bit out of sync in the second half

I am a huge fan of James Burke – he is one of the great writers and thinker who can connect the dots and explain it all to mere mortals like myself. A science historian and TV producer with an impressive resume.

The first part is an excellent analysis of human history and how the weather influenced human development and history – and he we have influenced the weather. The second part is more fictional – a docu drama if you will – how a global climate watchdog battles global warming and which measures have to be done to change our current unsustainable lifestyle.

This two part series "After the Warming" was produced 1990 – and it freaked me out.

First – it shocked me, that he had already such an insight and clear suggestions in the year 1990, when hardly anyone – and certainly not the mass media – was talking about climate change and global warming.

Second – his "predictions" or better say insights are spot on, especially watching it now almost 20 years after it has been produced.

Third – we have already wasted so much time to change our lifestyle and we are still far behind what would actually be possible to re-balance the weather system.

Although the quality of the video isn’t brilliant – the content is. So please watch it.

Techno Record Covers

orangeguru — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 10:37:40 +0000

Typical technical simplicity.

Snap! had all it’s cover in this comic style. Unique style.

The techno style included a lot of image recycling. Thanks to cheap scanner and photoshop.

Very stylish: silver sleeve, simple symbols, cool attitude.

Font distortion was all the rage – once people discovered how to make outlines in FreeHand and Illustrator.

No techo collection without a smiley.

Actually a very rare cover style – with a real human. Disgusting!

Stylish image blending.

Mixing the techno comic style and showing off a fertile female.