Month: March 2013

Darren Crawford has managed to do what no one ever considered possible:  Post a Facebook posting from an Apple //e computer.   In what is a first ever event, Darren posted his message using a combination of Lynx and the mobile version of the  Facebook website. It wasn’t just an instant success, but instead was a work of some trial and error.   In discussions in the A2C.Chat channel of A2Central’s IRC, much of the discussion was about issues with character loss…

The Original Angry Birds has been marked to Free by Rovio Entertainment Ltd.  Normally, Angry Birds is a $0.99 cent download. The company has also updated the app with 15 new levels, marking the first update in the app in a long while.   Upon updating it, they also released the game to the public for free download, although no timeframe has been specified for this giveaway. You can download the original Angry Birds game from the Apple iTunes store at:…

Java once again is at the firestorm of vulnerabilities with Apple.  The latest release of Java 6 has been exploited again and Apple is pushing out an update, Java for Mac OS X 2013-002. According to the information provided in the update panel, “Java for OS X 2013-002 delivers improved security, reliability, and compatibility by updating Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_43. On systems that have not already installed Java for OS X 2012-006, this update disables the Java SE 6…

Paris, March 3rd, 2013 – Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to announce Mr Sprite, a command-line tool to manage sprites and to simplify the integration of sprites into Apple IIgs games. Programmers spend a lot of time to prepare Sprites sheets : – You have to ensure the Sprite width is a multiple of 4 pixels (16 bit), – You have to prepare both Even and Odd aligned version of the Sprite, – You have to organize your Sprites into 320×200 pictures to…

WITA2GS has added a bevy of home brew courses for the Apple IIgs Golf Game from Accolade, Mean 18.  According to the posting on the website, “Sorting through many miscelleous archives forwarded on from Antoine as he comes into contact with random collections and images each disk from them, I came across 8 disks worth of golf courses for Mean 18, the excellent golfing sim from Accolade.” For more information check out the WITA2GS website posting at: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/homebrew-helpings-lots-of-courses-for-mean-1/

The Apple ][ specific Cassette Tape collection maintained by Brutal Deluxe has reached 589 tapes and is continuing to grow nearly daily.  Antoine Vignau, curator of the site has added a number of items in the past few days including items from the following vendors: A.P.P.L.E. (Library pak 1C/2B), Hayden (Applesoft utility programs, Engineering mathematics-1, Revive, Slow list/stop list) MUSE (Maze game) Programma (Ampersoft, Jumpout/Shooting stars, Saucer war, Time clock) Systems design lab (Funpak I by Chuck Sommerville) Tsukumo (Apple…

Gerard Puter, the developer of the Virtual ][ Emulator has released an update to the emulator.  Virtual ][ Version 7.1 is primarily a bug fix release witht he following items changed: Fixed an issue that could cause Apple II screen pixels to be randomly shown or hidden. Improved implementation of the “mounted OS X folder” feature to fix an incompatibility with EDASM. Some of the Applescript demos didn’t work in version 7.0; this has been fixed. Virtual ][ is a…

A security breach with Evernote’s servers has exposed more than 50 million users passwords, causing the Evernote Corporation to issue a complete password reset.  The announcement by the Evernote Corporation states that there was no data exposure but to be safe, the company is forcing all users of the popular note taking service to reset their passwords. The full announcement is at: http://evernote.com/corp/news/password_reset.php

Apple’s stock continues to behave strangely, but with more explanation in recent weeks. Seems a couple of large hedge funds sold billions in Apple shares over a short period, driving the price down. More recently, another fund manager speculated on a stock split, which caused a short rally in the shares. Yet another wants to extract cash from Apple’s hoard into his own pocket. All these moves are both short-sighted and self-serving. Indeed, it seems to the Spy that any…