Month: March 2011
KANSAS CITY, MO — March 30, 2011 — KansasFest, the 22nd annual convention dedicated to the Apple II computer, is now open for registration. Users, programmers, hobbyists, and retrocomputing enthusiasts are invited to Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, from Tuesday, July 19, 2011, through Sunday, July 24, for six days and five nights of sessions, demos, announcements, contests, and camaraderie. The week kicks off with keynote speaker Bob Bishop, co-founder of Apple’s R&D lab alongside Steve Wozniak and creator of many…
As is one can tell from the dates on my posts, I spent a while tracking this one down. The original link is in a now inaccessible e-mail account so I went out and located it directly on the web. The date of the manual is in 2010 so it looks as though it is being kept relatively up to date. For those interested in why I am posting this particular link, the reason is simple. BASH is the shell…
Apple, Inc. has released an update for iOS. (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1358) Version 4.3.1 is intended to fix a number of anomalies in iOS 4.3 including: Fixes an occasional graphics glitch on iPod touch (4th generation) Resolves bugs related to activating and connecting to some cellular networks Fixes image flicker when using Apple Digital AV Adapter with some TVs Resolves an issue authenticating with some enterprise web services The update was not totally unexpected since many users were reporting issues with the iOS…
Actually it’s been out a couple of days now. At first blush (for maybe a couple of minutes), it looks pretty good. According to the various press releases it is faster than the previous version. Without actually timing anything my opinion is that statement appears to be true. As an aside, I’ve been seeing articles around the web suggesting it may be an IE killer on the Windows platform. Installing it on a Mac requires some steps. Connect to http://www.mozilla.com…
Plagued by inquiries from users with issues with their new MacBook Pros, Apple, Inc. has released an update for Mac OS X intended to deal with those issues directly. Mac OS X 10.6.7 update has come more than a month after the release of the product and is “Intended to resolve stabilitity issues” with the os. The issues with the new line of MacBook Pros are graphics related according to an article in Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/21/new-macbook-pros-freezing-under-heavy-load/) in which the machine feezes…
Don Lancaster, Curator of the Guru’s Lair website and author of several Apple ][ releated books including A.P.P.L.E.’s Call-A.P.P.L.E. In Depth Book 4, All About Applewriter, has made a number of his Apple ][ books available in PDF for free download. The current books he has released are the Apple Assembly Cookbook, Book 1 and Book 2, as well as a number of others. You can find all of Don’s currently released books at: http://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.asp
Alex Lee, curator of the What Is the Apple II gs website (http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/) has put together an ultimate collection of system tools, extensions, CDA’s and other plugins for your Apple IIgs. The collection is available on a single 32mb disk image and is downloadable from the WITA2GS (http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/) website. The collection has items for every Apple IIgs OS from System 3 to System 6.x. You can download the package at: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/files/System_Addons.zip You can read the entire article at: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/system-extensions-or-create-your-killer-gs-os-environment/
According to an article carried on Bloomberg’s website, Apple, Inc. is suing Amazon over the use of the “App Store” trademark. The story at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/apple-sues-amazon-com-over-use-of-app-store-trademark.html mentions the fact that Amazon mentioned carrying Angry Birds, one of the most popular packages in the Apple App Store and that Amazon “improperly used the Apple App Store Trademark”. Apple apparently is seeking an injunction against Amazon as well as damages for the usage.
Many of you readers may have noticed that I have been rather absent in my postings to the website for the past two weeks. Now, I am back, well shaken, radiated and ready to get this glow in the dark bod back into form here. News events here in Japan have been nothing less than heart breaking and absolutely horrifying. The thought of so much loss of life and damage is beyond the comprehension of the average person, but I…
Finding interesting stuff for the Mac is difficult given the relative numbers of users and programmers out there. I think I may have found something though. In the *NIX world (including OS X) the Python language seems to be the up and coming thing for programming. Python is an interpreted object oriented language. Python comes free with OS X, Linux, and BSD. It has to be downloaded and installed if it is to run on a Windows machine. I have…
This morning while performing my daily internet news gathering I came across an update to an interesting program. Minitube is a You Tube downloader/player. One of the major points the author makes is it doesn’t use the Flash player. In my opinion this makes it fairly fast. This program is available in four forms, Mac, Windows, Linux (32bit binary), and source code. The Mac and Windows versions have demos. I would guess the Linux and source code versions are the…
Mike Willegal has announced that final beta testing on the Brain Boards has begun and that the kits will be $59.00. Pre-built units will be available at some point for an additional fee. Mike has also put out a beta of the users guide for users to familiarize themselves with the board and created a website for the board at: http://www.willegal.net/appleii/brainboard.htm Orders for the Brain Board will begin to be taken on 19 March 2011 with the first units expected…
I might be a little late to the game in all this but I never had an iPhone before. Mainly cause I was on verizon and was not going to jump ship to get it. Not after hearing how horrible the network was on AT & T. So my plan was up in February and I said, I am not going to get the iphone now because they were going to come out with iPhone 5 (rumor) and I would…
Almost any series of commands which can be run in the shell can be run from a shell script. Tying in some of the last few posts I published here this is an example. Let’s say I wanted to run the gedit editor from the shell rather than from the dock/GUI… I would first have to locate the executable program. I happen to know it is installed in “/Applications/gedit.app/Contents/MacOS/gedit“. By running this program the gedit editor will start. Since it…
I volunteer as a system administrator at a place which installs software for an “educational charity” on Fridays. Yesterday the repair guy (who is a big Star Trek fan) called me over to his table. He showed me a video on Youtube about an Android app which turned a tablet into a “Tricorder”. I thought that was pretty cool. A quick search on Google for “lcars ipad” turned up this link to a couple of videos from last year. The…
The annual Pwn2Own competition has had it’s first day results come in. The idea behind the competition is to present some “hackers” with a series of web browsers on various machines. These machines are configured by various software manufacturers. The first hacker to generate a remote exploit on a particular machine gets to keep the machine plus $15,000. Although armed with 62 last minute patches, Safari was the first to go down. It took only five seconds. Next to go…
The Mozilla Organization has released the first Release Candidate fo their new Firefox 4 Internet Browser. The new browser has come about after a number of delays in the program which initially had the release of the completed browser in February. However, the program itself is feature rich, with a cleaner and easier to use interface. The new Release candidate should lead the way to a release within a short time frame, however, Mozilla has offered no details on the…
Apple has released the latest version of their developers tool, XCode 4 on their developers website (http://www.developer.apple.com). Apple is no longer requiring that developers using the program have a developers membership to use XCode. It is even available from download from the Mac App Store for $4.99. The new version has a number of new features in it including: Single Window Apple LLVM Compiler 2.0 New Debugger Interface Builder is Built-in Fix-it and Live Issues Instruments for Xcode 4 Assistant…
A new way of writing Applesoft Basic programs has been created by Andres Lozano, known in the Apple ][ world as Loz. Virtual Basic is a complete BASIC with all of the same operators and commands as Applesoft, except that it is written in a style much like other high level languages of the modern era. The entire system for Virtual Basic is a series of python scripts. If you are writing Virtual Basic programs, they can written using…
Wade Clarke has released an update for his Leadlight Adventure. The game itself is quite the adventure. Your are playing a girl Belinda who’s world is slowly falling apart. According to the Leadlight website, “15-year-old Belinda Nettle is studying at Linville Girls High School in Australia’s Blue Mountains. After falling asleep in the library one afternoon, she wakes from her mundane existence into a nightmare. Her classmates are transformed, nameless terrors seek her out across the schoolgrounds, and traps and…
