Open Apple

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Andrew Schultz — gamer, FAQ author, and Interactive Fiction Competition participant. Text adventures are enjoying a resurgence in popularity and access, and Andrew guides us through the tools and resources available for aspiring game authors. Both Steve Weyhrich’s history book and the Steve Jobs movie are available for home delivery, but there’s only one we want to find under our Christmas tree. Jason Scott has integrated the JSMESS emulator into the Internet Archive, granting users unprecedented access to historical software right in their browsers. Finally, Ken, in his quest to be more Woz-like, adopts his hero’s fashion sense.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 10:16)

• Apple II guest speakers at Emerson College
• Super Megafest 2013
• Ken’s unboxing videos on YouTube
• Xbox One first impressions with Lon Seidman
• Floppy Days by Randy Kindig
• ANTIC Atari podcast

User Login (10:17 – 52:09)

• Andrew Schultz on GameFAQs
• Wade Clarke’s Leadlight
• Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7, by Aaron Reed
• Eamon Adventurer’s Guild Online
• The Interactive Fiction Database
• Andrew Plotkin’s Hadean Lands: Interactive Fiction Kickstarter
• GET LAMP panel at PAX East 2010
• Spring Thing

II News (52:10 – 1:45:31)

• Steve Weyhrich’s Sophistication & Simplicity, based on the Apple II History site, now available from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble
• Amazon Prime Air drones
• Chrisann Brennan’s book about Steve Jobs, The Bite in the Apple
• Jobs now available on iTunes
• Jobs on Rotten Tomatoes — 26%
• Apple Time Warp podcast with John Romero and Craig Johnston (also available on iTunes)
• The Romero Archives
• John Romero interviews Nasir Gebelli
• Apple II game developer reunion 1998
• Building an Apple-1 replica from scratch
• Briel Computers’ Replica 1 Ten
• Ivan Drucker’s Raspple II
• David Schmenk’s Apple II Pi
• The Interactive Fiction Competition
• Charles Mangin’s joystick adapters, courtesy option8
• PAX East 2013 retro console room
• Jason Scott of The Internet Archive debuts the Historical Software Archive based on JSMESS
• Ars Technica’s Casey Johnston reviews Karateka, 30 years later
• Virtual Apple
• Strong Museum Museum of Play
• The Art of Video Games (TAOVG)
• Generational hardware gaps
• Do not approach your loved one while in your fighting stance or she’ll kick you in the head.
• Computer History Museum releases Apple II DOS source code
• Slashdot tours the Goodwill Computer Museum
• An entire Apple museum on eBay!
• Steve Wozniak endorses SCOTTEVEST jackets
• Woz-i-sodes playlist one and playlist two
• Eric Shepherd’s Sweet16 emulator
• good morning son”>Tower of Myraglen
• Brian Picchi releases Lamb Chops
• Andrew Schultz’s Copts and Robbers FAQ

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Bill Martens of Call-A.P.P.L.E. Preserving our community’s software and documentation is important not just to the users, but to the people doing the preserving; Bill explains why. We look at how the media can never get enough of Steve Jobs, examining his early career and denoting his boyhood home as a historical landmark — but Woz gets his time in the spotlight too, on panels about Atari, the Jobs movie, or a Homebrew Computer Club reunion. Highlighted eBay auctions include the ten rarest and most expensive games and yet another Apple-1. Finally, Brian Wiser joins us to discuss The WOZPAK Special Edition, a book that made its debut at KansasFest 2013 alongside its creator, Steve Wozniak.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 11:07)

• November, by Thomas Hood
• Apple2Pi by David Schmenk
• A2CLOUD & A2SERVER, by Ivan Drucker
• BrickPi combines Raspberry Pi with Lego Mindstorm

User Login (11:08 – 39:37)

• Bill Martens of Call-A.P.P.L.E.
• The history of A.P.P.L.E., founded by Val Golding

II News (39:38 – 1:25:36)

