Revisiting Nibble
| Filed under History; 3 comments. |
At KansasFest 2010, Stavros was kind enough to make several issues of Nibble magazine available to any attendees who would give them a good home. Despite Nibble‘s founding editor having been the KansasFest 2007 keynote speaker, I’d never actually read the magazine myself. I’d been an Apple II user since the early Eighties, but did not join the community in earnest until 1992. With Nibble having published 1981–1995, my opportunities to enjoy the platform’s heyday of offline support were few.
I picked up the twenty-year-old Vol. 11, No. 6 (June 1990) and found the 96-page, full-color issue an absolute delight to read. It was like being transported back in time to when enjoying the Apple II put you in the majority, not the minority. In 1990 in particular, the possibilities seemed limitless, despite the writing being on the wall, as evidenced by Mike Harvey’s editorial in which he pounds the pulpit for Apple Computer Inc. to pay more attention to the platform that made them famous. It was a melancholy experience to read that article, knowing how that story would end.
This issue included a 168-line Applesoft BASIC program called Whodunit, a murder-mystery game by Constance Fairbanks. Program listings for users to input were something I remembered well from academic textbooks and even Mad Magazine. I wonder how many budding programmers learned their craft by familiaring themselves with these commands en route to seeing the final product — or did they just enter the lines by rote, with no comprehension of their function, as my class was taught to do in school? Fortunately, Nibble appears to have encouraged the former, as the listing is prefaced by a section subtitled “How the program works”, which breaks down the program’s routines.
Due to its breadth, depth, and budget, a single issue of Nibble probably contains more content than I could ever hope to fit into a full year of Juiced.GS. Although humbled, I am also inspired by the giants upon whose shoulders today’s Apple II print publication stands. I will likely revisit this issue and this publication for more ideas of articles and blog posts.
Oh, and the issue’s original owner? According to its mailing label, that would be one Jim Maricondo. The all-star connections never end at KansasFest.
I also continue to be impressed by the volume, magnitude, and breadth of topics covered in Apple II magazines during the heyday of that computer. In this Internet era, magazines are perhaps less valued than they were back when there WAS no other source of information for a computer (beyond the dial-up services like AOL, GEnie, and CompuServe).
I learned how to program from Nibble so I continue to be fond of the magazine.
I know what you mean. When I first had a chance to sit down and try out an Apple II Plus, there was a Nibble magazine next to it, with a simple game program I entered. Learned all about how to edit lines of Applesoft to make corrections, how to save the resulting file to disk, etc.