Word: styluses
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...affordable computers that may one day replace bulky desktop machines. Each uses a modified version of Apple's Newton software and offers easy hookups to E-mail, the Internet and applications like spreadsheets and word processing. The eMate has a keyboard designed for kids' clumsy fingers and a special stylus that lets them draw and enter data by "writing" on the screen. And though Apple has packed both new devices with the latest technology, it hopes the machines will transcend mere gadgetry...
Pilot users can jot notes and addresses into the machine with a tiny penlike stylus that traces letters onto the touch-sensitive screen, like an Etch-A-Sketch. To help Pilot turn those squiggles into English (the Achilles' heel of the Newton, which was likely to translate GET LUNCH into EAT COUCH), users must write in Graffiti, a simplified written language that replaces each letter with a geometric pattern; an A looks like an upside down V, for instance. It took us 10 minutes to learn, and after a week we were up to about 80% of our normal writing...
...Pilot is almost all screen; input is done with a stylus on its touch-sensitive screen. Unlike the painful full-text recognition of the Newton, the Pilot uses the Grafitti alphabet, which has you enter data letter by letter using special keystrokes. It takes a few hours to learn how to make each letter of the alphabet, but you can easily be writing at 20 words per minute within an afternoon. The Pilot literally took the market by storm as a little guy: it's about the size of an index card, weighs only six ounces and gets several weeks...
...Pilot's Scheduler software is intuitive and easy to use, while powerful enough to set up repeating appointments at the touch of the stylus. The Address Book, Memo Pad and To-Do List all share the same "look-and-feel...
Jade and bronze were the quintessential materials of archaic Chinese art, but ink and paper made it possible to run an empire on documents, and they replaced the stylus by the 2nd century A.D. It is notoriously difficult for Westerners to "get" Chinese calligraphy for the obvious reason that we can't read it and so can only admire it, more or less ignorantly, as abstract brush drawing. And yet its range of expressive power comes through marvelously in this show. At one extreme we see the almost chiseled formality of the 12th century Emperor Hui Tsung's script, with...