About

Welcome to Open Apple, a podcast dedicated to the Apple II. Join us each month as we share news and memories of Steve Wozniak’s most famous personal computer. Meet the hosts of Open Apple:

Mike Maginnis Mike MaginnisEm (Mike) has been an Apple II user since 1982. In 1998, he began the Computist Project to scan and post the entire run of Computist magazine.  This effort has since evolved into the Apple II Scans website, an extensive and ever-growing collection of Apple II and /// related documentation.  He has written for Juiced.GS and was the lead technical editor for A2Central.  Mike created and co-hosted No Quarter, a now-defunct weekly podcast dedicated to classic arcade gaming, and occasionally blogs about his Apple II passions at 6502Lane. Mike is a former United States Marine and now lives in Colorado where he works as a technical writer for DISH Network.
 Blondihacks. When she’s not obsessively shaving cycles out of 6502 code, Quinn is writing apps on mobile devices for her consulting company, One Girl One Laptop Productions. Prior to that, she had a long career in AAA video game development, including stops at Bungie, 3DO, and Pandemic Studios. If she’s not in front of the computer, you can find her behind the wheel of (or lying underneath) a janky race car with her 24 Hours of LeMons team.

You may email us via our online contact form.

A Brief History of Open Apple

Open Apple first aired in February 2011 with its original hosts and co-creators, Ken Gagne and Mike Maginnis, and broadcast monthly until March 2014, when Gagne left the show. After a brief hiatus Open Apple returned in July with Quinn Dunki, who appeared as a guest that month before joining us in August as our new co-host.

Want more? Read Ken’s telling of our origin story here.  And here’s what Mike remembers.

Credits & Acknowledgements

All songs in this podcast are used under license from OverClocked ReMix or under Creative Commons license from the Free Music Archive:

The (now-retired) “Name the Game” segment was stolen frominspired by a similar feature on Xbox Live’s Major Nelson podcast.

Voiceovers for shows #1 through #43 are provided by Emily Kahm, an alumna of Rockhurst University, home of KansasFest. Beginning with show #44, voiceovers are provided by Kelly.

The show’s album artwork is an original creation designed for Open Apple by Peter Neubauer. A modified version of the artwork is featured as the banner for this website.

Mike’s recording hardware consists of an AT2035 Cardioid Condenser Microphone and Blue Microphones Icicle USB pre-amp with shock mount, desktop microphone stand, and pop filter.  Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack is used to capture his audio stream.

Quinn kicks her rhymes for the ages on a Samson Go Mic, and records her audio using Rogue Amoeba’s Piezo utility ($15).

Discussions are held over Skype, recorded and edited with Audacity, Audio Hijack, Piezo, and Levelator, and published with WordPress, Blubrry, and Feedburner.

Over the years, the site’s content has been created and maintained using a variety of software, including Dark Room, TextWrangler, Windows Live Writer, MarsEdit, GraphicConverter, Transmit, and Safari.  These days, we mostly just use the WordPress dashboard.

This site’s favicon and RSS image use this Flickr photo with express permission from photographer Julio Martinez.

The site was created and largely maintained by Ken Gagne until his departure in April 2014.  Since then Mike and Quinn have assumed site administration duties.

Open Apple is an independent publication that is not affiliated with Resource Central, Gamebits, Juiced.GS, KansasFest, Syndicomm, 16Sector, A2Central, One Girl One Laptop Production or its subsidiary BlondiHacks, or any other organization. The views and opinions expressed on Open Apple are solely those of its hosts and guests.