Apple II Bits

I love the Internet and social media: email, Twitter, and Facebook have made it possible to reach people who’d never otherwise be accessible, and easier than ever to remain in contact with friends and family near and far.

But there’s still something to be said for taking our communications offline. KansasFest is the most obvious example, when we get to welcome new users to our community and catch up with long-time attendees. Newcomers who think this event is a one-time affair to check off their bucket list are often discover the energy and camaraderie they find there is addicting, requiring the event become an annual staple in their calendar.

But for those who can’t make it to KansasFest, it doesn’t take much to let them know they’re remembered. Eight years ago in the September 2007 issue of Juiced.GS, Peter Watson of MUG! fame wrote:

In 1992, I was fortunate enough to attend KansasFest in its heyday when it was still run by Tom Weishaar at Avila College… Unfortunately I haven’t been able to make it back since… But every year I read all the plans and wish I could win a lottery so I could attend…

Today that vicarious KFest experience came a little closer and a little less "imaginary" when a postcard from Kansas City arrived in the mail … I read the greetings from many of the other attendees at KFest as well, and I can honestly say I was touched. Heck, "blown away" might be a better description!

I’d just like to say "Thank you!" to the people who took the time to sign the card. It would have taken seconds of your time, but it’s created a memory for me that will last much, much longer!

The Apple II was and is a special computer partly because of the people that were attracted to it, and who stayed. I’ve seen another example of those people today.

I’m reminded of this gesture by Steve Wozniak, who recently spoke at the University of Buffalo. Despite his affinity for technology, Woz was once reminded of the power of not letting machines express express his gratitude for him:

When Wozniak was on Dancing with the Stars in 2009, he figured he would be voted off the show right away, so he should buy gifts for all the cast early on. He made gifts for all the cast with joke books, $2 bills, business cards and computerized letters about what a great time had and how to contact him.

"And then I thought, like education when I was giving computers to schools, it you have a lot of money, it’s easy to give money away but not to give yourself," Wozniak said. "That’s why I started teaching. If you really have it in your heart, it’s got to be more than words."

He decided to just write handwritten letters to all 26 members of the celebrity and professional dance crew.

Woz gave us the tools and infrastructure that brought us together and keeps us together; we should never discount their utility. But let us remember the significance of occasionally disconnecting and using other means to let our fellow community members know they are thought of and appreciated.

KansasFest 2011 is over — and thus begins my annual coverage of the event for Computerworld.com. Each year, I find a way to bring the Apple II to this enterprise IT site, giving both our retrocomputer a wider audience and Computerworld some diverse and fun content.

But the Apple II has been represented in many other articles during my four-plus years at Computerworld. Members of our community are IT professionals with staggering amounts of institutional knowledge, and as helpful as they are in-person at KansasFest, they have always been willing to be a resource during my research into related topics. I thought it’d be fun to index who has appeared as a source, or who has provided content, to Computerworld.com:

• Tony Diaz
• The cure for a hungry, sleepy laptop— Tony provided some technical advice for an issue I was having with my laptop. I don’t remember what his exact contribution was, as I didn’t tell him during that IM conversation that I was going to use his words in this blog post.
• Anatomy of an Apple IIc — I’d sent Tony a link to the PCWorld story "Anatomy of an Icon: Inside the Apple IIc", with which he then took technical issue. With his permission, I adapted his email response into this blog post.
• Sold on eBay: New-in-box Apple II, never opened — Tony offered a quotation as to why the Apple II is still enjoyed by hobbyists today.
• Face-off: 1979 Apple Graphics Tablet vs. 2010 Apple iPad – Computerworld — This was my KansasFest 2010 article, but Tony provided many of its photos, as did Loren Damewood and Mark Frischknecht.
• Steve Weyhrich
• Sold on eBay: New-in-box Apple II, never opened — Dr. Steve provided a historical look at what made the Apple IIc a successful model.
• Tony Ward
• CompuServe, Prodigy et al.: What Web 2.0 can learn from Online 1.0 — Tony Ward, former file library manager on Genie’s A2 RoundTable, is a modern-day Delphi community manager. His perspective on how Delphi has survived into the present day was surprising and useful.
• Eric Shepherd
• CompuServe, Prodigy et al.: What Web 2.0 can learn from Online 1.0 — As a former GEnie sysop, Sheppy provided valuable insight into why GEnie was popular and what ultimately killed it.
• Mike Willegal
• Apple-1 goes for $213K in Christie’s auction — Mike’s Apple-1 index was cited for information about other known existing Apple-1 machines.
• Eric Rucker
• Apple-1 goes for $213K in Christie’s auction — I cornered Eric in IRC, where he pointed out some of the qualities of the Apple-1 that was being auctioned. The final story quoted him.
• Peter Watson
• Linux Air: Hitting the road with the Eee PC — By the time Peter got his hands on this netbook, Computerworld had already published its own review and couldn’t commission Peter to write another one. But he did anyway, which we happily published as this complimentary blog.
• Mike Maginnis
• PalmPilot, BlackBerry, iPhone: A history of conquerers — Here’s a blog post that Mike wrote and which Computerworld published.
• Ryan Suenaga
• Ryan never directly appeared in a Computerworld article, but when I was presented with a list of companies to profile, knowing Ryan motivated me to choose his employer, Kaiser Permanente.

I look forward to other opportunities to put Apple II users’ names in lights!

With the apparent demise of the user group, there are no geographically oriented pockets of Apple II users anymore. But I have the good fortune of living in Central Massachusetts, which has somehow become a destination for many Apple II users over the years.

Juiced.GS associate editor Andy Molloy has regularly made the trip from New York to enjoy the retrocomputing goodness my area has to offer, from Funspot to PAX. The same site where we recently attended PAX also once hosted Steve Weyhrich, who took time out of his professional development in the medical field to share a dinner with me. Even other continents send representatives to Boston, where Australian programmer Peter Watson and I went to the pub that inspired the television sitcom Cheers.

Carol, Andre, Lynne, Peter, Kahm, and Ken — Apple II users forever!

This weekend alone, I visited with multiple Apple II users. Thomas Compter, who once hosted me and Kelvin Sherlock for a Lord of the Rings marathon, was in town to attend the annual Havoc game convention. His and his wife Jeannie‘s availability coincided with a local vegan pop-up restaurant’s monthly offering. I enjoyed spending an evening with these two KansasFest alumni, talking about everything but the Apple II, from WordPress to to dice towers to living in Germany.

Thomas and Jeannie moved a few years ago from Oklahoma to Vermont and then to Western Massachusetts, but the Panhandle State still has its share of Apple II users. Fewer than 24 hours later, I picked one up from the airport: KansasFest committee member, logo designer, and former HackFest winner Peter Neubauer. Peter’s diverse Apple II résumé was recently expanded by his interview of Alan Floeter for Juiced.GS, which landed in subscriber mailboxes just last week. In contrast to the previous evening, the Apple II was practically all we talked about. We caught up on reactions to Juiced.GS and plans for KansasFest 2011 before getting on the horn with Mike Maginnis for another few hours.

I consider myself very lucky to live somewhere through which so many esteemed Apple II users pass, and I appreciate them making time to connect with a member of their community. It’s like a series of mini-KFests to keep us going until the big one!