Steve Wozniak and the Apple Historical Museum

November 19th, 2012 12:46 PM
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David Greelish is petitioning Apple to include a visitor center in their new campus. It seems that Apple is quick to forget their history, offering visitors to their offices little opportunity to reflect where in the evolution of Apple’s product lines the user was introduced to the brand.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1984, Steve Wozniak gave a tour of what was dubbed the Apple Historical Museum. As he works his way through the time tunnel, he presents to the viewers examples of original Apple-1 and Apple II hardware, regaling us with tales of design and manufacture.

What I love about this YouTube video, which was digitized from the Apple IIc rollout VHS tape, is how timeless Woz’s presentation is. His enthusiasm, memory, and didactic nature are just as apparent in this 2010 tour of the Computer History Museum:

I wonder when Woz himself will be worthy of a museum and visitor center?

(Hat tip to myoldmac.net)

Historically rebrewed

July 14th, 2011 12:59 PM
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Many computing publications have risen and fell with the computers they covered, their shining moments squelched and historical literature lost. But every now and then, one gets a second chance at live. This week, it’s Historically Brewed, published 1993–1997 by David Greelish, host of the Retro Computing Roundtable podcast.

David’s goal is ambitious: he wants to take the nine roughly annual issues that were published in HB‘s lifetime and reproduce them not in their original format, but as a paperback book. The final product, including David’s computer-related autobiography, will be 195 pages, with "a detailed listing of contents [coming] soon.&quot.

It’s an uncommon approach to revisiting a defunct hardcopy publication. The more popular alternative has been to scan or otherwise recreate the original issues digitally, as Mike Maginnis has done with Computist, Mike Harvey with his Nibble CD-ROMs, and, more recently, Dale Goodfellow and Simon Williams with 300 Baud. But I can empathize with David’s love for print, seeing as how it’s the same motivation that has kept Juiced.GS from going all-digital.

To accomplish his goal, David is using Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing alternative to fundraising that has been successfully used by other retrocomputing enthusiasts, such as Jason Scott and 8 Bit Weapon. David’s fundraising page features a video that showcases some of the issues, where you can see some familiar bylines, such as Steve Weyhrich.

The self-published book will have an ISBN, meaning it will be obtainable (if not necessarily stocked) by major retailers such as Barnes & Noble. However, some distribution issues remain to be resolved, so the best way to guarantee your copy is by buying it directly from the publisher, done by pledging $25 or more. For $100, you’ll even get a page dedicated to you in the book!

After just a few days, David has already reached more than half of his modest goal of $1,200. Pledges will continue to be accepted until August 15, meaning you can preorder the book even after the minimum fundraising goal is met.

Apple airwaves

November 8th, 2010 1:47 PM
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In May 2006, Apple II coverage gained a new channel: the podcast. This popular form of timeshifted radio finally gained its own broadcast dedicated to our favorite desktop computer when Carrington Vanston, a Canadian previously unknown to our community, debuted 1 MHz!, offering "8-bit Apple news and 2-bit Apple reviews."

Later in 2006, the show was joined by Ryan Suenaga‘s A2Unplugged, which took a different tact with its regular programming coverage and celebrity interviews.

A2Unplugged continues publication to this day, though sporadically, with its 36th and most recent episode having been published five months ago. 1 MHz, on the other hand, published only a dozen episodes in its first two years before going silent in February 2008.

iTunes podcast iconNot all was lost: the Apple II was still a frequent guest of general retrocomputing shows of the weekly RetroMacCast, as well as Earl Evans once-weekly, now-sporadic Retrobits. Along with A2Unplugged and the archival Echoes of KFest, these were our best and only radio shows.

David Greelish of Classic Computing recently decided to complement those sparse offerings with his own show, and his debut is a knockout. The Retro Computing Roundtable has published its first episode with lively chatter and insightful discussion among a star-studded panel consisting of David, Earl Evans, VintageComputer.net‘s Bill Degnan … and Carrington Vanston.

I guess I should take it personally that the Canadian never answered my emails, as David somehow got him back onto the retro scene. Not only that, but in the RCR podcast, Carrington off-handedly dropped a bombshell: 1 MHz would be back.

And it is. Last Friday, for the first time in 2.5 years, a new episode of the 1 MHz podcast was published. With little mention of his absence, Carrington launches right into his usual fare of news and reviews:

Krüe releases the TreeHugger GS/OS Printer Port driver, but will you dare to install version 0.0? The daredevilry continues as you risk blowing your mind when you view the Visual 6502 emulator. For less risky but no less enjoyable online ogling, check out Dr. Matt Barton’s book excerpt about LucasArts adventure games called The Maniac in the Mansion. And then come with me on a journey to the post apocalyptic world of Wasteland where we’ll fight mutants, build robots and learn to repair toasts. Finally, I track down the rare and elusive Wasteland Survival Guide for the Apple II, which just makes me want to play Wasteland one more time.

It’s a great episode, filled with Carrington’s usual zany humor and mile-a-minute gushing (does he ever breathe?). The episode is apparently made possible (or motivated by) corporate sponsorship, though it remains to be seen whether that will prove enough for future episodes.

We can hope so.

Find all these shows on iTunes:

• 1 MHz
• A2Unplugged
• Echoes of KFest
• Retro Computing Roundtable
• RetroMacCast
• Retrobits