Open Apple #65 (November 2016) : Alex Lee, What Is The Apple IIgs?

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Alex Lee, purveyor of the canonical IIgs reference site What Is The Apple IIgs?  We talk about what it was like being one of the brave few with this machine, and that feeling of living in a secret world of incredible graphics and sound that nobody else seemed to know about.

Alex walks us through the history of IIgs emulators, and all the ways that the IIgs Finder was actually better than the Mac. He also talks about the legal challenges of running an archive site like this, which luckily are not too serious for this obscure machine. We finish up with talk of the future of the site, and the difficulty of finding some really rare software packages- help contribute content!

Alex is also working on an Apple IIgs coffee table book. Help encourage him to finish it, because we all want to buy it very very badly. Just saying.

Keep listening, because you won’t want to miss Alex casually dropping the phrase “Late nineties and early naughties” in his charming Australian accent. Tune in as well to pine along with Quinn for the never-to-be Ultima VI.

Our apologies for this episode being a bit late. Combinations of illness, holiday commitments, and technical difficulties all conspired against us this month.

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

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Open Apple #52 (October 2015) : GEOS! Robert Bowdidge, and more GEOS!

This month on Open Apple we sit down with Robert Bowdidge, one of three interns at Berkeley Softworks who ported GEOS to the best line of 8-bit computers. We talk about what a great place Berkeley Softworks was, along with the power of good tools and proper software engineering. Robert has great memories of the culture there, the GUI technology they had built, and the brilliant people who built it. Apparently GEOS existed for some other 8-bit computer as well, but we imagine it was slow and child-like. Users probably bought it at K-Mart or something.

After the interview, Mike and Quinn delve into their personal memories of GEOS, along with a couple of new projects they both did with the environment. Mike works on GEOS file conversion, and Quinn sorts out all the drivers so you don’t have to. We’re even having a contest this month! Download Quinn’s Ultimate GEOS disk image and find the secret phrase. First person to do so and email us at feedback (at) open-apple (dot) net wins nothing at all!

We also talk some news- lots of really great hardware is coming down the pipe. You won’t want to miss Javier Rivera’s hands-on with Plamen’s IIc VGA adapter, and the Uthernet II is now available. Don’t miss out! We talk some Woz, we talk some French Touch, and we revisit KansasFest yet again.

Celebrate GEOS with Quinn and Mike this Hallowe’en!

GEOS Disk Image guide:

  • D1S1: Boot / Desktop disk
  • D1S2: Demos
  • D2S1: Drivers
  • D2S2: More Drivers
  • D3S1: GeoWrite
  • D3S2: GeoPaint / Desk Accessories
  • D4S1: GeoSpell / LaserWriter tools
  • D4S2: GeoDictionary

A quick sidebar on show length- yes, this episode is almost 3 hours again, but we really did try to make it shorter. We’ll continue to try and compromise a bit on this, so thanks for your patience!

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

Continue reading “Open Apple #52 (October 2015) : GEOS! Robert Bowdidge, and more GEOS!”