May 2015 Why is it that so many software projects fail? Here in the frozen north, we routinely see one government and enterprise IT project after another delivered late, and not working, to the opprobrium of all the putative users. Government catastrophes run into the tens of millions. Notable failures in the United States include the IRS ($8B), FAA ($2.5B), FBI ($500M), McDonalds ($170M) and Denver airport ($560M) projects, to select a very few. And yet, though there is no…
Brutal Deluxe software has added a number of cassettes to their Apple II cassette collection. The library, maintained by Antoine Vignau, has now grown to 633 cassettes over the life of the library. New additions to the collection include the following programs: Creative computing software: Voodoo castle adventure Innovative computer programs (by Ron Graff): The patient professor Instant software: Oil tycoon Mad hatter software: Diet planning package MUSE: Maze game, Tank war, U-draw Program design: Preschool IQ builder (Same and…
The Ninjaforce programming group, the people who brought you Wolfenstein 3D for Apple IIgs, have released their latest action game: KABOOM! The game supports 4-players simultaneously– the first Apple IIgs game to do so! “Not only does KABOOM! play like a charm – its visuals and acoustics are of top quality to satisfy even the most demanding GS gamer!” Visit the official site for screenshots and downloads
Registration for Kansasfest, the only convention dedicated to the Apple II computer has officially opened for Registration. The 2015 event will include a keynote given by famed programmer Becky “Burger” Heineman. According to the press release from the Kansas Fest comittee, KANSAS CITY, MO — April 10, 2015 — KansasFest, the 27th annual convention dedicated to the Apple II computer, is now open for registration. Users, programmers, hobbyists, and retrocomputing enthusiasts are invited to Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri,…
For a long time I have been looking for the Apple //c Flat Panel LCD, one of the nicest items on the line. This monitor was short lived as its readability was poor and the item expensive. It was retired early so not many were produced, which is what makes them rare and sought today by collectors. I was lucky enough to be able to secure one, but quickly disappointed when first using it. I am a hands-on person that…
Mike Maginnis has announced the posting of Don Worth’s dis-assembly of Apple II Dos 3.2/ The document was scanned many years ago by Apple Historian David Craig and is a hand signed copy of Don’s personal copy of the dis-assembly. You can download the document for free from the Apple II Scans website at: http://www.apple2scans.net/2015/03/19/david-t-craigs-copy-of-don-worths-dos-3-2-flow-of-control-annotated-disassemblies-and-notes/
Apple has announced that the Apple Watch, will be available in nine countries on the release date, 24 April 2015. Those countries include Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US. Apple has also announced that walkin pickup of the watches will not be available, that you must make a reservation online through the reservation system or pre-order online beginning April 10th. For more information about the forthcoming release, check out the Apple Website at:…
David Finnigan of MacGui.com has announced the availability of his latest software project, the Marina TCP/IP stack for the Apple II. Marina is a stack which was written completely in 6502 assembly language and is written to work with the Uthernet, According to the press release, Because I wanted to learn more about ethernet and TCP/IP networking, and because I was dissatisfied with existing TCP/IP implementations for the Apple, I decided to write my own implementation. It is called…
The Spy has it on good authority that iTim is about to iCook up a major purchase–one that will rock merely the high-tech sector, but the entire business world. What follows is a partial transcript of a larger interview, with the Spy’s sometime erstwhile assistant, coder extraordinaire, workhorse novel character, and chief head banger Nellie Hacker, speaking with a source she declines to name. The Spy has omitted some of her comments as unnecessarily…provocative, and some of the subject’s answers…
Mike Maginnis, host of the Open Apple Podcast announced the release of the 45th edition of the podcast. According to his posting, This month, we sit down with Mark Kriegsman, author of Star Blaster, and a modern Apple II hacker. He has ported the awesome FastLED driver library to the Apple II, so you can drive many hundreds of 32-bit RGB LEDs with your Apple II. Meanwhile, we browbeat people into attending KansasFest, we rationalize our shame at developing on…
According to a detailed article by Patrick Wardle, OS X with Gatekeeper is vulnerable to attack from applications loading dynamic link libraries (DLLs) that don’t specify a path name. “The operating system looks for the DLL file in a number of well-defined directories. An attacker could thus ‘hijack’ the DLL by placing a rogue DLL file into one of those directories, so that the operating system will find the rogue DLL first….Unfortunately, by abusing a dylib hijack, an attacker can…
Version 2.0.1 of ADTPro has been released. This version has a fix that is important for users with native RS-232 serial ports (though they’re getting more and more rare all the time). There’s also some help for our friends that are trying to tune their audio settings, and a few other bug fixes. Initial text bootstrapping is faster due to some screen trickery and denser packing of data. http://adtpro.sourceforge.net 2.0.1 – March 21, 2015 New functionality: * [Audio] Client sends…
Technology continues to March forward each year providing transformations in new levels of power, performance, conveniences in computing. 2015 surely is no different. Apple will soon make available a familiar but yet radically different design for the computing paradigm. Apple’s new dictate for computing will become either a love or hate situation. As you might guess I am referring to Apple’s soon-to-be released Macbook next month. So what are the issues? And, why a love or hate sit…
The original manuscript for the book, Beneath Apple Dos is now available for Apple II historians. Apple2Scans.net curator and owner of 6502Lane Mike Maginnis has posted the text to his website with the help of the original author, Don Worth. For more information about the text, check out the 6502Lane website at: http://www.6502lane.net/2015/03/12/don-worths-beneath-apple-dos-original-text-files/
Apples long announced Apple Watch looks to be coming on March 9th. Apple has an announcement event planned for that day at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco at 10am PDT. Apple also will be live streaming the event over the Internet as they have done with all of their events since Tim Cook took the reins of the company. You can view the live stream using Safari or Apple TV on the day of…
Apple has long been listed on the NASDAQ stock index and will be moving to the Dow Jones Industrial index. The move for Apple, also ousts long time Dow Jones stalwart, AT&T. Source: Reuters
Apple has announced an initiative to make their latest data centers in Denmark and Ireland completely 100% energy self-reliant. The two plants will come to a total cost of 1.7 Billion Euros and will go into operation by 2017. According to the press release ” CORK, Ireland—February 23, 2015—Apple® today announced a €1.7 billion plan to build and operate two data centres in Europe, each powered by 100 percent renewable energy. The facilities, located in County Galway, Ireland, and Denmark’s…
Vintage Computer Festival East 10.0 has been announce. The festival will run the 17th to the 19th of April and will be held in Wall, New Jersey. According to their website: Vintage Computer Festival East is a hands-on, family-friendly celebration of computer history. It offers a book sale, classes, consignment sale, exhibit hall, food, lectures, museum tours, prizes, vendors, workshops, and more. The event is produced by Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists (MARCH) and is hosted at the InfoAge Science Center….
Mac users wanting to save a PDF of their TurboTax return or print to file, are forced to upload their data to Intuit via a silent connection. The Mac TurboTax license says, “You may save your return as a PDF file and understand it may be processed on Intuit servers, not as part of the Software.” In a February 19 Wall Street Journal article, Intuit blames Apple: According to Julie Miller, an Intuit spokeswoman, TurboTax made the…
Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced that the National Parks system will soon be another Apple Pay customer. If you have ever entered a national park that is popular like Yellowstone or Mt. Rainier National parks, the lines entering the parks can sometimes be overwhelming. This will soon be alleviated by the Apple Pay enabled iPhone 6, with travelers being able to pay their park entrance fees with Apple Pay. One can only hope that this will alleviate the lines…
