From: John Hay (OceanCity_at_mac.com)
Date: Sun Oct 09 2005 - 05:46:21 PDT
Well, to put this all in context, I would have to say that the case now
exists whereby an application which, having been created, developed, and
marketed, by an Apple "partner", e.g. a small-business vendor, in good
faith, then suddenly faced with the reality of Newton's demise, may have:
1. gone out of business and been irreparably harmed in the the process
2. cut their losses and run, shifting to another platform
3. continued marketing their existing Newton Software
.... etc., etc., and the litany of havoc leaving only a faint trail of
dust for the consumer to track down in good faith.
Remember, in the overall scheme of things, for whatever reason(s) the
entire Newton initiative was rather abruptly cut short in August of 1998
when Apple formally announced it's end of production. Lots of balls were
still up in the air and to this day have still not landed.
So long story short there exist numerous Newton packages in a state of
limbo which have lost support by their developers for one reason or
another. The applications run the gamut from junkware to geniusware and
from freeware to full version commmercialware. The sad thing is, one of
the ramifications of the abrupt termination of Apple's support and
production for the Newton is that there exist some very high quality,
usable Newton packages which were developed during the late 1990's in
good faith by vendors heavily investing in the process to build
outstanding best-of-breed software, in various states of versioning, but
must quit fine-tuned over the few years they were rolled out. Being high-
end or commercial in nature the developers of these apps needed to
protect their property by all of the normal licensing routines, and
here's the crux of the issue, some of which entailed interaction between
the vendor and the consumer at point of sale to generate and then use
the unlocking codes which seem normally to be based on the "owner's"
name or the motherboard serial number, or some such method whereby the
vendor could at least exert "some" degree of control over pirating.
So if you are in a situation where you either already own, or want to
purchase a license for such a Newton application from a vendor who has
long since vanished and moved on, how do you activate the application=3F
You still are going to need some kind of unlocking code. Try as you may
to legitimately track down the few remaining online Newton software
vendors to fulfill this requirement, in some cases the vendors no longer
exist.
=46ortunately for me, in the case of TimeTrax, by Config
Informationstechnik eG in Rottenbach, Germany, this group of software
engineers at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-N=FCrnberg has
been active since May 1995 and remains active today. .....more about
here <http://www.config.de/Company/profile.htm>
So, with TimeTrax for example, the procedure to install this application
on your Newton is as follows. You first download their free demo. Try it
use it, and if you want then to register and license it you click the
about TimeTrax item on your Newton which brings up a screen which
displays a "seed" number. This number presumably is either plucked
directly out of the motherboard somewhere, or further manipulated based
on some physical link to your Newton's identity, i.e. it's motherboard.
The, you go back to TimeTrax's online registration page, enter the
"seed" number, your name, billing info etc. and click on finish. The
info gets sent to Germany. Someone there reviewed the incoming orders
manually each day, sends you back the activation code via email which
you then enter into the Newton TrimeTrax about dialog and your demo
version becomes the full commercial version. All fine and dandy as long
as the kind folks in Germany continue to support this scheme.
But when they, and others no longer do, there are at least two very
unpleasant ramifications to end-users.
The first is that new users of, again just as one example, say TimeTrax
will be able to download the demo version expires after 30 days, then
have no chance to register and unlock it into the commercial version for
perpetual use.
The second is the case of an existing user who, for whatever reason,
chooses or is forced to move from Newton A to Newton B, and in so doing
is plunged into the inextricable quagmire of having no way to unlock the
application on the new Newton because the new Newton has a different ID
so the application rejects the licensing and will not function as a
commercial full version.
Hence the trap.
10/8/05 Jerome issued the following and I have taken literary license
to pass it along on a "Need to Know Basis" . . . =3F
>What is this list for =3F For App that cannot be registered anymore and
we want to have a way to register if the developper want =3F
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
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