This month on Open Apple, we sit down with legendary Apple II programmer, Bill Budge. In addition to being an icon of Apple II gaming and graphics, he is the number-one-requested guest by listeners of the show. Mike and Quinn are very excited he was able to make some time to talk to them, and hope you agree it was worth the effort. Bill is, of course, the author of such seminal classics as Raster Blaster, Pinball Construction Set, and MousePaint. He was an influential force in the golden years of Electronic Arts, and did many good works with early Apple as well.

After chatting with Bill, Mike and Quinn chew the fat about Soviet Apple II clones, slowing down the IIc Plus, and documenting rare II models. Meanwhile, Quinn constructs an impromptu sound studio in a conference room, and Mike waxes nostalgic about harpsichords. Also, this episode marks the most Apple III references snuck in to date. Mike even manages to goad the guest into bringing it up. Don’t miss Quinn struggling to remember the word “Dacta”, and Mike taking a cheap shot at Elevator Action.

A quick update to Quinn’s Floppy Emu Model B review- since this was recorded, Steve has updated the firmware so it now remembers the last disk image you used.

This month on Open Apple we sit down with Peter Lount, co-developer of Gemstone Warrior and Gemstone Healer for the Apple II. Canadian programmer Peter and his partner Trouba broke new ground in video games by combining fast action combat with procedurally generated caves and dungeon content. Gemstone Warrior doesn’t get credit for being the predecessor to Blizzard megahit Diablo, but it should. Peter talks about tuning his rendering engine, including rewriting huge chunks of it overnight to meet a deadline. What’s your reality resolution?

Tune in to hear Mike complain that Gemstone’s monsters are too smart for him, and hear Quinn choke on the most important Apple II announcement of the year. We talk a lot about solid state drives, marvel at underground ‘zines, and bask in the awesome glory of Brutal Deluxe’s tape collection. Audio is still the “best” way to move data after all these years. “A bold statement,” you say? “Nonsense,” you cry? Listen and decide.

Meanwhile, Ultimate Micro continues to kick butt by reverse engineering all that sweet Applied Engineering hardware, Quinn makes terrible “card” jokes, and we catch up on lots of feedback.

Breaking the fourth wall on segment bumpers- good idea, or great idea?

This month on Open Apple we sit down with David Schroeder, author of classic Apple II games such as Crisis Mountain, Dino Eggs, and Short Circuit. We talk about the randomness of our passionate brand-loyalty, the logistical realities of early Apple II development, and the magical era of “one-person, one-game”. We get into a lot of the technical details of Crisis Mountain and Dino Eggs, so you might pick up some tips for your own Apple II projects! David also has great memories of the economic and design realities of the time, where everyone was scrambling to figure out what a computer game was, and what players really wanted. Game developers are still fighting that battle, but at least we have a definition of “video game” now.

We’re sharing David’s games in the show notes below, with his permission! In exchange, he asks that you patronize, share and support Dino Eggs: Rebirth.

After that we jam through some quick news, bask in the fallout (see what I did there?) of the GEOS episode, and we get down and dirty with rodents. Do you have the GS with the bigger Em Bees? Trust us, you want the bigger Em Bees.

You might notice that we’re continuing to tighten up the show. Let us know how you feel about this trend in our show length! Do you like the shorter episodes? Miss the epic three hour monsters? Email us at feedback (at) open-apple (dot) net. We have social media too, but we can never remember which ones.

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!

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Tony Diaz- KansasFest committee member, and consummate Apple II collector. With KansasFest just days away, we go deep on Tony’s amazing collection of unique prototypes, documents, peripherals, and the stories that go with them. If there’s a person with deeper knowledge of the early history of Apple Hardware, we haven’t met them.

Thanks for your patience in June, everyone! Some technical and logistical difficulties kept us from posting this episode as soon as we would have liked. We hope the show is worth the wait. We dive into lots of new hardware toys, KansasFest-like events around the world, lots of software updates, and one of the best Apple II games ever made.

How many times does Quinn boo Atari this month? What can we learn about Mike’s dark, mysterious past? How many tedious Jobs movie news items can the world produce? Listen and find out!

KansasFest 2015 is just days away. Hope to see you all in Kansas City this week!

Open Apple #45 has been published. This month, we sit down with Mark Kriegsman, author of Star Blaster, and a modern Apple II hacker. He has ported the awesome FastLED driver library to the 6502, so you can drive many hundreds of 32-bit RGB LEDs with your Apple II.

Meanwhile, we browbeat people into attending KansasFest, we rationalize our shame at developing on emulators, we talk dead tree easter eggs, we make terrible awesome BASIC & Twitter puns, we talk about post-mortem collecting, and Mike generates hate mail. Just in case you’re not completely over movies about Steve Jobs, we talk about one of those as well. Yawn.
More importantly, help us convince Mark to build a lo-res display from FastLEDs and bring it to KansasFest.

Once again, in case you’ve been living under a rock and somehow missed it, the dates for KansasFest 2015 have been announced: July 14-19! Go to http://www.kansasfest.org to register, then pull up a comfy chair and enjoy this super-sized episode of Open Apple (yes folks, it’s another three-plus hour extravaganza… or marathon, depending on your perspective).

Apologies for some audio quality issues in this month. Quinn had equipment difficulties and Mike has been under the weather. Thanks for your patience. Stay tuned until the end of the show for a special treat (not just Mike’s usual cheeky outtake).

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Beagles Bros Randy Brandt, Mark Simonsen, Tom Weishaar, and Alan Bird. We share stories of Beagle’s development, poke lots of fun at each other, and check in on where everyone is now.

We spread the love for Oz KFest with Andrew Roughan, and amazingly resist the urge to make any upside-down jokes about Australia. Mike and Quinn are trying to be bigger than northern-hemispherism, and they like to think they’ve grown as people as a result.

We talk brain-imaging, we talk helicopter piloting, and we spread more IIgs love than usual. We search for amazing things, and sometimes we find them. Join us for another great month of Apple II brouhaha.

Listen here now, or subscribe in iTunes!

This month on Open Apple, we talk to Chris Torrence, the new Roger Wagner Volunteer Archivist on behalf of Softalk magazine. Chris is a lifelong Apple II fan, and has recently undertaken the valuable effort of producing a book containing all of Roger Wagner’s Assembly Lines columns. This will include all of the articles included in Roger’s original book (Assembly Lines: The Book) as well as columns never before available in book form. He’s not just republishing the articles, he’s annotating, footnoting, and expanding on them as needed. It’s a terrific service for the community. We’ll dig into that, as well as Chris’ start in computing, and how he got to where he is today. We manage to get through an entire show without taking a cheap shot at Commodore, so you won’t want to miss this. Wait- no we don’t.

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with David Finnigan, proprietor of the Mac GUI Web site and author of the upcoming book, The New Apple II User’s Guide. Our eyes are caught by another new book release, The Best of Creative Computing: Volume 3, as well as the upcoming biopic based on Steve Jobs, in which actors have been cast to play Apple’s two co-founders. Prince of Persia is still big news, with the source code for Jordan Mechner’s classic Apple II game having been salvaged, released, and modified, while classic games like Leisure Suit Larry, Dungeon Master, and even Repton are enjoying literal and spiritual remakes. On eBay, we crack open the case to examine broken Apple III boards and prototype Apple IIGS boards.

Find the show on the Open Apple Web site or in iTunes or the Zune marketplace.