No Newtons?

After writing Monday that I virtually never see anyone use a Newton, the guy sitting next to me on the plane yesterday whipped one out right after takeoff. What? As he wrote down a few notes I interrupted him, brash soul that I am. I could tell that it was an older 3-digit MessagePad. He didn't volunteer the model number when I asked about it so I didn't pry further--not brash enough, I guess. He said that someone had given it to him and that he found it to be only so-so useful. He's still undecided about its utility versus having just another thing to lug around. He asked me whether I liked my 3400 that I was doing some work on and I extolled its virtues. Finally, he commented that Apple has some great products but that it needs to get its act together. Later he pulled out a Dell laptop and did some work. During the flight he entered some notes on the MessagePad several more times. Okay, so there are people that use them. Is this a sign that I should re-think my position? I did so just to be safe. Same conclusion. However, this encounter is one more experience among many that confirms to me that there is still a bigger market for Apple's computers and that getting its business act together has to be the paramount objective. First and foremost, Apple has to become a viable (read profitable) company even if it has to trim away all the fringe.

NEWS.COM has a thorough set of articles on yesterday's Senate Hearing into the software marketplace. Bill Gates seemed in denial and gave non-direct answers when directly questioned whether Microsoft was indeed a monopoly. Jim Barksdale of Netscape and Scott McNealy of Sun stated that Microsoft is a monopolist as did Sen. Hatch. I think the issue is so clear as to not need a Senate Hearing to obfuscate things.

Dana Baggett reported that the April Issue of MacAddict has a CD with the Mac OS 8.1 updater (the download, not a bootable CD) plus Internet Explorer v4.0, Netscape Communicator v4.0.4 and lots of other goodies--pretty handy CD to have. In addition, you might get it free as the first issue of a new MacAddict subscription is free.

From Stephen Hildreth, PowerBook Central, just renamed, contains more than classified ads for PowerBooks. It includes reviews, ratings, specs and price guides.

From Johnny Lee, Pretty Scroll 1.0.6 came out yesterday. Pretty Scroll controls the rate of scrolling and also scrolls by full-screen chunks. I find it, along with the hover scrolling ability of ScrollMagick, to be a dynamite combination for efficient scrolling.