piracy | Open Apple

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This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Glenda Adams, better known on the Apple II as The Atom. She was a cracker of some note back in the 1980s, and she shares great stories with us of her exploits in boot tracing, cracking, and distributing software in the glory days of the Apple II BBS scene.

We talk about the journey from programming to cracking, and back to programming again. We talk about the politics of the Apple II scene, and the unique experience of cracking software remotely. Think fixing your grandparents’ printer over the phone is hard? Trying cracking a game!

Can you deduce the release date of Fontrix by time-lining Apple II crack screens? We leave that as an exercise to the listener. Meanwhile, Glenda shares stories of porting Space Rogue, parties at Lord British’s house, and the old-school feel of early iOS development.

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

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:36:34 — 49.1MB) | Embed

This month in Open Apple, Mike and Ken talk with Kelvin Sherlock, prolific Apple II programmer of GShisen, Silver Platter, ProFUSE, and more. Ken builds the suspense before revealing the identity of KansasFest 2012’s keynote speaker before we look at the latest Kickstarter fundraising projects that appeal to Apple II users. We ask ourselves, “Why are Apple II users different?” when sharing knowledge, products, and magazines. On eBay, we’re looking at soundtracks, CP/M cards, compression software, and defunct user group newsletters, before engaging in a smackdown of BASIC programming languages. Finally, we enjoy classic Apple II games on iOS and challenge Kelvin to explain why we can’t port Portal to the 6502.

Congratulations to Sal Bugliarisi, who named the game as Choplifter! He won a $20 credit to the Juiced.GS store, courtesy publisher Gamebits. Our next winner gets an autographed copy of Bob Bishop‘s Bomber on cassette.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

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