The 2024 rendition of the FAPPLE2 Fest was held yesterday with 11 people showing up for the annual event in Kawasaki, Japan. The FAPPLE2 Fest is the annual get together of the Japanese Apple II hobbyists, originating from the 1980’s and is held each year at the home of one of the members, Atsushi Ushiroda. This years event included 11 hobbyists and a ton of machines and Apple II series computer related items including those from A.P.P.L.E. With the space completely stuffed with displays and machines, along with the hobbyists themselves, there was a ton of new things including hardware and sof ..read more

The Applesauce Floppy Disk Controller client software has been updated. Release notes from Applesauce FDC creator, John Morris stated: Client Release 1.88.5 – https://evolutioninteractive.com/applesauce/Applesauce_1885.zip Fix to CP/M support for disks that need a masked extent number for record count calculations. Improved disk layout when loading IBM-sectored disks that contain a lot of sectors on each track. macOS 14.2 and higher was incompatible with how the Disk Analyzer nibble view worked and would leave lots of empty space. This has been fixed. Allow WOZ image export of Appl ..read more

Big Mess O Wires (BMOW) has announced the availability of the Mac Sync-inator, a sync signal converter dongle for the Apple IIgs and Macintosh. According to the website, “The Mac Sync-inator supports all classic Macintosh computers and video cards with a standard DB-15 monitor connector, and is also compatible with the Apple IIgs (a 15 kHz monitor is also needed for the GS). The Apple IIc uses the same physical connector but has different video signals, and is not compatible with the Sync-inator.” Available for $39USD from the BMOW website, the Mac Sync-inator provides an easy way t ..read more

Colin Leroy-Mira has announced the availability of the latest version of his WOZAMP Video and Audio player for the Apple II series computer. "I'm happy to say I've released Wozamp version 2.3 at https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/wozamp-an-apple-ii-music-and-video-player/You may notice that the page's title is now "a music and video player" Please find attached to this message's replies a few examples ..read more

From our friend of the program, curator of the Free Tools Association (FTA) and creator of the ActiveGS Plugin and iOS app emulator – Back in 2011, I published my first iPhone app as a tribute to my Apple 2GS/FTA days. It was both a challenging journey to develop for iPhone 3GS/4 and iOS 3.2 back then, but also the beginning of a hectic journey… as the app was banned by Apple 2 years later for violating the infamous 2.8 -no emulator- rule. Yet, last Friday, something magical occurred as Apple revised its policies! Within a couple of days, I was finally able to update this 15-year-old app (run ..read more

Fredrick Ramsberg announced the release of The Airlock Collection of text adventures created with the Puny Inform and PuddleBuild tools. The collection of adventures is available for a number of computing platforms including those shown in the sections below. This collection is available for free and according to the announcement and website: The Airlock Collection Welcome to hours of fun on your favourite platform! This collection contains polished post-jam releases of some of the games that were entered in Punyjam #3, which was held in February of 2023. A jam means the authors have a limite ..read more

The Applewin Apple II Emulator for Windows has been updated.  Applewin 1.30.18, curated by Tom Charlesworth, was released with a number of changes  and bug fixes including the following: [Change #1272] New HDC firmware v2 to support returning HDD size in Y:X for status call. [@peteri] [Change #1277] Add (debug) cmd line switch to revert to HDC firmware v1: -hdc-firmware-v1. [Change #1279] Support Saturn RAM card in slot 3 for any Apple II model (for Robo Systems’ RoboCAD 2). [Change #1159] Speaker: change from mono to stereo sound buffer. [Change #1247] Robocom’s Interface Modul ..read more

From the Kansasfest Committee: While the evenings and nights of KansasFest are renowned for their spontaneity, the mornings and afternoons are reserved for sessions spanning a variety of uses, extensions, and applications of the Apple II family. Similarly, the virtual event features a variety of topics ranging from Apple II artwork to hooking your retro computer up to the internet. Just as varied as these sessions are the good people who volunteer to present them. If you have a topic you’d like to present, please fill out the session proposal form. Our theme for 2024 focuses on the ..read more

For those of you following the Apple II Desktop project, the latest alpha release is now available.  The changes in the latest version of Apple II Desktop, version 1.4 alpha 8 includes a slew of changes including the following: Changes relative to previous v1.4 alpha: DeskTop Fix corruption when exiting Shortcuts dialogs with a list view window. (#790) Reorder columns in list views. Clear GS/OS “case bits” when renaming files/volumes. (#352) Preserve GS/OS “case bits” when copying files. (#352) Fix corruption issues when replacing files with folders and folders with anything during copy ..read more

Kelvin Sherlock, creator of the Ample GraphicalUser Interface for the MAME emulator, has released a new version of the interface.  Release 56 of Ample brings the interface in line with the 0.264 release of MAME and includes a host of fuxes and changes including the following: Ample Changes Added some ORIC and TRS COCO machines. ORIC used 3″ floppies but we pretend they’re 3.5″ in the UI added 4x window option since ORIC needs it. Fixed a bug that was preventing 3.5″ disks from working on Macintosh double-clicking on a rom in the rom window will start the download MAME 0.264 Changes ..read more