Brutal Deluxe Apple ][ Cassette Collection Reaches 600

The collection of Apple ][ cassettes offered by Brutal Deluxe for download has surpassed the 600 tape milestone.  The collection, owned and curated by Antoine Vignau has been steadily adding more tapes each month as they have been discovered. The latest updates to the Apple ][ Cassette collection includes items from Powersoft, Inc., Program Design, and Softtape.   The tapes, cassette inlays and catalogs are downloadable from the site. For more information, check the Brutal Deluxe Casssette Collection website at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/index.html

eBook Edition of New Apple II User’s Guide Available

Finally, The eBook Edition is Available The first Apple II book in print since over a decade, The New Apple II User’s Guide has sold 400 copies since it first went on sale a year ago, 18th June 2012. Since day one, readers have been asking for an ebook edition for their computers, Amazon Kindles, and Apple iDevices. I’m happy to say that it’s available now! After evaluating all the options for delivering an ebook edition, I have decided to…

Early Apple ][ Sells for over $23,000 on Ebay

An early Apple ][ computer posted on EBay, sold for for an unheard of $23,099 US today.  The computer with the markings of being serial number 047 of the A2S1 series is a first run case, which does not have the traditional ventilation slots found in later run machines.  It also had a power supply hand marked as serial number 049. While most Apple ][ computers sold on the Internet normally go for up to a few hundred dollars, the…

WWDC Keynote to be Streamed Live on Apple TV

Apple has announced that their Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, scheduled for 10am PDT today will be streamed live on Apple TV as well as the Apple WWDC 2013 App.  For several years now, many developers and those in the Apple community have complained about a lack of live streaming of the Apple events.  With the record sellout time of the tickets for the 2013 rendition of the WWDC event, Apple was forced to cover those who were unable to get…

Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.8.4

Apple has released a minor update to their Mac OS X operating system.  Mac OS X 10.8.4 includes a number of bug fixes and security improvements including: Compatibility improvements when connecting to certain enterprise Wi-Fi networks Microsoft Exchange compatibility improvements in Calendar A fix for an issue that prevented FaceTime calls to non-U.S. phone numbers A fix for an issue that may prevent scheduled sleep after using Boot Camp Improved VoiceOver compatibility with text in PDF documents Includes Safari 6.0.5…

Apple Releases iOS App for WWDC 2013

Apple Inc. has released an iOS App for the iPhone and iPad which will give all registered Apple developers access to the event.  The 2013 edition of the WorldWide Developers Conference in San Francisco sold out in a record 71 seconds this year leaving many developers in the dark so to speak.  Apparently, Apple has heard the cries of anguish from those developers who figured they would be able to get a ticket and were not so lucky. The WWDC…

Latest in the Apple II World

What’s been going on in the Apple II world these past few days? Let’s take a look:   1.) Steven Weyhrich is asking about the Applesoft Firmware card in comp.sys.apple2 for his upcoming Apple II history book. 2.) The Daily Apple blog has been keeping up with daily updates. Currently we are working on Pascal and BASIC programming, and trying to use the Apple IIc as a command-line terminal. 3.) Wade Clarke has started a new web site called Wade-Memoir where he…

The Northern Spy — Decisions, Decisions

When all is said and done with the usual caveat that most is said and little done, people make decisions with their emotions and guts, not their brains. This has been noted here before in connection with the stock market and the purchase of cheap imitation PCs (rather than the real thing–Macs). Last month’s Provincial election here in British Columbia illustrates the same principle in the practice of politics. (Note: in Canada, municipal, Provincial, and Federal elections are independent of…

New Bitstream For SHR Graphics on the Carte Blanche Released

A note from “Charlie” in the CSA2 Usenet group has announced the arrival of Super Hi-Res Graphics capability for the Carte Blanche card in Apple //e emulation mode.  According to the posting, ” I have made a Carte Blanche bitstream that allows an Apple //e to have SHR graphics.  Most of the JAT stuff has been removed so it is mostly a VGA video card for the //e.  The SHR works pretty much as it does on an Apple IIgs,…

Brutal Deluxe Adds More Cassettes to the Apple II Collection

Brutal Deluxe, maintainers of the Apple II Cassette collection have announced a couple of new additions to the library.  They include: The Software Factory’s Apple Beneath Manor by Don Worth, with a signed manual from the author Ritam Corporation’s Monty plays monopoly, that is a new publisher. There are currnetly 592 cassettes listed in the collection.  More are being added as they come in.  If you currently own Apple II cassettes which are not included in the library, you are…

