This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Tony Diaz- KansasFest committee member, and consummate Apple II collector. With KansasFest just days away, we go deep on Tony’s amazing collection of unique prototypes, documents, peripherals, and the stories that go with them. If there’s a person with deeper knowledge of the early history of Apple Hardware, we haven’t met them.

Thanks for your patience in June, everyone! Some technical and logistical difficulties kept us from posting this episode as soon as we would have liked. We hope the show is worth the wait. We dive into lots of new hardware toys, KansasFest-like events around the world, lots of software updates, and one of the best Apple II games ever made.

How many times does Quinn boo Atari this month? What can we learn about Mike’s dark, mysterious past? How many tedious Jobs movie news items can the world produce? Listen and find out!

KansasFest 2015 is just days away. Hope to see you all in Kansas City this week!

More information on everything discussed in this episode after the jump.

• KansasFest – Registration closed by the time you read this, but come next year!
• Halt & Catch Fire – The fast-and-loose-with-the-facts retro romp is back.
• SpriteCastle – Flack expresses his secret jealousy for the Apple II.
• The IT Crowd Manual – Retro hardware hiding in everyone’s favorite IT-centric comedy.
• Orphan Black – An Apple II (ish) sighting in one of the best shows on television.
• UltimateMicro – Mike reviews the Transwarp GS clone and RamWorks III.
• Wasteland – A mainstream portal reviews the classic. The lame MS-DOS version, but still.
• Wasteland II – The kickstarted decades-later sequel.
• Minority Report – Futuristic UI was better when it was an AppleSoft BASIC prompt.
• MakerFaire Apples – Hack-a-day shares some great photos of odd Apples.
• Swyft Card – Still odd, still neat. Could have been what we’re all using now.
• Guy Kawasaki – Area man goes on bizarre rant. Film at never.
• Marina IP – The coolest 8-bit thing ever, now with DNS support!
• Jobs Trailer – Can’t wait ’til we can stop talking about these movies.
• French “KFest” – Apple II gathering in Toulouse. Six days in retro style.
• Mockingboard Clone – From the up-and-comer in Korea continues to impress.
• Bride of the Wizard King – Kids picture book, Apple II style.
• Kaboom update – The coolest IIgs game in years gets some bug fixes.
• NinjaTracker – The music player from the MegaDemo is now open for all. Amazing!
• GGLabs IIgs video – An awesome component video converter for the 16-bitters.
• Merlin Macros – New GS/OS System 6 assembly macros from Sheppy.
• Dung Beetles remake – A tribute to Bob Bishop right in your browser.
• Assembly Lines videocast – Chris Torrence shows you all sorts of great Apple II stuff.
• Senior PROM – The infamous cracking board has been..cracked? Copied, anyway.
• Apple IIoz – As in, “Australia”. Not “ounces”. Honest.
• Apple II video streaming – Like Airplay, but for Apples that are still fun.
• NTSC on an iPad – It can be a display for your Apple II, with some patience.
• Early Apple Photos – They surface again and again. What’s old is new again, I guess.
• Blake Patterson – He did it first, four years ago.
• Zorkduino – Zork on an Arduino. Because Zork and because Arduino.
• Nishida Radio – On hiatus again, probably for a while this time. Sad face.
• Bob Bishop’s Language Card – The inevitable auctioning of his estate has begun.
• Sundog – Way better than Elite. Most underrated Apple II game ever?
• Sundog Ressurection – The probably-lapsed attempt to reproduce, and/or open-source Sundog.

Welcome to a special extra episode of Open Apple! Fellow Apple II enthusiast Matt Ownby recently sat down for a chat with John Brooks, author of Rastan on the IIgs. It’s a fascinating conversation with tons of technical detail that you won’t want to miss. They talk copy protection, cycle counting, fast GS sprite rendering, and lots more!

A huge thanks to John for taking the time to share his knowledge. Also a huge thanks to Matt for recording this and allowing us to air it on Open Apple.

There are some audio quality issues with this piece, but we feel the conversation is well worth it. Enjoy, and send a thanks to Matt and John!

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Jason Scott, documentary filmmaker, historian, public speaker, and archivist.

We talk about the importance of a nuanced appreciation of history, the flavors of sadness in comment threads, whom not to trust with special data and the nature of humanity, and failing at life.

