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The Newton: simply won't go away, tries to be an iPod

Using an Apple Newton as a music player? It just has to be the act of what Larry Ellison once contemptuously described as "an enthusiast." You'd have to be in love with the thing. Enough to build WiFi into it? Yes!

But an enthusiast is, clearly, what Eric Schneck must be. Consider:

1) Speed: the Newton will download MP3s from your iBook - slowly. "Good or bad, depending on how you see it, the Newton was created well before modern standards were around. Hence, neither FireWire nor USB are supported," remarks the designer. Instead, the Newton MessagePad 2000/2100 "sports a unique autosensing InterConnect port which can transfer your MP3's at a blazingly fast 38kbps. If you value your time, leave the transfer overnight."

2) Quality: "Lo-Fi Music - with Eckhart Koppens's great MAD player for Newton, you can enjoy skip-free MP3 audio at 64kbit/s and 22khz encoding. Other bitrates work as long as the sample rate is either 22 or 44.1khz, which is more than enough for a decent quality audio book."

3) Storage: "The Newton does not carry any fragile hard drives. Instead you can store up to 64Mb of music thanks to the two full-size PCMCIA expansion slots. The Newton uses Linear Flash, expensive and rare, but damn quick!"

And it goes on in similar vein. It won't work with the latest iTunes player. It would - if Paul Gyot's ATA driver were to be released to the public - carry up to 10GB of music in ATA memory cards. And if they had support for OS X then you wouldn't have to boot your iBook in "Classic" mode.

Wireless? Yes! truly. "As an industry first, we are delighted to present wireless MP3 synchronisation to your Newton. Paired with the WLAN driver and a compatible card, the Newton will connect to and mirror a chosen music directory on your Mac."

Probably, most of you are asking "What's a Newton?" Frankly, it would spoil the fun if you got too much information. But yes, it's obsolete; and still, five years after the last one was built, its fans still love it. Even if Apple doesn't seem to remember it, even, any more.