Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine Volume 36, Number 5 — May 2026

World’s Largest Apple User Group Magazine — Since 1978

Issue Summary

The May 2026 issue lets Woz tell the real story of Apple Computer, Inc., as Floppy Days’ Randy Kindig sits down with Steve Wozniak ahead of the Byte Shop’s 50th anniversary. A.P.P.L.E. In Depth goes hands-on with the 8086YES! BOOK II, a hand-built Apple II Plus compatible laptop. Elmars Ositis introduces the MegaFlash storage upgrade for the Apple IIc, and Jawaid Bazyar releases GSSquared 0.8.0 with full 3.5-inch floppy support on the IIgs. A.P.P.L.E. rolls out new web tools for members (a global events calendar, an Apple II disk viewer, the KREBF Z-Machine player, and the Z-Gen disk generator) along with its Ultima III port for macOS 26. Also inside are RETRO365 on Michael Kosaka’s Budokan: The Martial Spirit, Andy Hertzfeld’s Pineapple Pizza celebration of the first Mac circuit board, and Forrest Lowe’s SAB 4K Pilot Part 8. Rounding things out are a calendar of June and July events, RetroMacCast, an updated emulator rundown, and the usual utility roundup.

Table of Contents

The Editor Still Bytes Back!
by The Editor (Bill Martens)
The editor introduces Randy Kindig’s interview with Steve Wozniak on the real beginnings of Apple Computer, Inc., timed to the Byte Shop’s 50th anniversary, and the month’s new member tools, including the Global Computing Events calendar. He reports Ultima III nearly at release quality alongside two Ultimore games and their cheat utilities. He also breaks the news that Structris, written by Martin Haye in 2012 and released for iOS by A.P.P.L.E. in 2015, is returning to the App Store. KansasFest 2026 registration is open, with the event moving from Kansas City to Springfield, Illinois. An editor’s note announces another move of the editorial office, this time to Tokorozawa, Japan.

New Nifty Tools From the Minds of A.P.P.L.E.
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A set of side projects spun off from A.P.P.L.E.’s larger “Thunderdome” project. The Global Computing Events Calendar is searchable by event type, location, and keyword. The Apple II Disk Viewer reveals disk contents by drag and drop, shows Big Mac and Merlin source as text, and can rebuild a z5 story file from two disk sides. KREBF, the web-based Z-Machine player adapted from Fredrik Ramsberg’s KREBF, handles z3 through z8 except z6, and Z-Gen builds Apple II Z-machine disks that run on real hardware. Also covered are the Ultima III port for macOS 26, now in beta build 0183 ahead of a KansasFest finish, and its companion Ultima III Cheater.

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, listing each project’s URL, author, and status. This edition updates the Ample, AppleWin, Clock Signal, GSSquared, MAME, and Mariani entries.

RetroMacCast Episode #736: Scott’s Frog Design MacBook Concept Creation
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A recap of the RetroMacCast episode in which James and John share their latest eBay finds: a retro Apple mouse pad, unreleased Mac 128K developer manuals, and a Macintosh II. Scott joins them to show the Hartmut Esslinger Frog Design MacBook concept he brought to life. News includes an Apple Lisa recreated on an FPGA, a $20 AliExpress clock turned into a working Mac, and the LaCie FM Radio Tuner.

Floppy Days #162: Interview with Steve Wozniak, Apple Computer, Inc. Co-Founder
by Randy Kindig / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Recorded just before the Byte Shop’s 50th anniversary event, Randy Kindig’s conversation with Steve Wozniak starts with his days designing HP’s first handheld scientific calculators and showing his computer at the Homebrew Computer Club, where Paul Terrell first saw it. Woz then covers how Terrell’s cash order for the Byte Shop got Apple going, building boards in the Jobs family garage (which he says was never really a company workshop), and working with Steve Jobs on Breakout for Atari. He also explains how the Apple II, with its rule-breaking digital color, was already built before the first Apple-1 was delivered.