• Wendell Sander’s Apple 1 Project
• iPod interface to Apple 1 Cassette Board
• Apple IIc clear case prototype
• Charles Mangin’s Apple IIe Card Y-Cable
• Jeri Ellsworth’s castAR Kickstarter
• Time capsule buried by Steve Jobs in 1983 finally found
• Steve Jobs’ Crist Drive, Los Altos house reviewed for historical designation
• Steve Wozniak, Dan Kottke & Andy Hertzfeld discuss the film Jobs
• Steve Wozniak and Atari founder Nolan Bushnell recall Steve Jobs and early Apple memories together
• 8 reasons why Woz still matters
• Wheels of Zeus
• US Festival 1982
• A.P.P.L.E. presents: The Woz Speaks DVD
• Sound of the dial-up modem explained and pictured
• Secrets of the little blue box
• Ron Rosenbaum’s “Steve Jobs and Me”
• Homebrew Computer Club reunion Kickstarter
• VCF Europe & VCF Midwest
• Jonathan Zufi adapts the Shrine of Apple into Iconic coffee table book, as featured in the Wall Street Journal
• 9 museums that want your legacy tech
• How LucasArts fell apart
• Top 10 most valuable computer games for the Apple II on eBay
• Apple-1 computer for auction at Breker (w/YouTube video)

Retroviews (1:25:37 – 1:54:42)

• Brian Wiser’s previous appearance on Open Apple
• The WOZPAK Special Edition
• RetroMacCast‘s look at the original WOZPAK
• Done the Impossible: The fans’ tale of Firefly & Serenity
• Wil Wheaton — Why it’s awesome to be a nerd

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Brendan Robert of the Java Apple Computer Emulator (JACE) and Apple Game Server. Innovative cross-platform tools are being used to bring Lawless Legends, an original 8-bit RPG, to the Apple II and Commodore 64; as part of the programming team, Brendan takes us behind the scenes. He lives in a lawless land himself — the Old West of Texas, where gaming icons Ion Storm, Zynga, Lord British, and Rooster Teeth reside. But when it comes to games, sometimes you can’t do better than Tetris, of which there are many new and devious deviations. We get rid of old toys, like a SCSI CD-ROM 7-disc changer and a LANceGS card, so we can all have room for new toys, like A2CLOUD, Apple2Pi, BenchmarkeD, AppleIIWorks Envoy, and Final Cut Pro X. And sadly, Wayne Green of InCider and Byte has passed away; we remember his magazines fondly.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 11:50)

• Robert Frost’s October
• Send voicemail!
• United States federal government shutdown
• Apple II subreddit
• The International Center for the History of Electronic Games
• Ken Gagne’s off-brand MP3 players on eBay
• A spare LANceGS
• SCSI 7-disc CD-ROM changer
• SSI AD&D games
• Upgrading the Mac mini, by Paul Zaleski
• Final Cut Pro X
• Xbox One & PlayStation 4 pre-ordered for unboxing!

User Login (11:51 – 36:40)

• Brendan Robert, aka BLuRry
• Lawless Legends on Facebook
• Lawless Legends on GitHub
• Java Apple Computer Emulator (JACE)
• Prince of Persia for the Commodore 64 (C64)
• Outlaw Editor for Lawless Legends
• Apple Game Server & Apple Game Server Online!
• Wasteland 2 on Kickstarter

II News (36:41 – 1:30:43)

