Don Worth | Open Apple

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This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Paul Lutus, author of seminal early Apple II software such as AppleWriter and GraFORTH. We talk about the impacts of software development on society, the value of the individual in the process, and the trials of coding software in the woods.

We talk extreme offsite backups, KansasFest keynotes, telnet BBSing, and the hurricane of awesome that is ReactiveMicro. We reminisce about the original Home Computer Wars (these kids today arguing about their smartphones are so darned cute), and also Boo Atari.

We trek from Bulgaria to Korea to Canada and back again, to bring you the latest in sound cards, solid state storage, and portable Apple IIc action. You won’t want to miss Quinn plugging Phil Plait for some reason. With our story on Atari 8-bits in Poland, this marks the most Atari content ever on Open Apple. It also qualifies us as the 698th currently operating Atari podcast. Boo Atari. See what you get when you poke the bear, people? ][ Infinitum.

More information on everything discussed in this episode after the jump.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:40:53 — 55.3MB) | Embed

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Egan Ford, aka the datajerk, the Apple-1 and II programmer extraordinaire responsible for the Apple II Game Server Online! Egan expertly demonstrates which CPU is faster, the 6502 or 8088, running circles around everyone listening. Laurie Spiegel is an Apple II user you may not have heard of, but extraterrestrials have, thanks to her contributions to Voyager’s Golden Record; we have some of her music for you to listen to. Courtesy Facebook and scanners, we save Don Worth’s magazines from the trash and Softalk from extinction, but we can’t save derelict hardware from abandoned buildings. Will Steve Wozniak be as good a commencement speaker as the late Steve Jobs? Having heard Woz at KansasFest, we weigh in.

(Please also note a correction to this episode.)

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 5:37)

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