Category: Columns
by Rick Sutcliffe Technology News and Views Since 1983 Something Old, Something New December 2011 The Spy recently acquired a few surplus G5s, and in the process of setting them up to be useful file servers and replacements for even older G4s at his home and church, (re)-discovered some interesting things about memory, disk drives, and both hardware and software compatibilities. First is that all disk drives are not manufactured equal, quite apart from the Thailand flooding that means many…
The November 2011 episode of Open Apple, the only co-hosted Apple II podcast, is now available! This month, Mike and I talk with Melissa Barron, the Apple II community’s famed tapestry artist. We three relate their experiences exploring the past and future of computer media at conventions and museums in Chicago and Rochester, exploring the methods used to create and preserve history. Further tributes are made to Steve Jobs, while Mike Westerfield reclassifies old BASIC tools and releases new ones….
by Rick SutcliffeNovember 2011 Presciencewas not foreseen by the Spy when he titled last month’s column, but said monicker now seems faintly evocative of a sad prophecy. The iCEO has not merely stepped down, he’s left us altogether. Steve Jobs’ legacy sees us all materially wealthier, for he had a unique talent for putting his finger on the pulse of the market two or three years down the road, then inventing the product to create the market his mind’s eye…
Posted by Mike Maginnis on CSA2: The latest episode of Open Apple, the monthly Apple II podcast has been been released. This time Ken and Mike chat with IIGS programmer Kelvin Sherlock about GShisen, his favorite programming languages, eBay finds, Apple II news and everything else we could think of. Find us on iTunes (and give us a review or a rating if you have a minutes) or stop by http://open-apple.net to download the MP3. Feedback is always welcome and…
by Rick Sutcliffe Technology News and Views Since 1983 R.I.P. … October 2011 Hewlett Packard appears to have taken comments made here last month seriously enough to take defensive measures. But let’s be realistic. First, changing CEOs at this juncture (nearly 50% share value lost) is like tossing a single sandbag into the raging torrent pouring through a broken dyke. Second, hiring Goldman Sachs Group to plan a takeover prevention strategy is a whistling in the wind….
By Rick Sutcliffe The Good, the Quick, and the BigMay 2011 Apple bids fair to take over the electronic worldas iSteve’s little Cupertino company doubles revenues year over year, pushes profits to heights not previously imagined, and bids to continue on this path indefinitely. As previously predicted in this space, many of the purchasers of iProducts are now buying Macs as well, ensuring a growing dominance in that space as more and more people come to realize that it’s better…
By Bill Martens When Steve Wozniak first created his Apple-1 computer, it was all hand wire wrapped and on breadboard. No fancy automated electronic assembly was even thought of. It was purely a labor and work of true love of the art form. These hand built machines were mostly produced in early 1976 with the original production machines being produced in April 1976 by Steve Wozniak (http://www.woz.org) and Steve Jobs. The fact that only 175 of the original Apple-1 production…
Mike Maginnis, curator of the Apple II Scans website, announced the availability of the second edition of Open Apple, the podcast with he and Ken Gagne. Join them as they delve into their blast from the past and their favorite software from yesteryear. According to the releases on CSA2, “This time, Mike and Ken are joined by Ivan Drucker: two-time KansasFest alumnus, Juiced.GS staff writer, and Mac consultant based out of New York City. News this month includes a look…
by Rick Sutcliffe Some Things Old, Some Things New March 2011 For the last two months the Spy has digressed from the reader’s usual fare to cover two endemic ethical issues–to wit, the misconduct of the spammer, and that of the rogue board member. For March, there are many interesting technology news items to consider. To complete the title, the Spy may borrow a rumour or two, and will certainly consider things Blue (-Ray, that is.) New products are now…
The A.P.P.L.E. iPhone app of the month is the program Mailroom. (http://www.usemailroom.com/) For those of you who have used the Mailplane app, this program will look quite familiar. This program allows the user of the app to control a number of GMail accounts at the same time. While the developers are different, there has been a cooperation between the authors of the two programs in order to make the iPhone based Mailroom just as good as the Mac based Mailplane…
By Mike Pfaiffer My topic for thought this time is something in Canada which has even made its way to some American media. Our ISPs have been given permission to implement Usage Based Billing (UBB). The way our ISPs currently bill their customers is based on speed. In Winnipeg the two major ISPs are Shaw (cable) and MTS (DSL). Through out Canada we have three more large ISPs. All charge based on speed. Certain ISPs like MTS have set things…
This issue I’d like to whine and complain about proprietary versus open standards. In the past I’ve generally come out against proprietary software and standards. I will do so again today. The motivation behind my current rant is the admittedly cheap MP3 player I bought last month. It is a 2 GB Sylvania SMPK2083 made in China by Curtis International. My primary purpose was to use it as a voice recorder for my notes. It does so remarkably well. The…
by Bill Martens Product: Icy Escort Version: 1.10 Size: 4.4mb Requires: iPhone OS 3.0 Languages: English Website: http://www.donutgames.com/ This past week, I began to look at games for my iPhone 3Gs and of course, there are plenty out there. However, the distance between the good, the bad, and the downright ugly is tremendous. One diamond in the rough was a game I ran across from Swedish Game Development AB, also known as Donut Games. Icy Escort is a puzzle style…
This month, I finally joined the rest of the world in the mad dash for the iPhone which everyone else partook in last year. This lateness to the party was no fault of my own other than the fact that I was stuck in a phone contract that was two years long. My contract began three weeks before the iPhone came out and actually ran through June of this year. While this type of contract is not unusual, it has…
by Rick Sutcliffe Just as there are 10 kinds of people in the world– those who understand binary notation, and those who do not–so there are two kinds of people in the world, those who build, and those who tear down. The Spy prefers to be one of the former, and on the occasions when he becomes a critic, tries to be constructive about it, even when this is not easy. (There are two kinds of critics, the constructive, and…
Man oh man what a time. You know how things come and go in cycles… This is one of those times. Lots of little things piled up… My cousin was appointed as ambassador for Le Festival du Voyageur (a major local mid-winter party in French similar to Mardi Gras). Congratulations Roger! I may have mentioned this one earlier. My new quad-core PC had a hard drive failure. It’s a good thing I backed up everything before it stopped functioning. I…
By A.P.P.L.E. Staff This month, we are back to full steam on our production and our setup. Our staff are finally back in place and we are attempting to make up for some lost time here. Getting back to our normal production schedule has been a bit problematic but thankfully we are heading in the right direction as we produce this issue. There have been several items of interest this month from A.P.P.L.E. including the back issues also have been…
2010 01 27 is now past and the iPad officially exists, instead of merely being the chief grist for the rumour mills, as for the last year. How did the Spy do on his predictions? Got the name wrong (was there a last minute iSteve change of mind because so many, including the Spy, guessed the original name correctly as iSlate?) He was right on the initial size (9.7 inch LED screen. It’s also very thin at 0.5 inch and…
Another year is here, Apple has once again shocked the world, Mac World Expo is under threat of no big company participation and we here at A.P.P.L.E. are working on more projects than we know what to do with. What that means for our members is that there will be new hardware available once again after a 19 year hiatus from the hardware realm. Our engineers have been involved in the A2GS-L01 laptop project for the past two months, and…
Another month with the new Spell Catcher has convinced the Spy that it shall remain a denizen of his permanent tool set. The reader will recall from last month that this is an OS X version of a product that was installed as an extension under OS 9. Now it lives, like just about everything, as an application. However, it can be set (application specifically) as the input method and so be interactive in any or all applications. This allows…
