Month: December 2011
Egan Ford and Michael Mahon did a good bit of collaboration this week to effect the upgrading of the Apple ][ Game Server. The Apple ][ Game Server allows users to load games straight from the Internet onto their real Apple ][ computers via the cassette port and the audio port of their PC. The HIFI files have been sped up from 12kHz/6kHz 8000 bps to 12kHz/8kHz 9600 bps. LOFI continues to operate at the cassette interface default of 2kHz/1kHz…
Apple’s new just in time for Christmas ad campaign has kicked off with a new made for TV ad. The ad, featuring that man in the red suit with the jolly laugh, seems to need Siri now to make his life complete. Of course, we all know what a practical joker Siri can be, but when she suggests Mrs Claus says to lay off the cookies, Santa takes the appropriate action and laughs it off as he eats his in-hand…
More than 10 million Apple IIs were sold during the computer’s lifetime, but even with such a large user base spread around the world, some Apple II software fell off the radar after its heyday and has yet to be rediscovered in our archive-minded 21st century. Many users’ floppy disk collections were forgotten, given away, left in the attic or thrown in the garbage. Amongst the disappeared software until very recently was Dragon Fire, a 1981 dungeon maze RPG by…
Apple has released a minor update to the current iOS 5.0.1 for the iPhone. The update has the moniker 9A406 making only minor alterations to the current version of iOS. This version has not been pushed out globally yet and details of the update have been a bit difficult to come by. However, this release was addressed in the Apple support document and is meant to fix issues with the following items on the iPhone 4S: “Invalid SIM” or “No…
In the waning days of the Apple ][, cassettes were used quite prevalently. This continued into the realm of the Apple ][ plus for a short time. Now thanks to purchases made of some of these collections by Apple ][ fans, many of the cassettes are being archived. One such fan who has archived materials from a good number of vintage computers is a New Zealand man living in Tokyo, Philip Lord. His tape collection ha reached levels unrivaled by…
iTunes is having a number of issues according to reports we have received from our members and readers. Reports late last night of Apple rolling the system out early in the wrong parts of the world and then refunding the monies hours later were rampant. Then it was Apple ID’s not being recognized. Now it seems as though some of our readers are having issues with getting through the screens associated with registering for the service. Unfortunately, this issue is…
Apple Computer Inc. has released an update to their Logic Express program. Logic Express is Apple’s consumer level version of their Music Mixing package which allows for the user to manage multiple sound streams and build songs in a professional manner. With its 36 instruments, the program is a very capable “little brother” to the professional version of the software, Logic Pro. It can handle up to 255 tracks of audio and has 83 plug in effects. The latest version…
A story this morning mentioned that Apple will be producing their A5 iPhone CPU in a new factory in Texas. This would not normally raise any eyebrows outside of the fact that Samsung is the company running the factory. This would generally lead people to believe that Apple and Samsung had settled their differences. This, however, is not the case. The court cases are still on and the South Korean company is merely a supplier who has contracts with Apple…
Many iPhone users who have had their iPhone stolen are finding that the thieves or those who purchased the stolen property can actually still send text messages as the original owner of the phone. Apparently, this was first discovered in the Mac Rumors forums at http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1267235 Initially, Apple made users believe that the remote wiping utility which is now on all iPhone, would resolve such issues, however, as it seems many users in the forum have discovered, the thieves will…
Speculation that Apple may be losing out to it’s Chinese competitors in mainland China is coming to the forefront. While Apple products are popular the glove over, in China, there is a possibility that infrastructure to handle the iPhone and iPads may be the major limiting factor in China. According to a report in Reuters by Lee Chyen Yee, “A tie up with another telecoms service provider would help catapult Apple sales. But the biggest by far, China Mobile Ltd…
Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, Inc. has said that a different thinking company like Apple could never have emerged in a group think country of Singapore. His recent interview with the BBC on BBC Radio exposes the ultimate question he has for Singapore: “Where are the creative people? Where are the great artists? Where are the great musicians? Where are the great writers?” Although education and infrastructure play a major role in the foundation of Singaporean society, The whole…
Apple Inc. has released an update for both the Lexmark printers and the Brother printers. This driver updates fix some of the compatibility issues that people were having with the printers under Mac OS X Lion 10.7. Brother Printers supported are listed in the Apple Printer Support Document at: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669#brother To Download the Brother Driver version 2.8, go to: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL894 Lexmark Printers supported are listed in the Apple Printer Support Document at: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669#lexmark To Download the Lexmark Driver Version 2.7,…
Rumors of a mid sized Apple iPad are once again flairing up on the internet. The latest in a posting from DigiTimes Systems mentions the possibility of Apple launching a 7.85 inch iPad late 2012. The site goes on to compare the Apple iPad and the Kindle Fire, obviously in an effort to give the iPad some competition. While the mini iPad would make some people happy with the fact that the iPad would then be able to fit into…
Sandvox is an easy to use Website Creation package produced by Karelia Software. The package allows the user to produce high quality websites with a minimum of effort and knowledge, yet has all the tools for even advanced web site creators. Currently at version 2.2.3, Sandvox has a number of updates each year and has evolved to become one of the most powerful Website creation pacgaes available. Our Users group has used this package in house here at A.P.P.L.E. now…
The Seattle Retro-Computing Society or SRCS is a group of Retro Computing entusiasts which meet once a month at The Living Computer Museum in Seattle. The group has decided that due to the fact that the fourth Saturday this month would fall on Christmas Eve, there would be no December meeting. The next scheduled meeting of the group will be on the 28th of January, 2012. The meetings last from 10:30am to 5pm and is a chance to get together…
Brutal Deluxe software has added four more cassettes to the Apple ][ Cassette website. The new cassettes, scanned and added by Antoine Vignau, brings the number of cassettes in the collection to 563 tapes. The Cassette was the main storage type for the initial Apple ][ Computers from the advent of the Apple ][ in 1977 until the first floppy disk drives were commercially available to consumers in 1979. They also continued to be used well beyond that time due…
In the 1979-1981 time-frame, floppy disks were quite expensive, yet cassette tapes were a dime a dozen. Dann McCreary had the idea of putting an entire disk on tape. Thus Tape-O-Disk was born. However, after the prices of floppy disks came down to a level where everyone could afford them, the program all but disappeared until re-discovered by Apple ][ collector Antoine Vignau. When Antoine replied to an correspondence inquqiry by Dann, he received back one of the most insightful…
Are you the type of person who has their entire life written down or are writing a book about it? If so, then you will want to look at the new version of Mariner Software’s MacJounral. Version 6.0 was released with over 100 improvements and changes to the journaling program. Complete with new blogging tools, MacJournal allows you to write and entry and share it with the world if that is what your life is about. MacJournal’s efficiencies are the…
Mike Willegal of Mimeo fame has created an online registry of all known Apple-1 computers. While Apple Computer Inc produced 175 of the units in 1976, very few of the machines have survived the years and the tradein program Apple had when they introduced the Apple ][ computer. To date, Mike has catalogued 39 units complete with information about owners, auctions, auction / sale prices and current state of the machine. The original Apple-1 computer sold for $666.66 USD in…
The document of incorporation of Apple Computer Inc, from 1976, has been sold at auction for nearly $1.6 Million USD. The document which was originally held by founding member Ron Wayne, was sold in 1994 to US Businessman, Wad Saadi for several thousand dollars. The new owner of the document, Eduardo Cisneros, a US Television Exec (CEO of Cisneros Corp) and muscle car enthusiast, said about the purchase of the document in a tweet, “Very happy to own a piece…