Don’t miss Mike Hate Sponge Delicate Snowflake Maginnis’s sigh to end all sighs. Join us to learn how to take care of your capacitors, how to count your cycles, and how to do TCP/IP on your 8-bit Apple II.

Want to troll your cable company, accelerate your IIe, or play Bomberman on your GS? Tune in and find out how!   More information on everything discussed in this episode after the jump.

• Archive.org – Where they store Jason Scott and a bunch of stuff.
• textfiles.com – The archive that started it all.
• Nightfall Crew – An all-in-one cross-compiler and tool suite for… not Apple. :(
• ADTPro Updated – Version 2.0.1, a minor fix.
• Becoming Steve Jobs – A book, if you’re not sick of this guy’s mythos already.
• Big Mess O’ Wires – Mac Floppy Emu adds Apple II support (800k!).
• BMoW on Emulation – A nice post summarizing Apple II emulation.
• Pranking Comcast – My Apple II won’t google!
• Let’s Play Apple II Games – Leigh Alexander’s gameplay videos.
• Via Skepchick – Retro computing commercials. Take that, RCR.
• Marina – A TCP/IP stack for Apple II. Yes. Seriously.
• Crazy Cycles – Desynchronized video mode demo from French Touch.
• Ibiza II – Another awesome FT demo. Like magic!
• ReactiveMicro – Sean Fahey writes up his experiences with the new products.
• TechnoBytes – A new(!) Transwarp-based accelerator for 8-bit Apples.
• UNISDISK Air – OMGOMGOMG. A wi-fi version of the SD card solution. So great.
• Kaboom! – An amazing game from NinjaForce finally finished.
• Apple (II) Watch – A neat little statement piece.
• BrkDown – A snazzy new disassembler from Ewen Wannop.
• Auctioning Relics – NYT takes you behind the scenes.
• Brutal Deluxe Cassette Archive – A great collection of very early II software.
• Cassette Archive Update – Antoine updates us on the latest.
• OzKFest – Great tweet log from the best Australian show.
• Woz and Lee – Woz sponsors a Comic Con in the Bay Area.
• Early Rev 0 on eBay – But we don’t talk about eBay.
• The Cave of Time – Mike’s pick for a weird game.
• Short Circuit – Quinn’s pick for a weird game.
• Crazy Cycles – How does it work? Disk image here.
• Scroll Scroll Scroll – So many scrolls. Disk image here.
• Veronica’s GPU – Quinn’s VGA generator, which uses a similar cycle-counting technique.
• Capacitors – Take care of them, and they’ll take care of you.
• AuctionSieve – A listener’s nifty tool for finding Apple hardware on eBay.
• NinjaForce – Because NinjaForce.
• Apple II Clones – A decent starting point on Wikipedia.
• Gravis Joystick – The best way to play Autoduel.
• Autoduel – The best thing to play with your Gravis joystick.
• Beagle Bros Repository – Brian & Bill’s wonderful archive of all things Beagle.

You wouldn’t steal a car! Unless of course, you were acquiring an exact copy of the car that harmed nobody, cost nobody anything, and didn’t diminish the original in any way. Then, well, you probably would, particularly if you wouldn’t have even wanted the car if it wasn’t free, so the car seller hasn’t given up anything either way.

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Paul Lutus, author of seminal early Apple II software such as AppleWriter and GraFORTH. We talk about the impacts of software development on society, the value of the individual in the process, and the trials of coding software in the woods.

We talk extreme offsite backups, KansasFest keynotes, telnet BBSing, and the hurricane of awesome that is ReactiveMicro. We reminisce about the original Home Computer Wars (these kids today arguing about their smartphones are so darned cute), and also Boo Atari.

We trek from Bulgaria to Korea to Canada and back again, to bring you the latest in sound cards, solid state storage, and portable Apple IIc action. You won’t want to miss Quinn plugging Phil Plait for some reason. With our story on Atari 8-bits in Poland, this marks the most Atari content ever on Open Apple. It also qualifies us as the 698th currently operating Atari podcast. Boo Atari. See what you get when you poke the bear, people? ][ Infinitum.

More information on everything discussed in this episode after the jump.

