NEWTON SONG EASTER EGG

There are sounds that the Newton generates with successive taps of the pen, and they appear not to be quite so random. The note sequence can at times make a short song. The notes for the Newton song are according to the friend in the C major scale (little bit higher than normal scale)

    ECCFGDEDGFGCADGGC
    31145232545162551
There have been many guesses as to what the song is, and they include: the old 70's tune "Popcorn" and the 'Oscar Meyer Theme song'.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The best way to try this is to make a check list in Notes and then untap and tap the check box. Folks at Apple in the know say the sounds are randomly generated, but it does in the above case appear to not be random.]

That Doonesbury Thang!

Create a new note in the NotePad
  1. Write the following words: egg freckles
  2. Highlight the words
  3. Tap assist!

Nifty Quotable!

  1. Open a Newton Book.
  2. Select the "i"-button (Info).
  3. Select the "about"-menu.
  4. In the about-box, tap three times quite fast in this box.
  5. Wait and see what happens.
  6. Try to hit the close - button.

Aliens are Here!

Here's the nitty gritty to see the easter egg, but there's lots of explaination about the whole Area 51 thing in the long version below.

In the "Time Zones" application (including a world map) the Apple Developers put an entry for Area 51 in its correct location. Later, they added a twist -- if the user picks Area 51 from the map, the icons in the datebook application take on an alien theme. Normally, meetings are represented by an icon of two people face-to-face, events are represented by a flag, etc. When Area 51 has been chosen, the icon for a meeting is a person facing an alien, the icon for an event is a flying saucer, a to-do task is represented by a robot, and so on.

CIA finds out in August of 1995 that the location is exactly correct, throws a fit, and Apple pulled it out. But the ROM was already done -- so the feature was hidden by a software patch ("System Update") -- but this part of the patch can itself be removed, and "Area 51" returned to its rightful glory. Here's how to get the Easter egg back:

	1) Open the Extras drawer.
	2) Switch the folder of the Extras drawer to "Storage".
	3) Tap on the icon "Time Zones" and press the "Delete" button.
Warning: any cities you've added to your Newton will be lost. 
	4) Switch the folder of the extras drawer back to "Unfiled icons."
	5) Tap on "Time Zones."
You'll find that Area 51 is on the map -- just tap near Las Vegas and choose Area 51 from the popup. Now look at the icons in Dates. (To purge the aliens from your PDA, open the back and press reset).

NOTE: On the MP 130, you will not see "Area 51", but instead you will see either "Groom Lake" or, more likely, "Dreamland."

Dates Preferences Easter Egg

  1. Open the Dates application
  2. Tap on the info icon and tap 'prefs'; the preferences slip will open
  3. In the prefs slip, tap in the three of the corners (not the one with the close box) to hear a neat cuckoo sound and see the names...
    Top Right: "Scott Jensen"
    Top Left: "Fred Tou"
    Bottom Left: "Jeremy Wyld"

Bootup Pause

If you keep the pen pressed down 1/4" from the left side of the screen, about halfway down, when booting up, the Newton will ask if you want to bypass installscripts, effectively booting your newton with all packages frozen. They appear in the extras drawer with X's through the icons. Tapping one will run the installscript and open the package. This saves heap and is the only way short of a full memory wipe to delete a package that crashes the newton in the installscript. This also works with cards. Hold the pen down right after locking the card into place to freeze all the packages on the card.
[Editor's Note] *I* can't replicate this; all I get the Newton to do is to pause for a really long time, but than might be of use to somebody? ]

See a "Newton Eclipse"

  1. Set the Date of your Newton 2.0 device to October 23, 1995. Reboot.
  2. Then set it to October 24, 1995
  3. Switch your Newton of and on again and look what happens!

Who Wrote All This Stuff, Anyways?

  • If you write neat bong on the Notepad, highlight it, and tap the Assist button, a list of the Newton development team members will appear. Rumor has it this is a list of people that worked on the 2.0 Rom but left Apple before the completion of the project. But, as usual, it's just a rumor.
    Note: This is a different list of names than the similar 1.0 easter egg that generates another list.

    • Programmer's ALERT!

    If, while developing with the NTK, you run across
       GetGlobals().SirNotAppearingInThisROM
    And you're curious as to what on earth it is, here's the answer:
    There are some applications (Gesture Launch from ICS, Graffiti Placement from SIM, LunaLoad from Lunaware, and ScrollEx from NDT ... ) that the 2.0 developers knew would have problems with 2.0, so when you install a new package, apparently, the OS checks the name of the new item against this list, and if they match, it returns
    	"Contact the software publisher for further information."

    Aliens are Here! (LONG Version)

    You may or may not remember me talking earlier about the Area 51 contents of the Newton 2.0 software. At that time I said that the information was still in ROM and could be had programmatically. What I didn't know, but do now, is that it's possible to remove the patch by hand. Notes follow passed to me by a series of spies -- I don't even know who the original author is, but the information is dead-on correct (except I can't verify the cryptographer part -- don't give me a hard time about it, you try and talk to the CIA).There's an Easter egg in the 2.0 Newton (MessagePad 120) which was "censored" by, yes, the CIA. Back in '94, one of the Newton software types made a trek to the (very) small town of Rachel, Nevada, located at the edge of a secret government airbase. The base, called "Area 51," is thought by UFO enthusiasts to be filled with alien technology which the government is in the process of reverse engineering.

    Meanwhile, the government denies the very existence of the base, in spite of widespread media coverage ("Larry King Live from Area 51", etc).We figured it'd be funny to put a reference to Area 51 in the Newton -- especially given the substantial overlap between conspiracy buffs and computer nerds. In the "Time Zones" application (including a world map) we put an entry for Area 51 in its correct location. Later, we added a twist -- if the user picks Area 51 from the map, the icons in the datebook application take on an alien theme. Normally, meetings are represented by an icon of two people face-to-face, events are represented by a flag, etc. When Area 51 has been chosen, the icon for a meeting is a person facing an alien, the icon for an event is a flying saucer, a to-do task is represented by a robot, and so on.Okay, cute enough. Now cut to August 1995, when the 2.0 ROM has been declared final, seed units have been in customers' hands for a little while, and the release is just about ready to go. One of the seed units, it turns out, was sent to a cryptographer working for the CIA. When he found Area 51 listed at the correct latitude/longitude, he complained to Apple, demanding the removal of the Easter egg and threatening to have his superiors take the issue to Spindler if necessary. In the end, Newton management caved in to the demand and decided to pull the joke out of the system.But the ROM was already done -- so the feature was hidden by a software patch ("System Update") -- but this part of the patch can itself be removed, and "Area 51" returned to its rightful glory. Here's how to get the Easter egg back:

    	1) Open the Extras drawer.
	2) Switch the folder of the Extras drawer to "Storage".
	3) Tap on the icon "Time Zones" and press the "Delete" button.
    Warning: any cities you've added to your Newton will be lost. 
    	4) Switch the folder of the extras drawer back to "Unfiled icons."
	5) Tap on "Time Zones."
    You'll find that Area 51 is on the map -- just tap near Las Vegas and choose Area 51 from the popup. Now look at the icons in Dates. (To purge the aliens from your PDA, open the back and press reset).

    For more information about area 51, go take a look at some conspiracy crazed folks out in Nevada!

    Knock Three Times
    Write any of the following three times and you'll get a surprise:
    Oliver O. Fross
    Revision date: 29 February 1996.