Apple II Bits

Fellow Massachusetts retrocomputing enthusiast and all-around neat guy Dan McLaughlin recently started his own Apple II blog. He's actually had one for awhile, but its latest incarnation is powered by WordPress, the unofficial CMS of the Apple II community. I discovered the relaunch of Dan site's via the story of his introduction to the Apple IIGS:

[My father and I] pulled into the strip mall and entered The Computer Shop. In The Computer Shop, everything was gray: The carpet, the room dividers and shelving that held books and software, even the display tables. I take that back there was an accent color: beige. There might have been a touch of maroon in there as well. It smelled like new carpet even though it had been open for a few years. There was a large plate glass window from which sunlight was streaming in on this beautiful fall day.

After we had walked past the software displays, and aisles of computer books and magazines, near the back center of the store, I saw it. There for all to hear and to behold was the Apple IIGS.

Like Dan, I was introduced to the Apple II through my father. My family's business is commercial real estate, and once upon a time, we had an authorized Apple dealer as a tenant. It's for that reason more than any other that our first computer was an Apple IIe and not a Commodore 64 or one of the many other platforms of the personal computer revolution. My three older brothers and I all made use of the computer for school projects, personal correspondence, and especially games, but I cottoned to it like none other in the family: I taught myself programming (and in the process destroyed some software for which we had no backups), expanded the hardware, and became a part of the community on CompuServe. Whereas my three brothers went to college and got their first PCs, I got my first Mac, sticking with the only brand that I'd ever known. After college, I became part of a convention, a magazine, and a podcast, leading me to make friends, pursue education, develop skills, attain jobs, and relocate across the country.

Dan's post reminded me how a financial decision made decades ago for practical and immediate reasons can have a snowball effect that we continue to experience and observe well into the 21st century. It's no understatement my father's fateful decision has defined the personal and professional development of my childhood and my adulthood. Although I can never know what timelines might've developed from bring a different microcomputer into the Gagné household, it's an alternative I'm glad I never needed to explore.

How would your life be different with a computer other than the Apple II?

Last week, Apple announced iBooks textbooks and iBooks author, two iPad applications designed to redefine education.

Although I still favor physical literature for leisure reading, the elimination of physical textbooks in favor of e-books has been a long time coming, as outlined in this 2009 column by Mike Elgan who proposed that "education reform should begin by burning all the textbooks." And Apple may be just the company to get the ball rolling. Some pundits are seeing this move as a return to Apple's origin: the iPhone and iPad, which have been aimed at consumers and the enterprise, overlooked that "schools have been one of Apple's biggest market since the days of the Apple II", writes Ryan Faas for Computerworld.

Others are less optimistic, saying that Apple's methodology is fundamentally flawed by being based on false assumptions and failing to address long-standing issues. Glenn Fleishman, a senior contributor to Macworld, remembers hearing these same promises in the days of the Apple II and cites a nine-year-old study that questions the value of technology in education (in contrast to a recent pilot program by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt):

It is not yet clear how much computer-based programs can contribute to the improvement of instruction in American schools. Although many researchers have carried out controlled evaluations of technology effects during the last three decades, the evaluation literature still seems patchy.

Lindsey Turrentine, editor-in-chief of CNET Reviews, says that no matter how elegant the software, the problem of hardware remains the same as it has the past three decades: "There was an Apple II in my third-grade classroom. We used it to play Oregon Trail. Then it died. Therein lies the problem with iPads in high school: devices break."

iPads are expensive, and they do break. And it may be true that Apple is simply trading one set of problems (the expense, weight, and outdatedness of textbooks) for another. But much of Apple's early success was found in the education market; "Education has always been a big part of Apple's DNA," said Eddy Cue, senior VP of Internet software and services, in the above video. Millions of today's adults may not be able to tell you exactly what they learned by playing Oregon Trail, but they remember the experience and the introduction it gave them to the computers that demand familiarity from today's workforce. Don't today's students deserve the same opportunities with today's tools that my generation had with the Apple II?

Thank you to everyone who voted in the poll to help me choose a Massachusetts license plate that best invokes the Apple II! The path toward the most popular choice has now concluded.

In the first round, I proposed eight candidates, and from reader comments added 36 more. I put those 44 up for vote, allowing each person to choose their favorite five. Eighty votes were cast, narrowing the pool from 44 to nine that had received five votes or more each:

ATEBIT was actually too late a submission to make it into this final round, but I included it for what I saw as its broad appeal. I grew up playing games more on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) than on the Apple II, and I still consider myself something of a retrogamer, with frequent visits to the American Classic Arcade Museum. ATEBIT can apply as much to that interest as it does to the Apple II, making it more of a proud label and less of an inside joke.

I put those nine options up and asked you to choose just one. I didn't vote, but I would've been quite comfortable ruling out options like AAPL2 (where's the extra 'A' come from, other than Apple's stock ticker?), APLIIE (I'm more of a GS man myself), and ONEMHZ (better for Carrington's show than my own.

I didn't vote in this round, leaving it to you, the readers, to decide. Thirty-eight votes later, here are the results…

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The third stage of choosing an Massachusetts license plate what befits an Apple II user begins. In the first round, I asked for your ideas. Many were provided; not all were were eligible or available. In the second round, I presented all 44 remaining candidates. Each person was allowed up to five votes, with 80 total votes cast (and yes, I voted!).

This third, and potentially final, round narrows down the choices to those eight candidates that received five or more votes, as well as one "Other" that was a late submission. This time, you are allowed only one (1) vote! You have until the first moment (EST) of Monday, December 12, 2011, to choose:

I asked for your help, and you provided! This Apple II Bits blogger, Juiced.GS editor, Open Apple podcast co-host, and KansasFest organizer is interested in wearing his heart on his sleeve — or, more accurately, his car, a gray 2007 Toyota Prius. Massachusetts allows vanity plates under stringent guidelines that, when combined with those plates that are already in circulation, significantly limit the remaining options. Or so I thought: with your help, my original list of eight Apple II-themes plates has grown to 44!

You've submitted your suggestions to me; now I submit them to you. Choose your five favorite license plates from the below choices. The poll closes at 12:00 AM on December 1st, 2011, after which I'll present the results here. If there are ties, a semifinalist round of voting may be necessary. Note that I am not beholden to public opinion and may elect a different custom plate or none at all. But your guidance in coming to one of many possible decisions is much appreciated. Vote early and often using the below poll!

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It's rare, if not unprecedented, for me to write a blog post that doesn't offer information but instead requests it. Yet here I am, asking for advice from Apple II Bits readers.

This past summer, I pointed at Steve Wozniak's license plate and hoped it was actually his, since it read "APPLEII". Even if that was a theatrical conceit, there are other Apple II fans who wear their hearts on their sleeves — or, more accurately, their cars.

I'd like to join that elite and order myself a custom plate that clearly represents the Apple II and its community. Massachusetts offers vanity plates, but under strict conditions: "All vanity plates must begin with two letters. The plate can be no more than six characters, or a maximum of five characters for motorcycle plates. Vanity plates cannot have letters and numbers intermixed." That rules out several possibilities:

The obvious alternative is APPLE2 — but the online registry indicates that "'APPLE2' is not available." Neither are "WOZ", "APPLE", or "JUICED". So what else would work? Nothing I've found to be both legitimate and available is either obvious or appealing:

Maybe you will be creative in ways I am not and think if something original. So please, leave a comment: What Massachusetts license plate would you like to see an Apple II Bits blogger, Juiced.GS editor, Open Apple podcast co-host, and KansasFest organizer sport?