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 […]
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Open Apple #55 now available
This month on Open Apple we sit down with Henry Courbis, co-proprietor of Ultimate Micro, serial entrepreneur, and Open Source guy. Henry is boldly going where no hobbyist has gone before, by making Apple II hardware his real day job. If anyone can do it, Ultimate Micro can! We talk massive modem phone bills, phreaking, […]
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Open Apple #54 (December 2015) : Year End Roundtable!
This month on Open Apple, we round out the year with our annual tradition of sitting around a virtual table with some friends of the show, discussing whatever comes to mind. Mike and Quinn are joined by Randy Brandt of Beagle Bros fame, Charles Mangin of RetroConnector, and some guy named Carrington Vanston. We talk […]
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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 […]
Posted inApple III, Interviews, Podcasts
Drop /// Inches #13: Dr. Wendell Sander
This month on Drop /// Inches, Paul’s Apple /// has trouble connecting with the world outside, so he speculates on possibilities for WiFi connectivity, and Mike’s Apple /// has trouble connecting with any worlds at all. So, we turn our attention to literature, including the full Apple /// patent, a survey of Apple II users, […]
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Open Apple #51 (September 2015) : Mike Westerfield, Opus ][, The Byte Works, Merlin 32
This month on Open Apple we sit down with Mike Westerfield, of The Byte Works’ fame. We talk about his adventures writing assemblers & compilers for 8/16 bit computers, and we see what he’s up to nowadays. We talk about small-system compilers, Logo, the perils of open source, and where to go for Byte Works’ […]
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Open Apple #47.5 (June 2015) : John Brooks via Matt Ownby
Welcome to a special extra episode of Open Apple! Fellow Apple II enthusiast Matt Ownby recently sat down for a chat with John Brooks, author of Rastan on the IIgs. It’s a fascinating conversation with tons of technical detail that you won’t want to miss. They talk copy protection, cycle counting, fast GS sprite rendering, […]
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Open Apple #47 (May 2015) : Jason Scott, Kaboom!, Infocom Secrets
This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Jason Scott, documentary filmmaker, historian, public speaker, and archivist. We talk about the importance of a nuanced appreciation of history, the flavors of sadness in comment threads, whom not to trust with special data and the nature of humanity, and failing at life. Don’t miss Em […]
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Open Apple #46 (April 2015): Paul Lutus, ReactiveMicro, and KansasFest Keynote
This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Paul Lutus, author of seminal early Apple II software such as AppleWriter and GraFORTH. We talk about the impacts of software development on society, the value of the individual in the process, and the trials of coding software in the woods. We talk extreme offsite backups, […]
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Open Apple #45 (March 2015): Mark Kriegsman, FastLED, Transwarp GS Clone, and Newsapalooza
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 […]