Apple II at the Apple Store Genius Bar

November 5th, 2018 11:17 AM
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A once-annual tradition of KansasFest was an outing to the Apple Store. Whether it was to Country Club Plaza location, where I was tricked into buying my first iPod, or to the newly opened Leawood location, where the store manager gave us all free t-shirts, it was always fun to check out the latest Apple gear and to set all the in-store iMac’s browsers to A2Central.com.

I often fantasized what the reaction would be if it weren’t just Apple II convention-goers who arrived at the store, but the Apple II itself. Let’s bring our ancient Apple computers and see if it’d be recognized by the even younger store employees. Better yet, let’s schedule a Genius Bar appointment to get help installing GS/OS!

I’m not the only one to daydream this scenario: Bryan Villados, Forrest Hodges, and Steve Chamberlin have proposed the same gag. But it was Luke Hsu who finally pulled it off when the first Apple Store opened in Taiwan.

Luke didn’t mention any interaction with or reaction from Apple Store employees, though. But we may have a hook to try staging this scene again soon: Apple will be implementing a "Repair Vintage Apple Products Pilot". The program will service products dating back to 2011 only, but the trial is deemed successful, perhaps we can expect that window to reach even further back in Apple’s history — and thus, with the Apple II being fully expected and supported at the Genius Bar, the gag will be entirely ruined.

(Hat tip to Alan Martin)

Hard Hat Mack in Taiwan

March 20th, 2017 11:22 AM
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Although the Apple II was invented and was popular in the United States, it’s fun to see all the other places our favorite retrocomputer has popped up. We know the Apple II community has active contingents in Australia and France, but we’ve also seen the Apple II in more far-flung locations such as from Russia to Korea.

Thanks to a recent YouTube video, I’ve now seen the Apple II somewhere I hadn’t before: Taiwan. It was the focus of a short segment on a television show in which the host introduced several girls to the 1983 game Hard Hat Mack on an Apple IIc:

I don’t have many details about the show seen here: the Chinese caption translates only to "old game era Apple II". But I wonder what the standard format of the show is, that the host didn’t seem to let his audience get their hands on the game.

I can commiserate, though: I too have never gotten my hands on Hard Hat Mack. As a young gamer, my attention was evenly divided between consoles and computers, which may’ve caused me to miss several classic computer games: not only Hard Hat Mack, but Tass Times in Tone Town, King’s Quest, Ultima, and others. It looks like the kind of game I would enjoy, since Donkey Kong always earns my quarter on any visit to Funspot. As one of the first games (if not the first) to be published by Electronic Arts, Hard Hat Mack is a piece of history deserving an experience.

I don’t have much excuse now, though, since Hard Hat Mack can be played online:

There’s no need to go on a Taiwanese talk show to discover the classics — Hard Hat Mack is alive and well!

(Hat tip to Luke Hsu via Jorma Honkanen)