Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine Volume 36, Number 7 — July 2026

World’s Largest Apple User Group Magazine — Since 1978

Issue Summary

The July 2026 issue is a post-KansasFest celebration, led by the complete edited transcript of Daniel Kottke’s KansasFest 2026 keynote, “My 50 Years as an Electronics Engineer.” The talk spans his friendship with Steve Jobs, the Apple garage, the Macintosh team, and his Wi-Fi-connected Apple-1 replica. A.P.P.L.E. announces the expanded 420-page 4th Edition of The WOZPAK Special Edition and the return of GS+ Magazine with Volume 8, Number 1. It also previews the Ultimore adventures coming to macOS 26 and moves the MECC Project into Phase 2, bringing its scanned manuals online. Also inside are Randall Frank’s recovered 1984 game Painter, Andy Hertzfeld’s tale of Microsoft’s first look at the Mac, and Forrest Lowe’s SAB 4K Pilot Part 10. Rounding things out are a global calendar of August events, RetroMacCast, an updated emulator rundown, Applesauce FDC 2.08, and the usual utility roundup.

Table of Contents

The Editor Still Bytes Back!
by The Editor (Bill Martens)
The editor reflects on a KansasFest 2026 that came and went in a flash and a summer of pushing out new books, apps, and tools, with Apple’s approval process holding up the apps. He also points readers to A.P.P.L.E.’s Virtual KansasFest session, now on its Discord channel. An editor’s note explains that the office relocation was finished in time for KansasFest, but at the magazine’s expense.

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 adds AppleEm IIe, a new browser-based Apple IIe emulator, and updates the GSSquared, MAME, Mariani, and Virtual Apple ][ entries.

RetroMacCast Episode #739: A Free Macintosh
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A recap of the RetroMacCast episode in which James and John share their latest eBay finds: a PowerBook 145B, a Classic II, and an LC III. They also look back at the June 1986 issue of Macworld and cover news including the WWDC 2026 stickers and swag and the story of the Apple ad that broke Microsoft.

KansasFest 2026 Keynote: My 50 Years as an Electronics Engineer
by Daniel Kottke — Edited Transcript
The edited transcript of Daniel Kottke’s KansasFest keynote. One of Apple’s earliest employees and Steve Jobs’ friend from Reed College, he recalls their 1974 trip to India, building and testing Apple-1s in the famous garage, Apple II production, the Apple III, and joining the Macintosh team in January 1981. He goes on to his later work at General Magic, alongside a young Tony Fadell, and at Silicon Gaming, and to rare finds such as Apple’s IPO prospectus and Joanna Hoffman’s 1981 Macintosh business plan. He also covers his Burning Man electronics projects and the Wi-Fi-connected Apple-1 replica he demoed chatting with GPT.

A Return to the MECC Project — Phase 2
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
With Phase 1 complete and the library’s 300-plus titles playable in A.P.P.L.E.’s in-house KEGS-JS Apple IIGS emulator, the MECC Project moves on to the manuals. Nearly ten years of scanning are being brought online through the new Brian PDF Viewer, named for Brian Wiser, with the bulk of the work due in time for the 2026–2027 school year. The article closes with thanks to the many contributors, including original MECC staff.

Ultimore Adventures for macOS 26 Coming Soon
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
With A.P.P.L.E.’s macOS 26 port of the LairWare Ultima III finished, blessed by Richard Garriott, and awaiting Apple’s approval, the same engine is being used to revive Joel Fenton’s 1980s Ultimore adventures, now with his full permission. All five games are being revamped with a Cheater program for each and will arrive one at a time in the App Store, starting with Ultimore: A World Divided.

GS+ Magazine Returns: A.P.P.L.E. Publishes Volume 8, Number 1
by Brian Wiser / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Brian Wiser announces GS+ Magazine Volume 8, Number 1, the first new issue in thirty years of the pioneering Apple IIGS magazine-plus-disk, produced in cooperation with founder Steve “Diz” Disbrow. The 270-plus-page full-color book pairs a new “Writer’s Block” editorial and a seven-page interview with Diz with all 37 original editorials, every disk README, program documentation, a complete glossary and indexes, and classic GS+ humor. It is available in paperback and hardback.

“Painter” Recovered: Randall Frank Releases the Source to His 1984 Apple II Flood-Fill Game
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Inspired by Virtual KansasFest, Randall Frank has rebuilt Painter, his Qix-like 1984 game of walling off bugs and flooding them with limited paint and his first program written entirely in 6502 assembly. He reconstructed the source from a non-running binary using SourceGen, rebuilt it in Merlin format, and ported it to ProDOS. It is released under the MIT license with a one-step build script and is playable in a browser via Apple2TS or downloadable from GitHub and itch.io.

The WOZPAK Special Edition (Expanded 4th Edition) Released by A.P.P.L.E.
by Brian Wiser and Bill Martens
The expanded 4th Edition of The WOZPAK Special Edition: Steve Wozniak’s Apple-1 & Apple II Computers now runs 420 pages, adding 24 pages of newly surfaced material. The additions are 14 pages of Woz’s 1977 handwritten notes on printer connections, his “Writing a Color Graphics Program in 6502 Assembly,” and Wendell Sander’s “Communication Card Print Routine.” The book combines The WOZPAK (1978) and WOZPAK II (1979) with forewords from Woz, Randy Wigginton, Andy Hertzfeld, and other legends, and a nearly 300-page reprint, The WOZPAK: Original Edition, was released the same day.

The August Global Event Calendar
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A roundup of August 2026 events worldwide, each with dates, a link, and a short description. It spans demoparties and retro gatherings such as Evoke, BREAKOUT, Xenium, and the Atari-focused Fujiama; gaming and esports events including Gamescom, The International, CEO, and the Pokémon World Championships; and conferences from USENIX Security and BSides Las Vegas to KDD, IJCAI-ECAI, and DjangoCon US.

Apple Folklore — Shut Up!
by Andy Hertzfeld / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Andy Hertzfeld recalls Microsoft’s first look at the Macintosh, demoed with the Lisa hidden in another room at the end of a 25-foot cable. When Bill Gates asked what hardware drew the smooth cursor, Andy nearly revealed that it had already been done on an Apple II, until Steve Jobs yelled “Shut up!”

SAB 4K Pilot — Part 10
by Forrest Lowe / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
The tenth installment of Forrest Lowe’s recovery and analysis of Steve A. Baker’s 4K PILOT interpreter examines the COMPUTE (C:) command processor, which evaluates an expression and assigns the result to a variable. Covered are its 16-bit add, subtract, multiply, and divide routines, sign handling, divide-by-zero and range-error checks, and the syntax it parses. Includes annotated original and revised assembly listings and symbol tables.

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: 2.08 Software Update
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff / John Morris
Release notes for Applesauce FDC software 2.07 (June 17, 2026) and 2.08 (July 13, 2026). New support covers Heathkit HDOS 640K and 720K disks, a “combined” side option for CP/M, and CoCo RS-DOS disks beyond 78 granules. Fixes include the fast imager, the disk-map display, and firmware update notifications, along with several contributions from David Schmidt. The earlier 2.06.x notes are included as well.

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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