If you looked solely at Apple Computer’s records and price lists, you might think the Apple II died in 1993, when the Apple //e was discontinued. But the Apple II community didn’t perish, didn’t dissolve instantaneously, that year. Indeed, it seemed to rebound, with a new spurt of enthusiasm and development—mostly from smaller developers and freeware or shareware developers. Back in those days, GEnie was the center of the Apple II world, with dozens of new programs uploaded each week to the A2 forum there.
As time passed, however, the community began to shrink. Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly. Magazines and newsletters shut down, one by one, passing their gradually-declining reader base from one to the next like runners in an Olympic relay. From Nibble to inCider/A+ to II Alive to GS+, the long winding down continued. Major publishers canceled their Apple II projects, and Apple II developers found new outlets for their creativity. User groups’ Apple II activities slowed, then halted. But the community remained. Smaller, perhaps, but still strong.
It wasn’t really until 1994 or so that the community realized that the decline was accelerating, and it was in that timeframe that new newsletters began to appear: Shareware Solutions II first, then Juiced.GS. This brought on a new wave of development from the smaller developers—mostly the freeware and shareware kind, but the quality of the freeware and shareware software continued to improve. It was something of a new Renaissance.
But beneath the veneer of calm and seemingly improving fortunes lay the simple truth: the community was still shrinking. Each year’s KansasFest gathering garnered fewer and fewer attendees. Shareware Solutions II’s publication schedule—theoretically a bimonthly—began to vary wildly, sometimes taking six months or longer between issues. One by one, the remaining shareware and freeware developers began to disappear; often because these developers were students that graduated and got real jobs, and eventually families, and no longer had the time to write software for the Apple II.
The new Renaissance peaked in 1998: that year’s KansasFest brought a large number of new applications and other exciting developments. Wolfenstein 3D was released. Enthusiasm and hope was at a high. After that, though, things started to slow down.
Fast-forward to today. We’re about one month shy of KansasFest 2000 (popularly known as Y][KFest). There are only a scant handful of active Apple II developers, and only one of them—Ewen Wannop—has released anything new in the last few months. The author of this article, Eric Shepherd, halted active Apple II development in October of 1999 in frustration.
And that frustration is where the state of the II is today. If you compared lists of people that register shareware or buy commercial Apple II software today, you would find that each developer or publisher’s list is essentially the same, and has essentially the same number of people on it. Selling 40 copies of a product is now considered a success. Selling 60 copies is a smash hit.
Apple II developers know there are more Apple II users out there than that. They can see II users chatting on Delphi, exchanging information on comp.sys.apple2, trading systems on eBay, and even showing up to user group meetings. But only a few are actually actively supportive of their programming efforts.
This is harmful to the community. The Apple II world is shrinking. It may be approaching the point at which it can no longer generate the gravity needed to keep itself from flying apart. We, as Apple II users and enthusiasts, have to do more to hold our community together. We have to support developers—not just with kind words, but, when asked, with money. Paying $10 or $20 for a piece of software you use isn’t a huge sacrifice to make, and it will help give our programmers a reason to keep writing new software for the II.
Consider this as we enter KansasFest season—the time of year during which the vast majority of new software releases occur. If you want the Apple II to live, please support your friendly Apple II developer in any way you can.