The History Lesson Hands up everyone who remembers the Super Bowl ad for the original Macintosh computer, the one that aired in January 1984–that utopian, libertarian, iconoclastic production that scared the Apple board silly, then ushered in new eras for both computing and advertising. Now, keep your hands up if you actually used one of those computers that very month. What if you had your hands on a Fat Mac on January 24, 1984? “Wait a minute,” the history buffs…
About the author: Richard J. (Rick) Sutcliffe, is Professor of Mathematics and Computing Science at Trinity Western University in British Columbia. He represents Canada on international computing standards committees, and has written two textbooks and more than fifty papers, articles and reviews. He has been a columnist, software author, and active in electronic publishing. He has also been an invited speaker at numerous churches, educational and computing conferences, and technical symposia at local, national, and international levels. He presently resides…
Press Release 10 April 2002 Jef Raskin Interview in June 2002 Issue of the New Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine Seattle—Apple PugetSound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) released it’s second issue of Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazine since its return in March 2002. The latest issue of the magazine includes an exclusive interview with the father of the Macintosh, Jef Raskin. Jef speaks candidly in this interview about his days at Apple Computer, Inc. and his relationship with Steve Jobs during the years he was developing…
The First Edition of Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine. (Reproduction) Apple Puget Sound Program Library Exchange C/O Val J. Golding 6708 39th Ave. S.W. Seattle, Wa. 98136 (206) 937-6588 (Home) (206) 623-7966 (Work) February 7, 1978 Dear Apple Owner: The purpose of this letter is to form an Apple computer users group, as indicated by the tentative name above, and to further the exchange of information and programs of interest to Apple Users. A preliminary meeting has been set for 7pm Thursday, February…
Over the last several months, I have entertained several requests for information about Apple to PC transfers and vice-versa. Though several packages are available to perform this task, there is only one that we think is as seamless as it gets. Apple Disk Transfer (ADT) by Paul Guertin is one of the simplest packages to use. Although many Apple II web sites still have software in Shrinkit (.SHK) format, the .DSK format is catching on. There are currently 3 packages…
The latest of the Star Wars Episode II (Attack of the Clones) trailers was recently added to the official Star Wars website at www.starwars.com. The latest trailer shows much-improved cohesiveness between the scenes and a few a different twists on the plot being shown to the public. Although the scenes are fluid and nice, the free version of Quicktime only allows a medium sized view of the clips. In order to truly experience the power of the Episode II clips,…
In 1981, I worked with a group of people who had begun a journey of amazing proportions. This particular group had managed to provide much of the information about the Apple computer available at the time. This information came in many forms. Software. Documentation. Even Hardware. It was only available through Apple PugetSound Program Library Exchange or A.P.P.L.E. for short. The brainchild of Val J. Golding, the group started in December 1977 as an idea due to the fact that…
A.P.P.L.E. Glimpses is a product introduction article. Each month, we will be introducing items which we think are noteworthy here. Although items are listed here, it does not mean an endorsement. It only means that we figured the item was interesting enough to be noted to the Apple community. This month we have a nice variety of items. We hope that you will find them as interesting as we did. If you do decide to purchase a product we mention…
Twenty-five years and counting, and yes, with a great deal more gray hair, the editor still has a few more bytes left. Many eons ago we thought we had written the last for Call –A.P.P.L.E. but one never knows. What goes around, comes around eh? Early on, we were fascinated with computers, starting in 1977 with a TI-59 programmable calculator. Writing for the 59 came closer to pure machine code programming than one might imagine, what with the need to…
Extend the life of your PowerPC machine with Linux Loveland, Colorado — 26 March 2002 — Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., the leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions announces shipment of Yellow Dog Linux 2.2, the most mature and complete PowerPC Linux distribution available. Yellow Dog Linux 2.2 offers an array of improvements over v2.1 with the most advanced, stable release of the 2.4 kernel, improved support for the Apple ADC monitors, and accelerated video. The screen brightness and volume…