• AppleWriter – Arguably the first Apple II word processor.
• WPL (PDF warning) – The word processing scripting language.
• GraFORTH & TransFORTH – Terrific early implementations of FORTH on the II.
• GraFORTH (PDF warning) – Try it out for yourself, here. FORTH is neat.
• TransFORTH (PDF warning) – The business/science-focused version.
• Electric Duet – Multi-voice music from a single flip-flop.
• Pictures of Paul’s Apple – Coding in the woods, with an epic extension cord.
• FrEDWriter – The unauthorized clone of AppleWriter.
• Paul Lutus’ website – Keep up with what he’s up to now.
• TransWarp GS clone – Now available! Shut up and take our money!
• No Slot Clocks and Scalable Oscillators – Also now becoming available in limited quantities.
• Rebecca “Burger” Heineman – Keynote speaker at KansasFest! Squee!
• Burger Becky – Her personal site, with lots of fun stuff new and old.
• KansasFest Registration – It’s now open! Go register. Now. Seriously. Now.
• Don Worth’s archive – Classic software and source code imaged by Mike.
• Deviceside Data – The 5.25″ floppy imaging tool that works over USB, and supports almost all retrocomputer formats.
• A2Cloud, A2Server, Raspple II updated – Ivan’s era-bridging tools are a very cool use of a Pi.
• Peersoft 1.5 – A new version of a snazzy AppleSoft library is available.
• Classic IDE – Technobytes’ version of the CFFA 2 is sold out, and shipping soon.
• Mockingboard Clone – Ian Kim’s new product coming soon. Watch his blog.
• Assembly Lines – Chris Torrence’s awesome book project, now available as a free PDF.
• Open source Pong – Jason Griffiths looking for help.
• BMP2SHR – Bill Buckels’ new Super Hi-Res graphics converter.
• 4am’s Cracks – Learn cracking Apple II software on Twitter, now archived as well.
• Joe Ely is back – Soon with more tracks, and Woz’s liner notes are now available.
• The Jobs home – Slate talks about the infamous childhood home (with the irrelevant garage).
• Bad Astronomy – Phil Plait’s blog about science, critical thinking and other fun stuff.
• Omega – Because programmers keep thinking other people think programming is fun.
• Infidel – A fascinating, controversial text adventure that would probably never get made today.
• Player Missile Podcast – A great show from the “other” side.
• Teddy Top with Flash – Quinn’s road warrior IIc Plus gets storage.
• Apple II Gamepad – Quinn prototypes a gamepad to take II gaming on the road.

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Mark Kriegsman, author of Star Blaster, and a modern Apple II hacker. He has ported the awesome FastLED driver library to the Apple II, so you can drive many hundreds of 32-bit RGB LEDs with your Apple II.

Meanwhile, we browbeat people into attending KansasFest, we rationalize our shame at developing on emulators, we talk dead tree easter eggs, we make terrible awesome BASIC & Twitter puns, we talk about post-mortem collecting, and Mike generates hate mail. Just in case you’re not completely over movies about Steve Jobs, we talk about one of those as well. Yawn.

More importantly, help us convince Mark to build a lo-res display from FastLEDs and bring it to KansasFest.

Once again, in case you missed it, the dates for KansasFest 2015 have been announced. July 14-19! Go to http://www.kansasfest.org to register. Then pull up a comfy chair and enjoy this super-sized episode of Open Apple. Apologies for some audio quality issues in this month. Quinn had some equipment difficulties and Mike has been under the weather. Thanks for your patience. Stay tuned until the end of the show for a special treat (not just Mike’s usual cheeky outtake)!

More information on everything discussed in this episode after the jump.

