This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Ewen Wannop, British programmer of 16-bit telecommunications programs such as Spectrum, SAM, SNAP, and SAFE. The hosts share feedback galore from the last episode and contemplate how to record a live show. After catching up on some headlines from last month, we plow forward, celebrating the return of an interactive fiction publication and grumbling that even beginner IF can be as obscure as the medium is infamous for. The September 2012…
As long as mobile devices such as my 3rd generation iPod touch still require me to squint at everything, and require me to jab at a glass screen to “type,” the desktop computer is still worlds easier to use for so many tasks. Sarah Purewal at PCWorld thinks so, too. It’s an intriguing proposition, but don’t count on mobile devices killing off your desktop PC any time soon. While mobile gear is certainly convenient when you’re trying to conduct business on…
When last year’s hard drive shortage threatened Backblaze’s all-you-can-store cloud backup service, the company had to get creative to keep up its 50TB-a-day hard drive habit. The solution: external hard drives from retail stores and an army of volunteers making sure they kept coming. “We buy lots and lots of hard drives . . . . [They] are the single biggest cost in the entire company.” Those are the words of Backblaze Founder and CEO Gleb Budman, whose company offers unlimited cloud…
Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini, founders of Brutal Deluxe Software, are proud to introduce their newest software to the Apple II community. “I’m fEDD up” is Brutal Deluxe’s second answer to nowadays preservation of 5.25″ diskettes on the Apple II. Its main features are: • Essential Data Duplicator compatible If Utilico Microware’s EDD or compatible card is installed in your system, it will use the card’s powerful features to read track data. • Nibble and timing preservation It saves raw…
Here’s your chance to ask the Woz some questions for an interview on Slashdot. To kick-off our [Slashdot’s] 15th anniversary month, Woz has agreed to take some time to answer a few of your questions; as with other Slashdot interviews, you’re invited to ask as many questions as you’d like, but please ask them in separate posts. We’ll be running a number of other special interviews this month, so keep your eyes open. Post your question to Slashdot
More on the fifteen inch retina MacBook Pro The Spy has had this machine a month now, and experience confirms his first impressions. The machine is computationally fast, though not spectacularly so. Having an SSD for a drive makes more of a difference than any internal changes. The display is crisp, better than anything he’s had in a portable before, and the glossy finish not nearly as annoying as such once were, but the improvements are not as revolutionary as…
The new location-aware app from Foursquare Labs is now available from the iTunes Store. Its exciting new feature is personalized searches for your friends. According to a Mashable article by Stan Schroeder, “Users can now see where their friends check in, explore places they haven’t yet visited and monitor popular destinations. They can also toggle the map so it only displays previously visited places, as well as “Saved” locations — that is, place you’ve added to your to-see list.” The App…
David Finnigan, curator of MacGui and author of The New Apple II Users Guide has announced a web and email service for Apple II related materials. The announcement on CSA2 states: Soon, the barrier to entry for starting an Apple II web site will be reduced to the time required to register an account at A2HQ.com, a site coming soon for all Apple II users! Anyone will be able to have a WordPress blog, photo gallery, and enough web space…
After a long hiatus, Dave Touvell has revamped his Apple2Info.net website. The Apple2Info.net website, long the home of items such as the Essential Data Duplicator (EDD) has now become a Wiki type of website allowing for user contributions to the website. According to the announcement on CSA2: After mostly ignoring it for the last several years, I’ve revamped it and it’s now a wiki. That should make it easier for me to update and hopefully others in the Apple II…
A note from David Schmidt on CSA2 announced the arrival of the latest rendition of the ADTPro Disk Imaging software. Ok, here’s a few more goodies. The time and date is synchronized with the host, and there’s two versions of the serial driver: one that hides between the BI and buffers, and another that stomps on the Disk II driver. The latter is compatible with ProDOS utilities. There’s a little bit in there just for me – I don’t expect…
Just a few months ago, in June, Apple announced the latest major version of its operating system for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It finally became available this week, though not all of the new and improved features are being welcomed by all of the new users. One point causing the most uproar in the online discussions is the completely redesigned Maps application. Since the beginning, the Maps app used Google’s satellite and map data. Now, Apple is using…
Apple’s Store is now back online and taking orders for the new iPhone 5. Apple’s Partners including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint are also taking pre-orders on their respective websites. The iPhone 5 starts at $199.00 USD for the 16gb model and is scheduled to be available in 21 countries on the 21st of September. You can order the iPhone 5 directly from the Apple Store online at: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone
The Apple Store has been taken down in preparation for the start of the iPhone 5 pre-orders. While the phone was announced on the 12, actual shipping of the product will not begin until the 21st of the month. Also, in coordination with the outage, AT&T has a counter on their website as well. Apple is expecting that they will sell over 5 million units of the new iPhone 5 over the first three days they are available. http://store.apple.com/
Speculation is rampant about a possible new MacHeist which seems to be forthcoming. The MacHeist website has been redone with a Spider web with a spider and 7 flies caught in the web, making everyone on the Facebook page of MacHeist comment about a possible new heist. MacHeist gained notariety for putting together bulk packages of mainstream software and selling the packages for less than $100 for all of the software. While there have not been any large packages in…
A couple of weeks ago I noticed my HP printer was no longer printing two sided pages. Strictly speaking this was with Linux but it could happen with the Mac as well since they use the same printer driver software… I figured it was an application problem with Thunderbird and Firefox since all the other applications (and computers on my LAN) worked fine. It never occurred to me it was a driver problem. Thanks to some prodding by Adam T….
Tim Cook, in an invitation only event in Sanfrancisco, introduced the iPhone 5 this morning. The event which was held at the Beuna Yerba Center had a bevy of new announcements in regard to the iPhone / iPod series including the iPod Touch, iPod Nano and the iPhone 5. Apple has posted the event in its entirety on its website here: http://www.apple.com/apple-events/september-2012/
Book Title: The New Apple II User’s GuideAuthor: David FinniganPages: 775 In 1993, Apple Inc. discontinued the Apple IIgs computer and all production of software and manuals for the Apple II series of computers came to a screeching halt. Within a year, 95% of all Apple II software publishers were for the most part either shut down or they had moved on to publishing materials for the IBM PC or the Macintosh. A sturdy handful of folks however, continued keeping…
Brutal Deluxe Software has announced that their January 1996 version of the DeluxeWare CD-ROM is now available as a free download. The DeluxeWare CD-ROM contains over 650mb of Apple IIgs related software and was the first French CD-ROM dedicated to the Apple IIgs. COntents of the DeluxeWare CD-ROm include: Apple programs Documentations Creative visual Hypermedia Games Music System Utilities The CD-Rom is available as a 311.5mb zipped file and includes all of the software on the original disks. Also the…
Apple has finally put an end to months of speculation concerning the iPhone 5. With many different rumors and fake images swirling, Apple has announced that they will hold an event on the 12th of September. The event will take place at 10am PST at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. This has been the location of all of the recent Apple events outside of the Education event held in New York. While apple generally does…
This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with David Schmidt, the programmer responsible for ADTPro. Beyond his own program, David has also contributed to the development of Davex, GSport, AppleCommander, CiderPress, OpenEmulator, DiscFerret, CFFA3000 — and much, much more. Collectively, the show’s hosts marvel at the deluge of Apple II games that are being ported to iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system … though we question the direction Jordan Mechner is taking the classic Karateka. Apple-1 computers continue to fetch…
