Month: July 2012
It is possible that an iPhone 5 prototype has made its way out of the unknown labs at Apple. According to a Gizmodo article, it appears that a Chinese manufacturer of iPhone cases is showing an iPhone 5 in one of their cases, complete with the miniaturized dock connector. The question now: is it really a prototype, or is it just a simple mockup? If we look to history, we know that prototypes from Apple have made it out into the wild,…
The Java Apple Computer Emulator also known as JACE has been updated. According to Brendon Robert, the creator of the JACE Emulator, “This new version adds a new MetaCheat (free cheat) feature. 140kb 2MG floppy support has been improved to support prodos/dos ordering detection as well as volume numbers.” You can download the new MetaCheat feature as well see it documented in full on the JACE homepage at: https://sites.google.com/site/brendanrobert/projects/jace
The latest version of Apple Disk Transfer (ADTPro) has been released. According to the press release from David Schmidt, “This release understands ShrinkIt-shrunk disk images, and treats them like any other disk image. To be clear, ADTPro won’t create new SDKs – but it’ll unpack existing ones and write them to a real disk of appropriate size. Going the other way – from real disk to image – ADTPro will always create normal DOS-ordered (for 5.25″ disks) or ProDOS ordered…
David Schmidt, author of the popular Apple Disk Transfer (ADT) program for the Apple II, announced that the latest version, available now, has the ability to transfer ShrinkIt disk archives to Apple II computers. This functionality means that it is no longer required to use an emulator or another means to convert the .sdk file into a .dsk image. Therefore, much time is saved. This new version of ADTPro also fixes a few other bugs. Download ADTPro 1.2.2 at SourceForge.
Just the other day, Marc S. Ressl released the latest version of his Apple II emulator for Mac OS X. OpenEmulator, written by Marc S. Ressl, is the most exciting new Apple II emulator around. Designed to replicate down to the littlest details the experience of using real Apple II hardware, this free, open-source emulator succeeds in providing the full effect! The latest version, 1.0.3, adds emulation of the Apple II Plus and J-Plus computers, as well as the Disk…
The Apple store went down at 12:00pm ET today. No known reason for the outage is available, however, the message on the website circulates through multiple languages pointing to the possibility that it is a global outage for a possible website update or change. The apple store is located at: http://store.apple.com
Marc Ressl has released the latest version of his OpenEmulator. The OpenEmulator emulates a number of machines and will eventually include the entire Apple II series in its emulator core. At the moment, version 1.0.3 includes the following features: Added the 1979 Apple II plus and Apple II j-plus Added the 1979 Disk II drives and interface card (13 and 16 sector), with support for DSK, DO, D13, PO, CPM, NIB, 2IMG, FDI, DiskCopy 4.2, V2D disk images Added the…
Apple IIgs programmer Ewen Wannop announced yesterday that he has decided to change the status of his commercial software to freeware. Said Wannop: As my contribution to KFest ’12, I am reclassifying all my commercial software. From now on, all my commercial titles that have been sold by Syndicomm are now Freeware, and can be downloaded either from Syndicomm at no cost, or from my own web site: http://www.wannop.info/speccie The titles include: Spectrum 2.5.3 Deluxe disk image Spectrum 2.5.3 floppy…
Frank Black has released his latest rendition of Eamon Deluxe interactive fiction system. Version 5.0 which runs on all flavors of Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, allows the users to experience the joys of playing the original Eamon adventures all in one place. While the Eamon adventures were primarily developed for the Apple II series computers, this marks the first time that the system is available on all of the major current platforms. You can download the Eamon Deluxe…
Brutal Deluxe Software has added more cassettes to their Apple ][ Cassette archives. The project, run by Antoine Vignau has set out to archive every cassette ever produced for the Apple ][ computer and as of this posting has a total of 566 tapes in its collection. The new additions to the archives include: The Micromint, Inc.: Applesoft Sweet Talker Program Softape: Saucer invasion / Rocket pilot, Solitaire poker According to a posting in the comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup, there are 17…
Angry Birds Seasons HD for the iPad by Rovio Entertainment Ltd., is currently free in the iTunes App Store. The App was recently updated to version 2.4.1 and now has more than 290 levels within the game. This is not the shareware version of the program but instead is the full app. You can download the app from the Apple iTunes store at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds-seasons-hd/id398329664?mt=8
This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken speak with Rich Dreher, developer of the CompactFlash For Apple (CFFA) card. The first batch of CFFA3000 cards sold out in 2011, and the second batch is now shipping with similar sales numbers. Rich takes us behind the scenes of the product’s success before dishing on other II hardware developers Vince Briel and Mike Willegal. We look at the astronomical numbers rare Apple-1 computers are fetching on eBay and at Sotheby’s and celebrate…
Skype version 5.8 has been updated to 5.8.0.945. The latest updates includes a host of general updates and stability bug fixes. You can download the latest version of the Skype software from their website at: http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-macosx
Due to the closure of Apple’s Mobile.Me, Mini vMac LT’s website has relocated to its own domain. The new website is at: http://mfort.net/ Mini vMac LT is a version of Mini vMac which supports serial connections in Local Talk mode, thus allowing usage of AppleTalk based games and utilities. The forums have also been relocated to the new website are now available for new user registrations.
It seems that owners of Cisco and Linksys home routers got a rather invasive surprise this holiday season. Cisco pushed out an update to their routers which requires users to use the Cisco Cloud service to log in to their routers. According to Boing Boing, the routers lock the users out and only lets them have access back if they agree to the new terms of service permitting Cisco to essentially spy on them. While many companies have monetized users…
What is K3b? It is a free CD/DVD/Bluray burning program for Linux (it can be compiled for the Mac as well). For the last little while, even before the last upgrade to the current version of Mint, I was having some trouble with the program. At first it no longer wanted to verify data disks. Just recently it wouldn’t even read the hard drive to pick up files to burn. It turned out the problem was a permissions thing. Unfortunately…
Karelia Software has released an update to their web production software, Sandvox. The new version focuses on the conversion of high resolution graphics and photos from newer cameras. Sandvox will now take the photos, generating the thumbnails quicker. Version 2.6.3 also includes a host of fixes and updates including: Publishing Other Bug Fixes Sandvox allow users to create websites easily with a minimum of HTML and CSS knownledge, includes embedding of all popular media formats and allows automatic publication via…
Gerard Puter has released a major update to the Virtual ][ Emulator. The latest update brings the emulator in line with the latest version of Mac OS X (Mountain Lion) and includes a number of video related improvements as well. Improvements included in Version 7.0 of Virtual ][ are as follows: Virtual ][ is a Macintosh based Apple ][ emulator, which includes many advanced emulation features rarely found in other emulation packages. Some of these advanced features include Epson compatible…
What boundary is the link between young and old? Is the Spy old because he hits a significant-sounding birthday number on July 3? Perhaps. After all, two nations celebrate his birthday annually, albeit one two days early, and another a day late. And, next year will be the thirtieth since he first typed this column on his Apple ][. Yet, perhaps after all, age is a state of mind. His father was a young-looking man at sixty-five, retired that year,…
Mozilla announced plans today to build a mobile operating system entirely based on the Web and HTML5, all powered by the popular Firefox web browser. Already, Mozilla has several mobile phone companies behind it, including Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, and Telenor. The Firefox OS will be built on Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko technology, which promises to eliminate several limitations of web development on mobile devices. One of the key features will be the privilege of HTML5…
