Comments on: Why the iPhone is no Newton

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:00:19 +0000

Great post. It is quite pathetic how 20 years later we still have to copy and paste data, which we have to do one attribute at a time. (and the iPhone doesn’t even have copy and paste!) It’s good to know that people in high places are dissatisfied with the current state of things

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend Magic Ink, which has some more inspirational ideas about “information ecosystems”, among other things.

Are there plans to do anything with RDF in Firefox?

By: Oyun

Oyun — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:24:07 +0000

ı have followed your writing for a long time.really you have given very successful information.

By: Aksi Lucah

Aksi Lucah — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:02:00 +0000

i really enjoyed reading this post..keep up the good work

By: Freak

Freak — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:51:12 +0000

“… running on a mobile device like the iPhone”

Not, it’s not. iPhone is locked and Jobs don’t want competition on the built-in Safari.

By: Markc

Markc — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:37:00 +0000

The Newton was/is a great system, and I’ve yet to find anything that is anywhere near as powerful or easy to use – as a PDA that is, not as a handheld multimedia device that happens to have an address book.

However it was made in more naive times. The idea of a soup is one of the things that made it so poweful, but there is essentially no security in the Newton’s model – any application can add, remove or modify any other application’s data. It allowed for “mashup” applications, which extended the built-in apps (and other third-party apps) with ease, but a modern implementation of a Newton soup would need additional security – and the UI that goes with it. Of course as soon as you add that UI (”Someapp would like to access your address book…”) the transparent integration of the Newton disappears.

By: Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin Khodabakchian — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:31:47 +0000

Alex, I am a big fan of your work and blog. I am wondering why you would need a local DB when ATOM, JSON, GData and others allow you to turn the web into a distributed DB – some more advanced caching and some background processing (a la Google Gears should help us get there). But I think that your vision of microformats and boundarieless data will push interactivity to the next level.

By: Justin Dolske

Justin Dolske — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 22:19:35 +0000

Eat up Martha.

By: Eric Shepherd

Eric Shepherd — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:28:11 +0000

I loved the Newton. I’ve owned several (I have four, in fact, right now). It was an amazing device, and got ribbed a lot more than it deserved for the handwriting recognition, which Apple improved constantly over its lifetime.

By: John

John — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:27:13 +0000

Nice observation, thanks.

By: quodlibetor

quodlibetor — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:45:53 +0000

So what you’re saying is that firefox 3–with its incorporated db, microformat detection, and fuel-enhanced extension APIs–is going to fundamentally re-define the way that we interact with our data?

Surely you jest