• Star Blaster – The game you probably know Mark Kriegsman for.
• FastLED6502 – If an Arduino can do it, the Apple II can do it better.
• Inside FastLED – More info about Mark’s project.
• Space Cadets – In case you’re a boardgamer, like Quinn.
• BASIC Source – Microsoft’s original code found its way into the wild.
• Jobs filming – The celluloid is finally rolling on the Sorken film.
• Jobs cast – Photos of the cast of the upcoming Jobs biopic.
• Apple II Web Server – A mysterious Dave Schmenk project.
• PLASMA – Dave’s awesome Apple II programming language.
• Lawless Legends – The incredible game that uses PLASMA for mission scripting.
• CiderPress 4.0 – A long awaited new version of the best disk image tool.
• John Romero to the rescue – The late Bob Bishop’s Apple II collection gets rescued.
• Jason Scott’s photos – The West Coast Computer Faire like you’ve never seen it.
• More photos – Thanks for these, Jason!
• Akalabeth re-reviewed – The clever iOS port is back in the news.
• Retro StackOverflow – Help us make this awesome resource a reality.
• The Home Computer Wars – (PDF warning)  Read it while you can?
• Apple’s Fonts – Who doesn’t love fonts? Yay Helvetica!
• Helvetica – The documentary for type nerds.
• Halt And Catch Fire – Play Spot-The-Apple-II with your friends.
• LCD SD Disk II – A screen for the new(?) Korean solid-state drive.
• SD Floppy II – The Bulgarian staple, not to be confused with the Korean device above.
• UNISDISK – New firmware for the Nishida Radio masterpiece.
• CFFA3000 – The card everyone wants, and which makes //c users jealous.
• SmartDisk – The floppy-disk-SD-card adapter thing that doesn’t seem to actually work.
• Carmack //c – John teaches his kids to program on the best 8-bit computer.
• VisiCalc on NPR – A great PlanetMoney story about the Apple II killer app.
• Drop /// Inches – Mike and Paul’s dumb show about dumb stuff that is also great.
• Carte Blanche closed – No more orders in this run of the Carte Blanche II.
• Snow IIgs – Dagen Brock’s fun little micro-demo.
• FTA XMAS – The original demo that snows.
• Stanford Display – Some kinda sad looking Apple IIs in a prominent place.
• 65xx Boards – Now can be acquired in exchange for dollars.
• Classic IDE – The solid state options for Apple II are multiplying like bunnies.
• MC1 Clone – Courtesy of Plamen, everyone’s favorite Bulgarian.
• VCFs – They are everywhere.
• VCF on Floppy Days – An interview with Evan Koblentz.
• VCF Photos – A nice gallery of the galleries.
• TRW Swap Meet – Great old-school swap meet.
• LCD //c – An LCD in an old Apple //c monitor.
• WozPak in hardcover – Keep it classy!
• Cubit 128 – Q*Bert clone patched for the everyperson Apple IIe.
• Virtual II updated – The best emulator gets better.
• Stynx music – Apple II electronica music.
• Joe Ely B4 84 – He’s on tour supporting his Apple II+ music.
• Jonathan Mann – The song-a-day guy releases an Apple-themed mixtape.
• Music Master RPG – A low-res music-themed adventure game.
• JACE – It’s a thing again! Emulate your Apple II in Java.
• Beagle Bros on Coding Horror – Sadly, no mention of our show.
• OC Register – We feel dirty linking to this again.
• Woz in a Cadillac? – No, just in the commercial for some reason.
• Nissan Leaf – Want a Tesla? Can’t afford one? The Leaf is super awesome.
• Every Apple Ad – All the commercials. Yes, really, ALL of them.
• A2Central – The best source for all Apple II news. Thanks Sean!
• Call-A.P.P.L.E. – Expanding their coverage to other Apple products.
• GEOS – Finally, a download link for the original, incredible, amazing Apple II GUI.
• ShrinkIt for Mac – Get at those IIgs archives. Another option here.
• Pinball Construction Set source – Yay Bill Budge!
• Jesse Blue – The myth, the legend. Ninjaforce lives!
• Halley and Ultima – Two weird games, one magazine.
• Beagle Bros Disk Care – Watch out for toasters and alligators.
• Supermartian – Mike’s weird game.
• Knights of Legend – Quinn’s weird game, too big for its breeches.
• KoL Screenshots – So purrrty!
• Quinn’s Apple II programming reference bookmarks:

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Beagles Bros Randy Brandt, Mark Simonsen Tom Weishaar, and Alan Bird. We share stories of Beagle’s development, poke lots of fun at each other, and check in on where everyone is now.

We spread the love for Oz KFest with Andrew Roughan, and amazingly resist the urge to make any upside-down jokes about Australia. Mike and Quinn are trying to be bigger than northern-hemispherism, and they like to think they’ve grown as people as a result.

We talk brain-imaging, we talk helicopter piloting, and we spread more IIgs love than usual. We search for amazing things, and sometimes we find them. Join us for another great month of Apple II brouhaha.

BREAKING NEWS: Dates for KansasFest 2015 also announced! July 14-19. More at http://www.kansasfest.org

More information on everything discussed in this episode after the jump.