Back in the late seventies and through the eighties, the quintessential user group was the Apple Puget Sound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) later known as TechAlliance. Based near Seattle (hence the name), A.P.P.L.E. provided its members with Apple ][ software collections at low cost, held informational seminars, and published the magazine Call-A.P.P.L.E. Steve Wozniak was an enthusiastic supporter, and the club prospered for a number of years. In 1990, many of its functions were taken in house by Apple, and…
21 March 2002 Tokyo Japan Steve Jobs opened Mac World Expo in Tokyo, Japan today with a keynote that seemed to draw something back to Apple that had been missing for a while.. Although he had given a speech just over one month ago in San Francisco, Jobs came to Tokyo with goodies in hand. His keynote brought cheers and applause from the crowd with his introduction of the 10gb iPod and the Cinema Display HD or High Definition as…
Press Release Date: 20 March 2002 News: A.P.P.L.E. to publish Call –A.P.P.L.E. magazine again. The premier Apple computing magazine available once again. Seattle, Wa. – 20 March 2002 — Apple PugetSound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.), one of the worlds largest user groups will be releasing the first issue of Volume 14 of it’s magazine Call-A.P.P.L.E.. This will be the first issue of the magazine after a twelve-year hiatus. The last issue released by A.P.P.L.E. was Volume 13, Number…
Press Release Date: 1 March 2002 News: A.P.P.L.E. to re-establish users group in Seattle. A.P.P.L.E., The world’s largest users group returns to the Apple community Seattle, Wa. – 1 March 2002 — Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.), one of the worlds largest user groups from the 1970’s and 1980’s has been re-established. Former A.P.P.L.E. employees, directors, and authors decided to revive the users group with the focus of the group being the entire line of Apple computers…
Apple’s recent product announcements have a one-shoe ring. True, Macworld saw a redesigned iMac (with an already heavy back order book), the new iPhoto software, and an iBook with a 14 inch screen. The iPod is also doing well. and today’s announcement of a desktop Mac speed bump will satisfy others whose heeds are more to the heavy-duty side. I may buy one of the latter myself. But it’s not enough beef, not by a longshot. On the desktop, the…
This month marks the first anniversary of the all-electronic Northern Spy. To commemorate, I’ve recycled a title last used as “Prognostics 1985–The Hardware Industry (Computek March 1985)”. As a long-time watcher over the fruit industry, I’ve every reason to ask what buds the Apple tree is putting out these days. After all, their desktops have been stuck under 1GHz far longer than is comfortable in view of P*nt**m speeds starting to push the 2GHz mark. As the platform wars wage…
Back in the late seventies, I often received software in copy-protected format. The idea behind all these schemes was to prevent a second useable copy of the original disk being made. It was a bad idea. Those five inch floppies didn’t last long before they wore out, so savvy users made copies, filed the original in a safe place, and only put a copy in their drive after that. Any disk whose data could be read into the computer could…
I needed (wanted) external FireWire drives on both my TIBook docks. This way I can have multiple locality backups of my important files and storage for local files as well. The household being Mac-centric, yet another such unit was required at the same time. We decided to get three IBM 61.6G 60-series ATA 100 IDE drives at local (Vancouver) parts supplier Atic ($260 CDN plus taxes, but prices change daily) and to obtain firewire cases to mount the drives. For…
The feedback sessions at WWDC provide some of the most interesting and informative times. The VP event this year was a highlight. Many of the questions centered around education, and Tim Cook, Senior VP, Worldwide Operations took much of the heat. Why? Understanding higher education goes past price and compatibility issues. There was once a weight of Apple presence at the university level, but no longer (especially in Canada), and this is the nub of market share loss. You see,…
When is a fireside chat not? When the fire is played on a giant video screen and the intimate setting includes thousands of software developers occupying every chair in a space large enough to be an airplane hanger. The jCEO did announce an end to CRT monitors, price reductions on the current LCD models, a new 17″ version, and lots of rah rah for OS X, much of it, I think, justified. Perhaps the only surprise was that OS X…