A.P.P.L.E. In Depth: An Apple II for Your Briefcase — The Book II
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A close look at the 8086YES! BOOK II, a hand-built portable Apple II Plus compatible that rebuilds the machine from roughly 120 discrete TTL chips. It folds into a clamshell laptop with an RGB LCD, a backlit mechanical keyboard, and an 18650 lithium battery pack. Five common expansion cards are integrated on the motherboard, including a Z80 CP/M co-processor, 80-column video, and a Language Card, along with an external Disk II interface. The $460 Tindie run sold out within weeks of its April 2026 debut.

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.

RETRO365 — Budokan: The Martial Spirit, a Title That Says It All
by Ernst Krogtoft / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Ernst Krogtoft tells the story of Budokan: The Martial Spirit, the ambitious late-1980s Electronic Arts game from Aikido instructor and veteran Atari and Epyx designer Michael Kosaka. It set out to capture both the techniques and the philosophy of the martial arts on the IBM PC. The article covers its large, fluid animation, Rob Hubbard’s score (he was EA’s first employee devoted primarily to music), its mixed critical reception, and the Amiga and Sega Genesis versions that followed in 1990.

The June / July Global Event Calendar
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A roundup of June and July 2026 events worldwide, each with dates, a link, and a short description. It spans Apple’s WWDC and the INIT HELLO Apple II conference; retro gatherings such as VCF GB, the Pacific Commodore Expo NW, and RetCon; and demoparties including Nova, @party, Remedy, Posadas, and the online Protracker Weekender. Gaming expos and conferences range from the Vancouver Gaming Expo to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India and IEEE WCCI 2026.

Apple Folklore — Pineapple Pizza
by Andy Hertzfeld / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Andy Hertzfeld recalls the Friday evening in 1981 when the first printed-circuit Macintosh boards arrived and Steve Jobs pushed the team to bring one up that night. The board showed only a checkerboard instead of the boot ROM’s “hello,” but Burrell Smith declared it close enough, and everyone headed to Frankie, Johnny and Luigi’s for the promised Pineapple Pizza.

SAB 4K Pilot — Part 8
by Forrest Lowe / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
The eighth installment of Forrest Lowe’s recovery and analysis of Steve A. Baker’s 4K PILOT interpreter covers the USE (U:) subroutine call, END (E:) return, and REM (R:) command processors. Covered are the return-address table, END’s double duty as program exit, a bug that reports the wrong line number after a return, and byte-saving changes. Includes annotated original and revised assembly listings.

GSSquared: Apple Series Emulator 0.8.0 Released
by Jawaid Bazyar / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Release notes for GSSquared 0.8.0, Jawaid Bazyar’s emulator covering the Apple ][ through the Apple IIGS ROM 01, with pre-built binaries for macOS, Windows, and Linux. This release brings full 3.5-inch floppy support on the IIgs, including read/write WOZ images for copy-protected titles such as Alien Mind and Tomahawk, along with more accurate disk timing. Disk changes can now be saved back to their images, with a save prompt on quit. Other additions include a redesigned Control Panel, multi-volume BazFast SmartPort mounting via .pmap files, a command-line machine selector, and a new F10 debugger key.

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

Advertisers

Our thanks to our advertisers for helping us to continue to bring the best of the Apple Computing related news and notes to the Apple community on a monthly basis. Be sure to patronize these folks as they are true supporters of the hobby that is Apple Computing.

  • A.P.P.L.E. Store
  • A.P.P.L.E. Books
  • 8 Bit Shack
  • Kero’s Mac Mods
  • 8bit-Slicks
  • 8-Bit Stuff
  • The Eclectic Light Company
  • ClamXAV
  • Apple-1-manuals.com
  • BlueSCSI
  • Forth Interest Group
  • Huibert-Aalbers Software
  • Eamon Wiki
  • Nibble Magazine

How to become an Advertiser

  • Contact the editor at callapple.org for information about advertising on the A.P.P.L.E. website and in Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine
  • Reasonable rates offered to both hobbyists and companies supporting the Apple community