Star Wars Episode II Trailer in Quicktime 5.0

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,…

Reflections: The Return of Call-A.P.P.L.E.

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

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…

The Editor Still Bytes Back

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…

Terra Soft Ships YDL 2.2

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…

The Northern Spy — A.P.P.L.E. is Back

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…

An A.P.P.L.E. Exclusive: MacWorld Expo Tokyo 2002

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…

A.P.P.L.E. to Restart Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine

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 — A.P.P.L.E. to Re-Establish Users Group in Seattle

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…

The Northern Spy — Left Shoe, Right Shoe

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…

The Northern Spy — Prognostics 2002

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…

The Northern Spy — Copy Protection — Fame Old Futility

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…

The Northern Spy — Rolling Your Own Firewire Drive

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 Northern Spy — From WWDC Part II

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,…

The Northern Spy — From WWDC Part I

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…

The Northern Spy — TiBook!

May 2001 We’ve got a PowerBook 540C that’s been all over the world on trips to standards meetings. It turned heads many years ago on a European junket, but despite 12M of memory, a 1.2G hard drive and a Power PC 117MHz processor upgrade, a machine of this vintage can’t do more than walk programs like PowerPoint any more. The thrashing back and forth to the virtual memory gets on one’s nerves, and the audience becomes inclined to snicker–until I…

The Northern Spy — Where’s the Fire(wire)

February-March 2001 I decided it was time to upgrade my trusty old 8600/200/(G3 card of course) machines with Firewire/USB PCI cards, in anticipation of the technology’s bright new future. Call it an adventure. After spending some time browsing the links right here on The Northern Spy, I settled on two Orange Micro cards, a SCSI+Firewire combo and a Firewire+USB combo, with a 30M pocket VST Firewire/USB drive as the first consumer on the 1394 food chain. The Orange SCSI card…

The Northern Spy — Say, Professor, Where’s the Market Going

December 2000 Glad you asked, Nellie. With Apple’s stock down, the whole North American economy slowing, market share in the doldrums, the educational rep fiasco, and inventory a tad on the high side, the naysayers have been snapping at brand-new CEO Steve Jobs’ heels like a pack of punk piranhas. Things will get worse now the company’s announced a projected loss. But fact is, the company’s worth more than its market valuation just now, so if I had a few…

II Something Issue # 27

II Something Magazine

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:Issue # 27:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:a weekly journal devoted to the Apple II family of computersSunday, April 28, 1996 – issue 27 – II.Smthg.960428:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=: :=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:Contents:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=: About… Editor’s Greeting – welcome to issue 27 Letters Not A Funny Story – PG13 – Some Of This Will Be Disturbing WebFind of the Week – Lane Roathe The Wire Service – Endless Mike The Wire Service – E Pluribus Unix Updata – Internet Email Subscriptions to II Something So High I Can’t Get Over It So…

II Something Issue # 26

II Something Magazine

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:Issue # 26:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:a weekly journal devoted to the Apple II family of computersSunday, April 21, 1996 – issue 26 – II.Smthg.960421:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=: :=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:Contents:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=: About… Editor’s Greeting – Our Sixth Month is Complete! Letter Hair We Are Again WebFind of the Week – User Group Connection Home Page Do It In Hardware – EZ Drive the sequel Updata – Syquest Prices and Plans Updata – Internet Email Subscriptions to II Something So High I Can’t Get Over It So Wide I Can’t…