Flutterby™! : please build Apple II's 2005-10-18 17:25:49.781963+00

please build Apple II's

2005-10-18 17:25:49.781963+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments

Dear Steve Jobs - Please build Apple II's:

Woz got it. Thirty seconds after unwrapping an Apple II, you were opening the lid and connecting ribbon cables. It was respect. Apple extended respect. And Apple was respected by my rocket scientist buddies and myself. Apple extended the respect through meaningful manuals, a documented architecture and a generally awesome computer. Nothing was hidden. You could POKE and PEEK your way through the whole machine.

The Apple II became a platform for invention. A modem in every slot to create the first online chat? Music keyboard controllers years before MIDI? Digitizing audio through the cassette input jacks? Controlling teletypes through the joystick ports? Big Traks and Armatrons connected as $30 robots? The Apple II was the hub of lots of cool homebrew technology. The first time I heard Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' About Love" was through a tiny Apple II speaker. All 15 scratchy seconds of it. Where'd I get it? I downloaded it from a bulletin board.

Ironically, Steve Jobs managed to do this with the NeXT Cube. It had a DSP with direct ports out the back of the box - very similar to the GeekPort on the BeBox.

But I think part of the techie-love has been redirected towards USB. It's possible to do alot of IO control via USB. The other advantage is that you don't have to expose the guts of your $2000 Apple II to your soldered and wire-wrapped monstrosity.