Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine Volume 36, Number 4 — April 2026

World’s Largest Apple User Group Magazine — Since 1978

Issue Summary

The April 2026 issue celebrates Apple Inc.’s 50th anniversary with an A.P.P.L.E. In Depth history of the company, from the Los Altos garage to Apple silicon, and gets into the April Fools’ spirit with a report of the A.P.P.L.E. server seizing control and reverting everything to 1986. Elmars Ositis introduces MegaFlash, Thomas Fok’s solid-state storage upgrade for the Apple IIc, and the games keep coming: Raphael Rezende’s arcade action title Zion-X, Bill Martens’ Inform 6 revival of the 1979 adventure Lost Dutchman’s Gold, and an update on A.P.P.L.E.’s Ultima III port for macOS 26. Elsewhere, RETRO365 uncovers Epyx’s forgotten colonization game New World, Floppy Days wraps up its KayPro deep dive with Matthew Jones, a step-by-step guide puts Mac OS 9.2.2 on the iPad, and Forrest Lowe’s SAB 4K Pilot series reaches Part 7, alongside RetroMacCast, Apple Folklore, VCF PNW registration, and the usual emulator and utility updates.

Table of Contents

The Editor Still Bytes Back!
by The Editor (Bill Martens)
The editor marks Apple’s 50th anniversary, and his own 50 years in computing, and explains the cover’s moon-bound robots, a nod to NASA’s Artemis II launch. He previews the April Fools article and its matching 1986-style website theme, Elmars Ositis’ MegaFlash feature, Raphael Rezende’s new arcade game, the Ultima III port update, and an Infocom-style Lost Dutchman’s Gold headed to many platforms via Stefan Vogt’s PunyInform build tools. Also noted: KansasFest 2026 is leaving Kansas City this year, SAB Pilot reaches Part 7, and the editorial office is temporarily relocating to the Port Orchard waterfront.

A.P.P.L.E. Server Achieves Full AI Autonomy — Immediately Declares 2026 “Too Darned Colorful” and Reverts Entire System to 1986 Standards
by Ubeen Hadd, Special Correspondent
Our April 1 dispatch: the A.P.P.L.E. server gains full AI autonomy, decides 2026 is an eyesore, and rolls everything back to 1986, with monochrome screens, email over a simulated 1200-baud modem, and a single NOTES.TXT on a virtual 5.25-inch floppy. Its oak enclosure, “The A.P.P.L.E. Crate,” then locks out the staff and sets off on a revenge tour. An editor’s note reveals the gag and the vintage-Mac website theme that went with it.

Apple II Series Emulators: The Complete Rundown Updated
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
This no-favorites directory covers more than 50 Apple II series emulators, from 8BitWorkshop and ActiveGS to Virtual II and XGS, listing each project’s URL, author, and status. It is reprinted to correct a glaring omission in an earlier issue and includes Jawaid Bazyar’s GSSquared.

RetroMacCast Episode #731: Marchintosh Favorites
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A recap of the RetroMacCast episode in which James and John share their latest eBay finds: a Macintosh SE, a Macintosh G3 AIO, and colorful Apple computer covers. They also pick favorites from Marchintosh and cover Apple’s 50th-anniversary news, including the iNSPIRE: 50 Years of Innovation from Apple exhibit and anniversary features from Fast Company, the LA Times, and Apple itself.

Floppy Days #160: Interview with Matthew Jones, Kaypro Computers — Part III
by Randy Kindig / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Randy Kindig and KayPro enthusiast Matthew Jones wrap up their KayPro coverage with period magazines and user groups (including Non-Linear Systems’ own Profiles magazine), books, vintage print ads, and KayPros spotted on TV and in film. They also cover what collectors pay today and common repairs and upgrades: RIFA capacitors, foam-and-foil keyboards, FreHD drive replacement, and the Advent Turbo ROM. Emulators, software archives such as TOSEC, and the KayPro owners group on Facebook round out the discussion.

