Apple II Bits

Courtesy Mike Maginnis‘s interview with Bob Bishop (currently available in a free sample issue of Juiced.GS), everyone knows that it was nine Apple II computers that powered the television game show Tic Tac Dough. For some readers, this information comes thirty years after the fact, lending the Apple II a status as something of an unsung hero, working behind the scenes to power an industry. Did it ever get the recognition it deserved?

As a matter of fact, it did. The Apple II was not just an invisible workhorse but was also occasionally the grand prize. In this April 1981 episode of The Price Is Right, one of the many rewards offered to competitors was Steve Wozniak’s most famous personal computer:

The pilot episode of Starcade, one of the first organized video game competitions, also featured an Apple II alongside an Asteroids Deluxe coin-op arcade machine as the ultimate prizes.

Other combinations of this hardware and genre also existed: game shows for the Apple II. Here’s an example of the Apple II version of Wheel of Fortune:

Jeopardy was also released for the Apple II, but I always thought there were many more such opportunities than were realized. Twenty-five years ago, I would’ve liked to have seen an Apple II adaptation of Press Your Luck, for example.

Where else have you seen the Apple II intersect the game show industry?

Apple computers used to pop up in Hollywood all the time, from the Apple IIc in Explorers to Nibble code in Terminator to Apple III in TRON. Such occurrences have sadly grown rare outside of temporal anomalies such as Hot Tub Time Machine, and rarer still to own such a piece of cinematic history. Such a chance will present itself later this month.

Lost, JJ Abrams’ convoluted television series that came to a close this past spring, is auctioning off its assets. Among the props and set pieces up for bidding is an Apple II Plus, known on the show as Swan Station computer.

This Lost Apple could be yours — if the price is right.

I don’t understand what Lost was about and don’t care enough to fully learn the Apple II’s role in the series. Roughly, a character named Desmond was required to input numbers into the machine every 108 minutes or else the island he was on would explode. The main computer is accessorized with an Apple III monitor and a Disk II floppy drive.

It’s not too often I see theatrical computers for sale; the last one I recall was Gene Roddenberry’s Mac, auctioned a year ago next month. Lost carries significantly less nerd cred but is currently en vogue (or would’ve been three months ago), so now’s your chance to own a piece of ephemeral history.

The Lost auction will be held August 21–22, 2010, at 1:00 PM PDT at the Barker Hangar, 3021 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA, 90405.

(Hat tips to Cult of Mac and RetroMacCast)