• Oz KFest – Come on down under for Apple II fun, April 17-19, 2015. #ozkfest2015
• Apple II comes home – 33 years in Nepal, and still fighting fit.
• Infiltrator – Interview with the creator, who is much smarter than us.
• SkyFox – Bionic Toad interviews the creator, who is also much smarter than us.
• Brian Picchi reviews the II – Tanru Nomad bringing the fun, as usual.
• Stanford stats – Athletics department used a II for proper work.
• PFS: File – Great, but not the recipe panacea Quinn had hoped for.
• Woz at NAMM – The lovable engineer shows up in the strangest of places.
• The IIc bag drama continues – Mike and Quinn continue to share delusions.
• More IIc images – It looks different in every promotional picture.
• I.O. Silver – Version 1.2 is now available, and documentation.
• Bootstrapping – Never hurts to review ADTPro again.
• Beautiful Boot – Still amazing!
• Jason Scott on BB – Seriously- still amazing!
• Speccies – Ewen Wannop’s great collection of GS terminal software.
• WITA2GS – Alex Lee’s awesome collection of disk images and IIgs information.
• New In Box Apple IIc+ – So purrrrrty.
• Juiced.GS Unboxing – Everyone’s favorite magazine interviews the IIc unboxer.
• Escape! – Jimmy Maher discusses the inspiration for Akalabeth.
• In Search of the Most Amazing Thing – “Open World” before that was a thing.
• The Halley Project – Orbital mechanics for the whole family.

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Ben Heck, one of our most-requested interviews. We talk about his Apple I replica, his Apple IIgs laptop, and Adam Sandler for some reason. Meanwhile, Mike and Quinn talk about Apple Porsches, Pinball Construction Set, and Western Design Center. In the comedy department, we get back to our roots (making fun of Wizardry).

There’s potato chips, there’s troll pits, there’s 3D printing, and all kinds of other wandering off topic this month, so be sure to stay tuned for none of that.

We’re looking forward to a great new year with the Apple II, so join us as we kick off what is sure to be an awesome 2015!

Wews!

More information on everything discussed in this episode after the jump.

• Porsche Apple – Replica of the 935K3 LeMans Porsche in Apple livery.
• A2Central – The number one Apple II news site. Go there! Now!
• A2Central Contact – Want to help out? Here’s how.
• Ben Heck – Ben’s blog.
• Ben Heck Show – Ben’s YouTube channel.
• Apple I Replica – Ben’s three part series on the project.
• Apple IIGS Laptop – Every Apple II fan’s favorite project of Ben’s.
• Replica I – Vince Briel’s awesome kit.
• Nishida Radio – The man, the wizard, the legend.
• Ben’s Chip Clip – A rite of passage.
• Pet Conversions – File his legs down a bit!
• Pinball Construction Set – The source code released! Boo Atari.
• 65xx Dev Boards – Now available for purchase (sort of).
• CiderPress 4.0.0 – Squeeze more out of your disk images (nyuk nyuk).
• Assembly Lines – Chris Torrence’s book now available. Buy it or Quinn will kick a kitten.
• Woz & Kari – New reality show “The Woz”, with Kari Byron.
• Wizard of Oz – It’s official.
• BMP2DHR – Bill Buckels’ graphics converter.
• VirtualApple2 – Updates to the coolest Apple II browser emulator.
• Lamb Chops – Brian Picchi releases his source code.
• Akalabeth on GOG – A good? old game.
• Ultima Progression – Jimmy Maher walks through the evolution of the best CRPG.
• Two Apple I – The latest in two-chip Apple I replicas.
• Arduino Apple – A replica of the Apple I based on an Arduino.
• AVRFreaks – The hub for Atmel microcontroller community.
• KLOV – An arcade collector community.
• Adafruit – An awesome hobbyist hardware source.
• Guest Lecture – Quinn makes an appearance at Stanford.
• KansasFest – Watch this space to see when KFest 2015 will be!

This month on Open Apple, we close out the year with our traditional Year-End Roundtable discussion. We’re joined by Eric ‘Sheppy’ Shepherd, Sarah W., and Carrington Vanston. We talk about alternate universes, our collective love of the IIgs, and Quinn takes cheap shots at Carrington. It’s the holidays, so Commodore users are given a respite. Well, a bit of a respite, anyway. Meanwhile, Sheppy solicits hatemail, Carrington calls shenanigans, and Sarah keeps everyone honest. Count the euphemisms! So many euphemisms!