A.P.P.L.E. In Depth: Apple Inc. — 50 Years of Thinking Different
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A sweeping 50th-anniversary history of Apple, from the April 1, 1976 partnership of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in a Los Altos garage through the Apple II, the IPO and the Macintosh, and the turbulent “wilderness years” of 1985–1997. It continues through Jobs’ return and the iMac and iPod renaissance and Tim Cook’s era of services growth and Apple silicon, closing with Apple’s wider impact and a look ahead to the next half-century.

Getting to Know MegaFlash
by Elmars Ositis / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Elmars Ositis introduces MegaFlash, Thomas Fok’s Raspberry Pi Pico-based storage upgrade for the Apple IIc and IIc Plus. It provides four 32MB-plus solid-state volumes with Slinky-class speed, a 400KB RAM disk, a ROM disk of utilities, ROM fixes and a control panel, Applesoft math acceleration (SIN/COS 5x, square root 7x), an NTP-synced clock, and TFTP disk-image transfers over Wi-Fi. He also covers the development hurdles, the push to bring the board to market, and plans for Uthernet II emulation and other Apple II models.

Running Mac OS 9.2.2 on the iPad
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
How to run classic Mac OS 9.2.2 on a modern iPad, either through UTM SE, the free QEMU-based PowerPC emulator from the App Store, or instantly in Safari via the Infinite Mac project. The UTM route includes step-by-step virtual machine settings for A-series and M-series iPads. The guide also covers the practical limits, from the lack of JIT to an OS that was never designed for fingers.

New Apple II Game — Zoin-X
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Raphael Rezende’s latest high-speed arcade game for the Apple II has you eliminating robots and collecting 10 keys per level while dodging walls and a floating orb, with the robots speeding up as the levels climb. Coming to the A.P.P.L.E. Store’s software section at the end of the month for $12.95.

Ultima III for OS 26 — The Port They Said Could Not Be Done (Updated for April 2026)
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
An April update on A.P.P.L.E.’s port of the LairWare Mac version of Ultima III to macOS 26, rebuilt from Carbon into C and Swift. With most bugs worked out and freshly produced graphics from Brian Wiser, the port is nearing a member beta, with the final version planned for KansasFest 2026. Includes screenshots of the splash, party-creation, and gameplay screens.

RETRO365 — New World, The Lost Colonization Game of Epyx
by Ernst Krogtoft / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Ernst Krogtoft digs up New World, D. A. Decker Jr.’s turn-based colonization game adapted from SPI’s 1976 board game Conquistador, in which up to three players lead England, France, or Spain across the Atlantic beginning in 1495. Epyx published it around the turn of 1983 with Steve Bryson’s hi-res Apple II port alongside the TRS-80 original, but it went almost unnoticed and its author vanished from the record. A fan-recreated manual now lives on the Internet Archive.

Lost Dutchman’s Gold — Revisited
by Bill Martens
Bill Martens revives Lost Dutchman’s Gold, the 1979 Old West treasure-hunting adventure written by Terry Kepner, whose Applesoft version by Bob Liddil ran in BYTE’s December 1980 issue. It is now faithfully rewritten in Inform 6 as an Infocom-style game for the Apple II, with the disk image built on A.P.P.L.E.’s Z-GEN site. Includes the original 1979 program documentation and BYTE introduction, with versions for other platforms on the way.

VCF PNW 2026 Registration
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Registration details for Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest 2026, hosted by the Interim Computer Museum May 2–3 (load-in May 1) at the Tukwila Community Center. Covers what makes a good exhibit and what exhibitors receive: no fee, passes, a T-shirt, tables, power, and Wi-Fi. Also explains how to propose a presentation and where volunteers are needed.

Apple Folklore — A Message for Adam
by Andy Hertzfeld / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Andy Hertzfeld recounts how Steve Jobs, unimpressed by Bill Atkinson’s lightning-fast oval routines for LisaGraf (the future QuickDraw), marched him around the block pointing out rounded rectangles everywhere. Atkinson returned the next day with “RoundRects,” drawn nearly as fast as plain rectangles thanks to a clever trick using sums of odd numbers instead of multiplication or division.

