Archive for December, 2018

Retailing the Apple II

December 31st, 2018 2:29 PM
by
Filed under History;
Comments Off on Retailing the Apple II

There’s a lot to say about the history of the Apple II — and, thanks to writers like Steve Weyhrich, much of it has already been said. Some of it even originates in my own backyard, such as the creation of genre-defining software titles VisiCalc in Zork, which happened right in Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to MIT and Harvard.

But what about the local names that don’t make the history books? Especially retailers? They’re the ones who directly made computers available to the masses, equipping homes and offices with these new inventions. What was it like to be one of those early salespeople who had to convince customers of the utility of a machine that was entirely without precedent?

That’s a bigger question than can be answered in a humble weekly blog post — but it’s one that’s brought to mind after stumbling across this photo, taken exactly forty years ago last month:

B&W photo of businessman in store holding Apple II peripheral

I originally found this photo published with this caption:

Joel Skolnick computer store manager in Cambridge, Mass., displays a memory board of one of the many functions an Apple II computer can do which is shown on screen. November 15, 1978 (AP Photo / David Tenenbaum).

That’s not a very descriptive title: “computer store manager”. But it turns out Mr. Skolnick is still alive and well in the area, and a quick visit to his LinkedIn profile reveals that he was the vice president of finance for a business called… Computer Store. Huh.

The history of Apple II retail is a potential Juiced.GS article in the making, and one for which Mr. Skolnick would certainly be a primary source. In the meantime, enjoy this photo of Computer Store of four decades ago.

And Then You Die of Dysentery

December 24th, 2018 10:00 AM
by
Filed under Musings;
Comments Off on And Then You Die of Dysentery

I’m a weekly patron of my local library, often taking advantage of its interlibrary loans to borrow books that I might not otherwise get my hands on. That’s how I came to find myself recently reading …And Then You Die of Dysentery: Lessons in Adulting from the Oregon Trail, a book by Lauren Reeves published this October by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (ISBN 9781328624390).

Similar to the Juiced.GS article I co-authored with Sheppy back in 2005, "Everything I ever really needed to know I learned from the Apple II", this book is a collection of bullet points and pithy sentences connecting 8-bit technology to modern life. But what was a single page in Juiced.GS has been stretched out to 100 pages here. Each individual piece of sage insight has its own dedicated page on the right, complemented on the left with an original pixel art drawing by Jude Buffum, for 50 witticisms in total.

Some of the images are plays on social media memes, such as "Distracted Boyfriend":

Jealous girlfriend meme

Or modern technology, like fitness trackers:

Fitbit tracker

Others are more of a stretch. This illustration of Angry Birds is meant to suggest that "It’s important to play games along the trail to keep yourself entertainted." But I don’t remember that happening when I played Oregon Trail. Other than hunting (which was essential for survival and not just a distraction), what mini-games abounded in Oregon Trail?

Angry Birds

The art is lovely and humorous, but most of the lessons are a stretch, being unrelated to Oregon Trail and thus failing to connect with the supposed target audience. There is also a political joke that could be funny, but it lacks context or intent — and as the only joke of that sort in the book, it seems out of place.

Having written stories similar to And Then You Die of Dysentery myself, I wasn’t disappointed in the overall format of the book. But I think it would’ve been better as a series of short essays. Reeves’ humor shines best in her introduction, where she’s afforded the space to string sentences into full paragraphs. I don’t doubt she has more substance to share about MECC’s classic survival game — just not when limited to a single sentence per page.

For better or worse, the entire book can be read in 15 minutes. For a $15 book, that’s an expensive investment, but a perfect fit for a library loan. I suggest giving …And Then You Die of Dysentery a flip and getting a few chuckles before reshelving.

(Hat tip to Chris Torrence)

Puma shoes for the Apple II

December 17th, 2018 8:37 AM
by
Filed under Hacks & mods;
Comments Off on Puma shoes for the Apple II

Activity trackers are all the rage, from Fitbit wristbands to Oura Rings to Apple’s Health app. They all vary in what they record, from sleep to biorhythms to flights of stairs, but almost all measure one basic metric: steps — putting one foot in front of the other.

Why not get closer to the source of that data by moving the sensor off your hands and onto your feet? That’s what Wired predicted six years ago:

The next generation of athletic shoes will feature radio frequency identification tags, motion sensors and accelerometers that will allow you to customize the look, fit and responsiveness of your kicks. The shoes of tomorrow also will transmit data to the cloud, allowing you to fine-tune your workout and brag about your accomplishments on Facebook or Twitter.

This is not a new idea: Puma took the first step in this direction more than three decades ago when it released the RS-Computer, a running shoe stuffed with tech that estimated your mileage and calories. Data could be downloaded off the shoe onto an Apple II or Commodore 64. You might think RS stands for Recommended Standard, as in the RS232 port, but RS was short for Running System.

Now those shoes have been revived with no ports at all, RS or otherwise. Last week, Puma released 86 pairs of a reimagined RS-Computer shoe, with Bluetooth connectivity and USB charging. It’s not backward-compatible, unfortunately, and can’t connect to the Apple II. But Puma hasn’t entirely forgotten its roots: the accompanying iOS and Android app, listed as "PUMA RS Computer Shoe" still uses an 8-bit interface and even includes a free retro-themed game. The only downside to the app: Puma has chosen to model this UI after the C64.