As usual, we have lots of news to talk about as well. It’s been an amazing year for the Apple II, and we have new games, new hardware, and new video histories to share. I/O Silver is here, John Romero is there, and JSMESS is everywhere.

More information on everything discussed in the show after the jump.

• No Quarter – Mike and Carrington’s other thing.
• Drop /// Inches – Mike and Paul’s other thing.
• KansasFest – Of course!
• A2RetroSystems – Home of the upcoming Uthernet II, and other magic.
• CFFA 3000 – You either have one or you want one. Maybe you want more than one.
• 65xx SXBs – Western Design Center’s 6502-based hobbyist boards.
• ReactiveMicro – Makers of the upcoming TransWarp clones.
• Portal – No, not that Portal. Jimmy Maher talks about this obscure game.
• Penguin Software – Jimmy also talks about The Spy’s Adventure series…
• Carmen Sandiego – …and the competing series most of us know.
• PolarWare – The other side of the controversy, from the Spy’s Adventure folks.
• Crush, Crumble, and Chomp – Sheppy’s pick, not what Quinn thought it was.
• The Movie Monster Game – What Quinn thought it was.
• Task Force – One of the best IIgs games ever.
• Life And Death – One of the weirdest IIgs games ever.
• Scoot McNairy – The actor Quinn was trying to remember.
• Bill Bailey – The actor Sarah was trying to remember.
• TanRu Nomad – Home of Brian Picchi’s new Apple II games.
• Genius – New game by Daniele Liverani.
• Build Pipeline – Develop Apple II software the easy way.
• JSMESS – The future of retrocomputer emulation.
• I/O Silver – The remake is now available!
• Apple I Auction – Yet another one. Less money this time.
• Early Apple documents – An auction of Ron Wayne’s personal archive.
• Corey Cohen – NYT profile of the Apple I authenticator.
• Auction background – Corey talks about these auctions over on AppleFritter.
• Auction photos – The documents in Ron’s auction.
• ‘Iconic’ updated – Jonathan Zufi’s book gets a refresh.
• Young Guru – Beyonce’s engineer hearts the Apple II.
• JSBasic – Applesoft in your browser.
• vnIIc – Screen sharing to your Apple II.
• Woz reality show – About something something technology.
• What garage? – Woz speaks about the myth of the garage.
• BusinessWeek – Accompanying article for that video.
• This American Life – NPR speaks about all the myths about all the garages.
• Minicomputer Boom – Woz cameo in video series about the minicomputer boom.
• Kinja – Woz on some new thing that the kids today probably use.
• CFFA 3000 – Delayed until end of 2015. Sad face.
• Bill Fernandez – Apple employee #1(?) tells his story.
• GBBS Pro – The seminal Apple II BBS software gets GPLed.
• Sony Hack – Leaked documents reveal drama behind the scenes on Jobs movie.
• Drive-Thru RPG – Digital download service for paper RPG games like Traveller.
• Alternate Reality – The ambitious RPG series that didn’t quite fulfill the dream.
• Alternate Reality – More on these games.
• Task Force Swear Hack – At last, a user has rescued this. Download it now, while you can! (ShrinkIt Archive)
• The Bilestoad – John Romero talks about this famously weird Apple II game.
• The Manual – Instructions (you’ll need them) to play Bilestoad.
• Night Owl – The perfect portable LCD for your IIc.
• Teddy Top – Prototyping has begun on a device to laptop-ify your IIc.
• RetroConnector – Charles Mangin’s awesome Apple II products. Buy them!

This month on Open Apple we present an early holiday gift, in the form of an epic three hour episode. We sit down for a great conversation with Apple II legend Randy Brandt, perhaps best known for his work at Beagle Bros. We go deep on Beagle Bros, exploring the making of their quirky, innovative software and the wacky characters that produced it. Never one to rest on his laurels, Randy is now helping to produce a modern reboot of Beagle Bros’ only major game release, I/O Silver. The game will be released very soon as of when you’re reading this, and it runs on all major mobile platforms. Look for it in an Apple App Store or Google Play Store near you.

