Open Apple #46 (April 2015): Paul Lutus, ReactiveMicro, and KansasFest Keynote

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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Open Apple #40 (October 2014) : Chris Torrence, Printers, Celebrating Lode Runner

This month on Open Apple, we talk to Chris Torrence, the new Roger Wagner Volunteer Archivist on behalf of Softalk magazine. Chris is a lifelong Apple II fan, and has recently undertaken the valuable effort of producing a book containing all of Roger Wagner’s Assembly Lines columns. This will include all of the articles included in Roger’s original book (Assembly Lines: The Book) as well as columns never before available in book form. He’s not just republishing the articles, he’s annotating, footnoting, and expanding on them as needed. It’s a terrific service for the community. We’ll dig into that, as well as Chris’ start in computing, and how he got to where he is today. We manage to get through an entire show without taking a cheap shot at Commodore, so you won’t want to miss this. Wait- no we don’t.

We also mark the passing of Lode Runner creator Douglas E. Smith, we talk about printers for some reason, and we talk about more eBay auctions on this show that doesn’t talk about eBay auctions. You won’t want to miss this month’s Weird Gaming, where we run the gamut from incredible educational games that didn’t get their due, to horrifying shareware games that can’t be forgotten quickly enough. We talk AppleSoft source code in Tech, and lots more. So drop your machine two inches, and let’s go!

More information on everything mentioned in the show can be found after the jump.

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Open Apple #39 (September 2014) : Gary B. Little, New Segments, Apple IIc Cards

This month on Open Apple, we talk to Gary Little, prolific author of many technical reference books about various models in the Apple ][ line. In addition to writing great books that go deep on the hardware, Gary also wrote lots of great software, including such gems as AmDOS, and the popular Point To Point modem communication software.

We also catch up on all the news (there’s lots!) and take some cheap shots at other podcasters along the way. Join us as we talk about open source hardware, GS ports of great arcade games, the joy of redialing, and DClocks. So many DClocks!

More information on everything mentioned in the show can be found after the jump.

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Open Apple #34 (Jan 2014): 2013 end-of-year roundtable

Open Apple roundtable 2013's panelists

At the dawn of 2014, Open Apple engages in its annual tradition of reflecting on all that has transpired in the Apple II community in the past year. Ken Gagne moderates a panel of Mike Maginnis, Andy Molloy, Ivan Drucker, and David Schmenk to look at topics in news, emulation, hardware, software, conventions, and publications. Popular themes include the Raspberry Pi, the S-Prize, social media, JSMESS, the Jobs film, and KansasFest 2013.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

News (0:00 – 17:49)

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Show #2 (Mar 2011): IvanX, VCF, VNC & GPLE

Ivan DruckerIn the second monthly episode of Open Apple, Mike and Ken are joined by Ivan Drucker: two-time KansasFest alumnus, Juiced.GS staff writer, and Mac consultant based out of New York City. News this month includes a look forward to Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) East 7.0 by two of its alumni, an Apple-1 expansion card for the Apple II, and controlling Apple II emulators via an iOS VNC; reviews of our favorite Beagle Bros programming utilities; the exorbitant prices Apple II hardware and software are fetching on eBay; and new iterations of our favorite adventure, role-playing, and text-adventure games.

Congratulations to Wade Clarke, who correctly guessed Karateka for last month’s “Name the Game” contest! His prize is a free Juiced.GS Concentrate, courtesy Juiced.GS publisher Gamebits. The prize for this month’s contest is a free two-day pass to VCF East 7.0, courtesy Evan Koblentz of MARCH.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 11:56)

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