unboxing | Open Apple

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This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Andrew Schultz — gamer, FAQ author, and Interactive Fiction Competition participant. Text adventures are enjoying a resurgence in popularity and access, and Andrew guides us through the tools and resources available for aspiring game authors. Both Steve Weyhrich’s history book and the Steve Jobs movie are available for home delivery, but there’s only one we want to find under our Christmas tree. Jason Scott has integrated the JSMESS emulator into the Internet Archive, granting users unprecedented access to historical software right in their browsers. Finally, Ken, in his quest to be more Woz-like, adopts his hero’s fashion sense.

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Introduction (0:00 – 10:16)

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This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Kay Savetz, Internet publisher and author of the memoir Terrible Nerd. We cross enemy lines to review a book about the cultural, scientific, and philosophical implications of Commodore 64 programming, some of it applicable to the Apple II. Paul Terrell’s Polaroid snapshots of the first Apple-1 computers are cool, just like our reception to Jordan Mechner’s new Karateka game. On eBay, we discover the Androbot is not just another neat product from a Nolan Bushnell company, but another reason we prefer the Apple II to other platforms. And Ken’s accidental purchase of some Microzines produces the concept for a new and very expensive podcast!

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Introduction (0:00 – 17:33)

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