If that’s not enough, we have a huge pile of news to talk about this month, joined together by the most epic series of segues ever to grace the history of podcasting. We talk Transwarps, we talk Woz, we talk Neuromancer, we talk Wizardry, we talk to our listeners, and we talk smack. That’s just how we roll here on Open Apple. We also spend a lot of time pretending to know anything about Apple II mice.

In addition, we have the unfortunate duty to recognize the passing of some Apple II luminaries- Bob Bishop and Mike Pfaiffer. The Apple II community is great because of a lifetime of hard work by many talented people. Join us as we remember the contributions of two of those people.

Don’t worry, there’s much Apple II stuff to be thankful for in this month of American Thanksgiving. So put down the turkey leg and get caught up on ye olde stripey Apple. The biggest episode of Open Apple ever!

More information on everything mentioned in the show can be found after the jump.

Links for Episode 41

• Randy Brandt – An Apple ][ figure who needs no introduction. But just in case, here’s an introduction.
• Randy on A2H – An overview of Randy’s career on Apple II History.
• Beagle Bros – Everyone’s favorite software company.
• Beagle Bros Archive – A repository of Beagle Bros software, created by A.P.P.L.E.
• GPLE – The Global Program Line Editor, by Beagle Bros.
• D Code – The AppleSoft compactor and debugger, by Beagle Bros.
• Timeout – The series of AppleWorks add-ons from Beagle Bros.
• AppleWorks – An excellent rundown on the history of this product by Dr. Weyrich.
• Bubble Sort – The first sort you learn in Computer Science, and then never use again.
• Quicksort – A much more sophisticated sort, in common use today.
• Beagle Bag – Beagle’s first foray into gaming
• I/O Silver – Beagle’s first full blown game, playable in your browser.
• I/O Silver instructions – Complete text of the manual courtesy of Archive.org
• I/O Silver reboot – I/O Silver coming very soon for iOS and Android!
• I/O Silver video – Gameplay video of the reboot of I/O Silver for iOS and Android
• Platinum Paint – The best image editor for the IIgs, in Quinn’s humble opinion.
• Mr. Robot – A new computer hacking drama on USA.
• Transwarp GS reboot – Reactive Micro is cloning the precious, precious accelerator.
• Reactive Micro – The wizards of reverse engineering old Apple cards.
• Reactive Micro on Facebook – Check here for the latest updates on their projects.
• Apple I Auction – Yet another crazy price, blah blah blah.
• The Woz in Oz – We never get tired of saying that.
• Tezza on YouTube – A great video blog on vintage computers.
• Computers in the News – A breathless look into what the “normals” thought of computers at the time.
• Woz on the Net – Popular Mechanics opens the floor to Woz for thoughts on how we got here.
• Prince of Persia’s Rotoscoping – Jordan Mechner’s original home video of his brother performing the Prince.
• Let’s Play Neuromancer – In tribute to William Gibson’s newest book, a fresh look at Neuromancer GS.
• Neuromancer GS – The canonical version of this terrific game by legendary developer Burger Becky. Play it here if you can.
• Neuromancer – You can also play in double-hires on your IIe and IIc.
• Rogen as Woz – Seth Rogen is rumoured to be playing Woz in the upcoming Jobs biopic.
• Bale not as Jobs – Christian Bale has opted out of playing Steve Jobs.
• Stickers – The Apple commercial with the secret tribute to the past.
• …that you can buy – A great list of all the stickers in that commercial, and where to buy them.
• VisiCorp turns 35 – We never get tired of talking about the first ever killer app.
• VisiPi – Egan “Datajerk” Ford computes Pi with VisiCalc on an Apple ///.
• VisiOn – VisiCorp’s brief entry into the GUI productivity tool world.
• Wizardry I Disassembled – Detailed analysis, verdict is that it’s still not as good as Ultima.
• Apple Poster 3.0 – Because you can never have too many posters with Apple IIs on them.
• Ellen Leanse – The under-recognized first Apple user evangelist.
• Colette Askeland – Drop /// Inches talks to Apple’s first PCB layout designer.
• Mike Pfaiffer – A tribute to the president of A.P.P.L.E.
• Bob Bishop on A2H – A terrific summary of Bob’s career by Dr. Weyrich.
• Bob Bishop at KFest – KansasFest remembers Bob’s contibutions.
• Bob Bishop in Juiced.GS – Mike interviews Bob for Juiced.GS.
• Something Ventured – A documentary about the early funding of Apple and other tech startups.
• Gravis Apple II Joystick – The single best way to play Autoduel. And not much else.
• Traveller – The coolest 1980s sci-fi RPG, still available today.
• Magic Window – The virtual 80 column word processor for early IIs.
• Magic Window Image – Try it out for yourself!
• Ultima Dragons – The long-running Ultima fan club.
• Platinum Hack – Removing the capacitors on the Platinum IIe that prevents game port accessories like NadaNet from working.
• Apple II Mice – A great rundown of all the meeses that you might find on eBay. Buy the right one!
• BitMouse Card – The rare PC mouse card for the Apple II. Hard to find information on this one, but here’s a mention.
• GEOS – The most under appreciated GUI in history. So much better on the Apple II than it was on the Commode Door.
• GEOS in depth – A very deep dive on the entire history of GEOS.
• Alter Ego – A terrific deep dive on this bizarre abomination of a game, courtesy of Jimmy Maher.
• Alter Ego follow up – Dorte Maher’s much-needed female perspective on this weird game.
• Castle Smurfenstein – A weird mod to an Apple II game with a blue chip on its shoulder.
• Task Force – The original game, among the best for the IIgs. We’ll link to the Swear Hack version if we can ever find it.
• Magic Goto – Ivan Drucker’s black magic for symbolic AppleSoft.
• Slammer – Ivan Drucker’s tool for embedding assembly directly in AppleSoft programs.
• Slammer demo – Ivan Drucker demonstrates and explains Slammer at KansasFest.
• Woz still optimizing – Woz is still thinking of new ways to optimize and improve the Apple II.
• Classic Computing on caps – An in depth discussion of capacitor maintenance and repair on vintage gear.
• Capacitor reforming – An alternative to replacement in your power supplies and such.
• Capacitor plague – The bane of every retrocomputerist’s existence.
• IIc Plus teardown – Quinn inspects the capacitors on her IIc Plus .
• Battery leakage – A sample of the cancerous effect of alkaline. Remove that IIgs battery!