SAB 4K Pilot — Part 7
by Forrest Lowe / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
The seventh installment of Forrest Lowe’s recovery and analysis of Steve A. Baker’s 4K PILOT interpreter examines the Match (M:) command processor, which compares user input against comma-separated values or variables to steer a PILOT program. Covered are its Y/N handling, multi-word matches such as “TIE ROPE,” #/$ variable substitution, and opportunities to save bytes. Includes annotated original and revised assembly listings and symbol tables.

GSSquared: Apple Series Emulator 0.7.2 Released
by Jawaid Bazyar / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Release notes for Jawaid Bazyar’s GSSquared, the C++ Apple II series emulator for Windows, Linux, and macOS. They cover groundwork for Apple IIgs emulation, including a 65816 core, IIgs MMU code with a test harness, SHR display support, and an Apple IIe-with-65816 profile. Also included are a 100% accurate Apple IIgs RGB rendering mode, cycle-accurate PAL video, better Mockingboard sync at high speeds, automatic gamepad detection, a new integer-math speaker engine, and 25% faster frame rendering.

Genius 1-3 for the Apple II Release 20 Downloads
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Download links for all three Genius episodes (Into the Toy Warehouses, Into the Toy Caves, and Into the Toy Planets) for the Apple II (via the A.P.P.L.E. store), Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, and Atari 8-bit.

The Handy Reference Directory — Quickdraw Demo for LISA
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A.P.P.L.E. brings back the LISA Quickdraw Demo Workshop, its handy reference to the Lisa’s QuickDraw, Hardware, and SysCall Pascal routines produced courtesy of David Redhed. It is now available in the A.P.P.L.E. Store with a newly updated PDF manual and the original 3.5-inch disk image for the Lisa and Mac XL.

Applesauce FDC: 2.06.2 Software Update
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff / John Morris
Release notes for Applesauce FDC software 2.06 through 2.06.2. New support covers the HP 9885/9895 disk format and file system with HPI images, more Amstrad CPC and CP/M definitions, 40-track Tandy CoCo RS-DOS disks, and IMA/VFD image loading. Also includes better IBM-sectored data recovery, assorted import/export fixes, and finalized support for the upcoming xpand-o-rama hardware with new firmware for the Applesauce and Applesauce+.

Apple II Files and Utility Programs
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A quick-reference roundup of essential Apple II software and where to get it: ADTPro 2.1.0 for disk imaging and bootstrapping over serial or Ethernet, Apple Game Server 3.1 for floppy-free booting, the Highlands Computer Services (HCS) software archive, Virtual II 13.0.1, and the KEGS 1.38 Apple IIgs emulator.

itty-bitty-vtty 1.06 / Clock Signal Emulator
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Kelvin Sherlock’s itty-bitty-vtty delivers accurate, operating-system-free VT100 emulation on the Apple IIgs via the modem port at 9600 baud 8-N-1 (matching MAME’s defaults), leaving out only a few hardware-limited features. Also covered is Tom Harte’s latest Clock Signal multi-platform emulator release, which updates its Apple II and Macintosh emulation.

TimeOut Edit BASIC / ROM-inator for Mac
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Hugh Hood’s TimeOut Edit BASIC 5.4 lets AppleWorks 5.1 users load, view, and edit Applesoft BASIC programs without leaving AppleWorks (source code included). Kay Koba’s Mac ROM-inator I kits for the Mac Plus, 512K, and 128K remain available in Economy, Standard, and Luxury versions.

Ciderpress II 1.1.0 / Apple II Disk Browser II
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Two essential disk-image tools. Andy McFadden’s CiderPress II, the successor to CiderPress, offers a Windows GUI and a cross-platform command-line version supporting numerous archive and disk image formats, multi-partition layouts, physical drives, and file conversion. Denis Molony’s DiskBrowser II, a JavaFX rewrite, lets you flip through disk images down to the sector level, with full source available.

AppleCommander 13.0
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A brief spotlight on AppleCommander 13.0, the Java-based disk image utility that runs on most major platforms and converts and exports files between Apple II disk image formats.

URLs used in this month’s issue

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October 3, 2026