This month on Open Apple, the Apple II community’s only co-hosted podcast, Mike and Ken chat with Jimmy Maher, the historian behind the renowned blog The Digital Antiquarian. A published author, Jimmy provides us with his perspective on the pros and cons of going with a publishing house over the recent trend in retrocomputing toward self-publishing. We gripe about the Steve Jobs film sacrificing historical accuracy for mass appeal and recommend some alternative movies that get it right. We’re still loving iOS as a platform for classic gaming ports, from the adventure game Transylvania to the recently released Lode Runner Classic. Speaking of platforms, which is better: the Apple II or the Commodore 64? The answer may not be as obvious as you think! Finally, we offer a cautionary tale to vintage computer collectors whose inventory may be at the mercy of an avaricious landlord.

Find the show at the Open Apple Web site or in the iTunes and Zune podcast directories.

Jimmy Maher, whose excellent blog posts over at the Digital Antiquarian should be required reading for any aspiring computer historian, is trying to put together a Robot War competition.  He writes:

“I’ve recently had occasion to write a bit about Silas Warner, Muse Software, and Robot War (http://www.filfre.net/tag/muse). The latter is a bit outside of my usual fare, but just so interesting and historically significant that I couldn’t resist.  As the most recent article in that series attests, I would love to hold a Robot War tournament of the sort that Computer Gaming World sponsored back in the day, only (thanks to modern technology) better and more interactive. See the post in question for my complete vision of how such a tournament could work.”

Jimmy is looking for more entrants into the competition before he can move forward, so if you’re looking for something retro-computing to do, head on over to his site and sign up.  It sounds like it could be a lot of fun.