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 present an early holiday gift, in the form of an epic three hour episode. We sit down for a great conversation with Apple II legend Randy Brandt, perhaps best known for his work at Beagle Bros. We go deep on Beagle Bros, exploring the making of their quirky, innovative software and the wacky characters that produced it. Never one to rest on his laurels, Randy is now helping to produce a modern reboot of Beagle Bros’ only major game release, I/O Silver. The game will be released very soon as of when you’re reading this, and it runs on all major mobile platforms. Look for it in an Apple App Store or Google Play Store near you.

If that’s not enough, we have a huge pile of news to talk about this month, joined together by the most epic series of segues ever to grace the history of podcasting. We talk Transwarps, we talk Woz, we talk Neuromancer, we talk Wizardry, we talk to our listeners, and we talk smack. That’s just how we roll here on Open Apple. We also spend a lot of time pretending to know anything about Apple II mice.

In addition, we have the unfortunate duty to recognize the passing of some Apple II luminaries- Bob Bishop and Mike Pfaiffer. The Apple II community is great because of a lifetime of hard work by many talented people. Join us as we remember the contributions of two of those people.

Don’t worry, there’s much Apple II stuff to be thankful for in this month of American Thanksgiving. So put down the turkey leg and get caught up on ye olde stripey Apple. The biggest episode of Open Apple ever!

You probably know that Dr. Wendell Sander is the “father” of the Apple ///, and that Daniel Kottke was the lead tech for the Sara project.  But did you know that before Colette Askeland was doing board layout design for the original Macintosh prototypes, she was the PCB layout artist for the ///?

For some reason, her involvement with Apple’s first business computer has been largely ignored by history, but  Drop /// Inches was fortunate to be able to chat with her about the long hours and difficult work she did before moving on to greater recognition as an original member of the Mac team.  Give it a listen.

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 speak with Martin Haye, 8-bit programmer extraordinare. We love us some conventions, be they KansasFest, the Vintage Computer Festival, @party, ROFLCon, or WordCamp. We wonder why video games have abandoned humor and if Kickstarter can bring it back. Steve Wozniak is advising the Steve Jobs film — no, not the one in which Ashton Kutcher will play Steve Jobs, but that raises the question: who will play the hosts of Open Apple? On eBay, we’re suspicious of an Apple IIe that was supposedly once Jobs’, and we wish there were a more comprehensive online resource for Apple II clones.

Listen now at the Open Apple site, or subscribe in iTunes or the Zune Marketplace.

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.

The April 2012 episode of Open Apple, the Apple II community’s only co-hosted podcast, is now available.

This month, our hosts chat with world video game record holder and Apple II game critic Brian Picchi, whose YouTube channel showcases the best and worst of Apple II entertainment. It’s a good time to be a convention-goer: registration has opened for KansasFest 2012, the lineup for Vintage Computer Festival East 8.0 has been announced, 8 Bit Weapon played at the Smithsonian’s opening of the Art of Video Games, and Jordan Mechner is keynoting PAX East. Kickstarter continues to be popular for reviving classic franchises, Ewen Wannop updates SNAP and SAFE on a shoestring budget, and Jordan Mechner unearths his Prince of Persia source code. On eBay, we found a rarer-than-the-Apple-1 copy of Akalabeth on cassette, a rare Apple IIGS-specific wristwatch, and a potential CFFA3000 scalper. Finally, we look at some gadgets that are new to us, including old iPads, new iPads, and DSLR cameras.

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

This month on the Open Apple podcast, Mike and Ken chat with Andrew Roughan, Australian Apple II user and curator of the Marinetti Open Source Project. From Jordan Mechner at PAX East 2012 to John Romero at KansasFest 2012 to Nolan Bushnell at GameFest, we’re all about attending conventions and chasing luminaries. We squabble over how to pronounce “Karateka”, look forward to new Monkey Island and Wasteland games, and eagerly consume iBooks for Apple II users on our iPads. On eBay, we get a previously untold tale of an extravagant Australian lot, then take a small jump north to look at an Apple II J-plus, before marveling at how astounded major press outlets were over your typical Bell & Howell. 

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

David Greelish and Blake Patterson team up to bring you a new Apple-related podcast.  The first episode, which focuses on Apple Retail Stores, has been posted and you can listen here, or subscribe in iTunes.