• Blocks of Explosive Dismemberment at BostonFIG is not like Structris
• First-Person Tetris and Not Tetris
• Bastard Tetris
• Ultima IV from Good Old Games
• Mockingboard-rendered Ultima music
• Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar
• Boston’s Digital Den
• The Goodwill Computer Museum of Austin, Texas
• John Romero’s Apple II reunion at Ion Storm (1998)
• Steve Chiang of Shareware Games > DuelTris”>DuelTris joins Zynga
• Vintage Computer Festival Southwest 3.0
• Richard Garriott’s Britannia Manor for sale
• Abington (Mass.) Zombie Apocalypse
• Wayne Green of Byte & InCider passes away
• Wayne Green on changing the world
• The Softalk Apple Project
• Softalk Forever on Facebook
• Oz KFest
• Rich Dreher’s CFFA3000
• Rob O’Hara’s CFFA3000 review
• The Apple II at PAX East
• Charles Mangin’s RetroConnector joystick shield
• AppleWin & Virtual II
• Henry Courbis’ ReactiveMicro.com — still closed :(
• Hack your old Mac’s ADB keyboard to bring it up-to-date
• Griffin iMate
• A2CLOUD
• A2CLOUD setup video tutorial series
• ADTPro‘s Virtual Drive
• David Schmenk’s Apple2Pi
• Brutal Deluxe’s BenchmarkeD
• Brian Picchi’s Apple IIGS SCSI hard drive
• Scholastic’s Microzine
• AppleIIWorks Envoy
• CloudConvert
• MacLinkPlus 15
• Jobs film props on eBay?
• Ashton Kutcher’s extreme, Steve Jobs-like diet
• Unifile Twiggy Assembly on eBay
• Apple’s Twiggy Disks
• Apple Lisa Twiggy drive cleaning, adjusting, and circuit board repair

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Charles Mangin, the mad scientist who puts Mac Minis inside Apple II cases and inventor of the RetroConnector. It’s our first show since KansasFest, and we share our highlights and favorite products and announcements from the show. The Steve Jobs film is now out, and Ashton Kutcher and Steve Wozniak have words while critics publish their own mixed reviews. However, we have nothing but praise for Walter Isaacson’s biography, and Steve Wozniak gets his own moment in the spotlight courtesy interviews with the Verge and Game Informer. We’re super-psyched that Eric Shepherd has established the S-Prize — how big will the pot grow before some enterprising programmer claims it?

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 7:46)

• Open ANTIChertz KansasFest episode
• Open Apple interview with Steve Wozniak in audio and video
• “Have you ever wondered why we’re here?”

User Login (7:47 – 37:09)

• Charles Mangin of Mental Hygiene, RetroConnector, and Twitter
• Charles’ KansasFest 2013 interview on Computerworld

II News (37:10 – 1:48:44)

• No VCF Southwest 4.0!
• Melissa Barron’s 73H 0r3g0n 7r41L game mod
• Interactive Fiction Competition 2013, as sponsored by Juiced.GS
• Wade Clarke’s Leadlight game for Eamon
• Jason Scott’s Get Lamp documentary
• Steve Wozniak interviewed by The Verge and Game Informer
• Steve Wozniak secretly submitted Tetris scores to Nintendo Power
• The Jobs movie Web site, poster, and trailer
• Ken’s review of Jobs
• Ashton Kutcher and Steve Wozniak trade barbs
• Lawless Legends 8-bit RPG
• The history of Sierra On-Line documentary failed Kickstarter
• Missing in Action: 8-Bit Generation documentary
• When Kickstarter investors want their money back
• Juiced.GS in 2014 & three new Concentrate PDFs
• Sweet16 v3.0.1
• Eric Shepherd’s S-Prize to bring the Samba networking protocol to the IIGS
• Lewis Kornfeld of Radio Shack and Tandy passes away
• Rare Apple-1 fetches $387,750 in Christie’s online auction
• Apple II #0148 sells for $24,099
• Woz-edition IIGS sells for $610
• Shut up and take my money!

While attending KansasFest 2013, Steve Wozniak — inventor of the Apple-1 and Apple II and co-founder of Apple Computer Inc. — takes a moment to speak with the Open Apple podcast about Steve Jobs, Randy Wigginton, and the Apple II.

Be sure to listen to the story of how we got Woz to KansasFest, and watch the video of this interview, too!

Mike Maginnis and Ken Gagne, the hosts of Open Apple, join forces with Carrington Vanston of 1 MHz and Kay Savetz of ANTIC, for one massive retro computing roundtable at KansasFest 2013. We chat about the convention’s two surprise guests — Steve Wozniak and a working Apple-1 — and how both came to be there, as well as our favorite sessions and games of the week, including Michael Sternberg’s tournament of Martin Haye’s Structris.

It wasn’t long before Mike and Ken ditched the two other guys for the most amazing guest ever. Be sure to listen to our interview with Steve Wozniak!