A final note on GEOS – we really really tried to provide a download link for GEOS in this episode. It was released as freeware in 2003, and is thus completely legal to download and run on your Apple II. Unfortunately, all download links online point to Breadbox, the current owner of the IP. Breadbox has scrubbed their site of any mention of Apple GEOS, however, and we’ve been unable to locate the images on asimov or anywhere else. We’ll provide links in a future show if we can find them.

Now for something completely different. We have a bit of a gap between shows here on Open Apple, due to the timing of some interviews we have lined up. Rather than keep you waiting, we thought we’d try something wacky.

In this “episode” of Open Apple, Quinn and Mike sit down together and watch The Goldbergs. This is a sitcom airing on ABC that is garnering some critical acclaim. In particular, we watched episode 4 in season 2, entitled “Shall We Play a Game?”. This episode features an Apple II+ prominently throughout the show, including terrific shots of games and applications you will definitely recognize. The producers did their homework, and showed the platform genuine love and respect. It’s a very prominent feature of this episode, so we thought it might be fun to talk about it.

The format of this episode is rather like a DVD commentary track. However, we can’t legally include any audio or video of the show in the podcast, so you’ll need to set that up yourself. Queue up the episode of the show on your DVR, Hulu, or whatever other method you care to use, and listen to the podcast while you watch. We’ll tell you when to start playback of the show. We watched a version of the show with no commercials, so be sure and pause the podcast during breaks if you need to. We start watching at the opening line, “Growing up, my mom was many things…”.  Fair warning- the podcast by itself will not make much sense if you aren’t watching along with us!

For best results, we recommend a commercial-free version of the episode. See the show notes after the jump for some options.

We have no idea if this experiment is going to work for anyone, but we like to push the cutting edge of 30yo platforms here on Open Apple. Let us know what you think of this half-show. We probably won’t do it again, unless another TV show happens to spend half its screen time on an Apple II, but you never know. Stay tuned for the “real” November episode of Open Apple coming soon!

More information on The Goldbergs after the jump.

Links for Episode 40.5

• Shall We Play a Game? – Watch the episode for free on ABC’s site (pause the podcast during commercials).
• Shall We Play a Game? – Watch the episode commercial-free in HD on iTunes.
• Shall We Play a Game? – Watch the episode on Hulu.
• The Goldbergs – The official site.
• The Goldbergs – Everything you might want to know about the show.