An Apple II standing desk

March 26th, 2018 8:02 AM
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As part of starting a new job, my employer bought a standing/sitting desk for my home office. I moved my filing cabinets of Juiced.GS back issues to make room and set up the new furniture. To get a sense for its range, I then adjusted it to its maximum height.

Uplift's Bamboo Stand Up Desk, raised

A giant desk.

When I examined what I'd wrought, I didn't see a desk. What I instead pictured was this:

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The evolution of classroom tech

June 9th, 2014 8:53 AM
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The Apple II long had a role in education, with a library of edutainment software that included Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Scholastic Microzine. So it’s only fitting that it features prominently in the first decade of the Washington Post‘s reflection on the evolution of classroom technology:

From the article:

1977
The Apple II computer—in all its gray boxiness—was introduced. Aggressive marketing and volume discounts made it popular in schools. The landmark, garage-built computers, which retailed for $1,295, were the first Apples to use full color graphics—for a simple reason: Designer Steve Wozniak wanted to be able to play Breakout on the machine, and that original game ran in color.

1985–87
The mid-‘80s ushered in an era of educational computer games. Oregon Trail taught kids about the harsh realities of life as a 19th century pioneer, dysentery and all (and it’s still around today, though children of the ’80s and ’90s would hardly recognize it). Mavis Beacon taught typing—fast. Carmen Sandiego tried to pique kids’ interest in geography. And Number Munchers aimed to get children excited about multiplication and division.

From the video, you might think the Apple II was obsolete by the time the 1990s rolled around. But this early computer continues to educate today’s youth, whether as a programming tool, a museum piece, or a study in game design.

A mathematical problem

October 11th, 2010 11:11 AM
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One problem with using a computer as old as the Apple II is that most of its software was released more than two decades ago. Finding and preserving that data is a never-ending quest, but we are sometimes stymied at the very first step: remembering what the programs were! A chance encounter with a random program when we were half the age we are now is a difficult one to pin down, as the software’s function and interface often stick with us longer than its title screen, which is its most historically identifying feature.

Faced with this exact problem, gaming cartoonist Philip Armstrong recently explored this issue in the most descriptive manner he knows: comic strips. He drew three illustrated stories in which the main character, Oat the Retronaut, reminisces about “a series of forgotten edutainment titles that are the Apple II [equivalent] to Professor Layton[, Nintendo’s series of handheld puzzle games].” Here’s an excerpt:

Retronauts comic strip

Despite attending a grade school with a lab of Apple II computers, I grew up with little edutainment software. With the exceptions of Scholastic Microzine and Oregon Trail, I missed out on many classics like Number Munchers. I therefore have no recollection with which to help Mr. Armstrong find the games in question. The same goes for Asi Lang, who wrote to Juiced.GS with a similar request.

Can the Apple II community help either of these gentlemen reunite with their youth?