I downloaded the iOS app but, with only 86 pairs of shoes in the world, there were none near enough to me to advance the app past the initial "Searching…" screen. I’m amazed that Puma would bother developing an app for such a niche audience… unless the shoes are to be mass-produced at a later date.

Still, these shoes and this app are an interesting piece of history revisited, and one that may spur further interest in and knowledge of Apple’s role in their ancient origin.

(Hat tips to Jon Fingas, Andrew Liszewski, and Ivan Jovin)

AppleWorks & TimeOut Grammar

December 10th, 2018 11:46 AM
by
Filed under Software showcase;
Comments Off on AppleWorks & TimeOut Grammar

I was working on a particularly complex Juiced.GS article recently, so I did something I hadn’t done in awhile: I loaded it into AppleWorks Classic and ran it through TimeOut Grammar. It’s a tool that has served me well for decades.

For much of my academic career starting in fourth grade and continuing at least through undergraduate, AppleWorks was my primary word processor. It wasn’t just habit or nostalgia: its plain-text nature let me focus on the words and their meaning, and its spellcheck function’s interface was more efficient than any I’ve seen to this day.

But just as important was TimeOut Grammar (copyright 1992 by Dan Verkade; published by Beagle Bros Inc. and Quality Computers). This add-on module was, like most grammar checkers even today, simply a dictionary of search/replace patterns: phrases that are often used incorrectly or which can be more succinctly replaced with other phrases. TimeOut Grammar rarely understood context: gender-specific pronouns could be decried as "sexist", even when I was writing about religions or eras that have very gender-specific roles. But more often than not, it helpfully taught me to be concise and accurate, avoiding language that was wordy ("in order to"), vague ("nice"), cliché ("the fact is"), and redundant ("very").

I learned to write so that TimeOut Grammar’s first pass would find as few errors as possible. When I mentioned this habit to a fellow teacher, he laughed, "That’s scary!" Perhaps a computer teaching someone to write didn’t sit well with him — especially when the computer, as mentioned, lacked the nuance and frame of reference that a human writer or editor does.

But not only did TimeOut Grammar never force a rewrite; it also occasionally reminded me just how smart it wasn’t. My favorite idiosyncrasy is one I previously related on Syndicomm Online, as captured in the March 2005 issue of The Lamp!:

Appleworks SPEAKS SPANISH?
“”””””””””””””””””””””””””
One of my favorite AppleWorks quirks: try grammar checking “not likely to”, and accept all suggested corrections. The result will be “unliprobablyo”.

I didn’t know AppleWorks knew Spanish! :-)

-Ken

(KGAGNE, Cat 9, Top 20, Msg 18)

TimeOut Grammar must’ve stored a copy of the original document in its memory — a copy that wasn’t aware of the module’s own substitutions. So when "not likely" got replaced by "unlikely", it didn’t stop Grammar from continuing to see the original "likely" and wanting to replace it with "probably".

Writing is quirky and creative — something you don’t necessarily want your computer programs to be. But when used in moderation and with discretion, TimeOut Grammar was a wonderful tool that helped me along my way.

Steves manga on Kickstarter

December 3rd, 2018 9:45 AM
by
Filed under Mainstream coverage;
Comments Off on Steves manga on Kickstarter

Movie, documentary, graphic novel, opera — the story of Steve Jobs has been adapted to multiple media. Rarely does his counterpart, Steve Wozniak, share that top billing, despite having played as essential a role (if not more so) in the founding and success of Apple. But in 2014, one publication not only corrected that oversight; they also brought Apple’s story to an entirely new format.

Steves is a six-volume manga, introducing us to the founders of Apple in a quintessentially Japanese style. The author, Keiichi Matsunaga, has a long history with the Apple brand: "I was pulled into this world when I saw the beautiful computer, the Apple II, in Akihabara when I was a student," he writes. His version of the Apple story is based on true events but is highly fictionalized and dramatized, as is typical of anime and manga.

A page from volume 1

Remember, manga is read right-to-left.

The only problem for us Western readers: the book was published in Japanese. Fortunately, there’s now a Kickstarter to translate Steves into English.

All eight chapters of the first volume, which spans the invention of the Apple II through the introduction of Mike Markkula, have already been translated and are available online for free through December 18. I read the first chapter and enjoyed the dramatic retelling of various historical anecdotes, chuckling aloud at Woz’s brilliance and Jobs’ arrogance.

Getting the remaining volumes in English is no cheap affair: the Kickstarter offers no physical editions, and the entry point for getting them digitally starts at $60. The most affordable reward is $10 for the first digital volume, which, as mentioned, is already free. In the creators’ reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), they were asked, "Do you have any plan of hard copy option for this Kickstarter project?" Their answer: "Most unfortunately, we do not at this time. If you know any publishers who might be interested in printing it please give us a shout!"

At the time of this blog post, the Kickstarter campaign has raised about 28% of its goal and has less than half its fundraising period left. The website Kicktraq says the project is trending toward only 47% of its goal by the December 17 deadline. I hope this project succeeds, but if they don’t, I encourage them to research alternative publication and distribution methods and return to Kickstarter with more attractive rewards.

Woz and Jobs walk into the sunset

(Hat tip to Anime News Network)