Apple-1 sells for over 670,000 USD

With the Apple-1 computer being in big demand since the death of Steve Jobs, the German auction house Brecker has pulled in a record haul for a working version of the famed computer.  Hand built in the garage of Steve Wozniak, the Apple-1 was only produced in a short production of less than 200 units.  Of these 200, only 48 are known to exist today and of those, working models are even a rarer item with less than ten units…

First Full-Fledged Weather App with Crowdsourced Data Released

Known for providing detailed minute-by-minute forecasts, as well as traditional daily to 7-day forecasts, the SkyMotion 4.0 app now also ensures maximum accuracy by relying on one of the largest weather crowdsourcing platforms in the world. SkyMotion is now the only full-fledged weather app that gathers and integrates validated ground-level observations, allowing users to actually influence forecasts. The free application, now available worldwide for all iOS devices, is also the only mobile weather app to offer both nowcasts (precipitation forecasts…

Open Apple #27: Daniel Kruszyna, demoparties, iSteve, and clones

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with famed demo programmer Daniel Kruszyna, aka krüe. We chat about @party, the upcoming fourth annual demoparty to be held in recently beleaguered Boston, and how even non-programmers will find plenty to like. The first of three movies based on the life of Steve Jobs is now available for free online streaming — what’s the popular verdict on iSteve? There’s still more CFFAs coming from Rich Dreher, and they’ll work on even…

Apple Releases iOS 6.1.4

Apple has updated iOS to version 6.1.4.  The latest version of the software is intended to address issues related to the audio profile for speakerphone.  It is specifically targeted to the iPhone 5 as no other platforms currently have this issue. iOS can be updated through the General tab on your Settings for your iPhone.  For more information about this update, check: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1652

The Northern Spy — Trouble Tickets

A sudden spate of email from last October last week should have been a clue that not all was well with the Spy’s own company virtual server, where he has most of his mail accounts and the billing system for Arjay Web Services (WebNameHost and WebNameSource). Unfortunately, he failed to investigate until the following day, after customers complained about receiving bills they had already paid, even having their accounts suspended (all they on his big dedicated production server). A few…

SHELL*SHOCK Tank Battle Game Released for the Apple ][

Virtual Apple ][ has published a new Apple ][ game.  SHELL*SHOCK is a high paced action tank battle game for the Apple ][ computer.   Originally written in 1985 by Peter Blum, Alan Burkle, and Jonathan Dunaisky, the game has been largely unseen until this month when it was resurrected by the original authors and sent to Virtual Apple ][. SHELL*SHOCK is unique in the Apple ][ gaming realm as it allows users to battle each other in two player mode…

New Apple II Blog

There is now another Apple II blog for fans of this venerable machine to follow. The blog author promises to deliver a new article every day, and since this blog has opened three days ago, and sure enough, there are three entries, this promise is maintained. The name of the blog, fittingly enough, is the Daily Apple, and its URL is http://dailyapple.a2hq.com/ The entries so far are about the author’s Apple IIc, acquired in December of 1984, an Apple IIe…

WWDC 2013 Sells Out in 2 Minutes

WWDC, Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, has sold out their entire allotment of tickets in a matter of two minutes.   In previous years, tickets were still available until a few weeks before the conference, however, as the popularity of the Mac has increased, the conference has been a more desirable destination.   This record sellout is not likely to change next year either unless Apple increases the number of available tickets. For more information about WWDC or the availability of the…

A trio of reviews

The first is more of an update than a review. Ubuntu 13.4 is out. For those into running Linux this has been a fairly successful update. Although I haven’t tried it there does not appear to be many complaints. Mint 15 (derived from this version of Ubuntu) should be out toward the end of May. The second is a program called Simutrans found at http://freecode.com. Alternatively it is available in the repositories if there is access to a Debian based…

ADTPro 1.2.7 Released

David Schmidt has released an update to the ADTPro program.   According to the posting on CSA2, the update includes: New functionality: * [VDrive] Added the ability to bootstrap into ProDOS with VSDrive active * [Server] Added a command-line invoker for AppleCommander Bug fixes: * [Server] Start the numerical part of batch name at 1, not 0; reset the counter when a batch name changes * [Server] 5-1/4″ disk images with unrecognized filesystems are always written with DOS-ordered physical interleaving You…