Open Apple #20 (Oct 2012): Ewen Wannop, Spectrum, the next Apple II, and Mac Mini

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Ewen Wannop, British programmer of 16-bit telecommunications programs such as Spectrum, SAM, SNAP, and SAFE. The hosts share feedback galore from the last episode and contemplate how to record a live show. After catching up on some headlines from last month, we plow forward, celebrating the return of an interactive fiction publication and grumbling that even beginner IF can be as obscure as the medium is infamous for. The September 2012 issue of Juiced.GS just shipped, and with it, a look at what features a hypothetical System 7.0 operating system would include. Is it reasonable to consider that a software upgrade warrants a hardware bump, and what the next model of Apple II would look like? Photos of Steve Jobs in his natural habitat show an Apple stronghold as Spartan as ever, but you can decorate yours with Melissa Barron’s screenprints from Etsy. There’s a Disk II floppy drive on eBay that holds within it a working Mac mini — a cool hack, but is it worth a cool grand? We question the value of purchasing free software on eBay and marvel at everything from lighters to thumb drives in the shape of an Apple II. Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode. Introduction (0:00 – 13:08) * Retro Computing Roundtable podcast * ActiveGS * Ken Gagne’s @party presentation via SceneSat * BostonFIG covered at Computerworld * Indie Game: The Movie * Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters * Going Cardboard: A Board Game Documentary * Get Lamp User Login (13:09 – 29:02) * Ewen Wannop’s homepage *