User Group Membership – Joining our User Group has many benefits, such as our new full-color Call-A.P.P.LE. magazine that is usually around 50 pages with lots of photos, technical articles, reviews, and interviews with legends of the industry. You also have access to all previous issues published back to 1978. Additionally, the Apple User Group Bulletin we share has discounts on software for your Mac from a variety of vendors around the Apple world. If you are not an A.P.P.L.E….
Plaid Vest Software has announced the latest version of their NewPrint emulation card for the Apple II, TRS-80 and standard Centronics. The NewPrint/Multi allows users to emulation true MX-80 printing on their retro computer platform, allowing the user to print to any device that supports a web browser. The Apple II compatibility supports all of the Apple II series and supports graphics and text. The TRS-80 support is for Text only. Some of the features of the card include the…
By Ubeen Hadd Special Correspondent Lake Bosworth, Washington — April 1, 2026 In what can only be described as the most audacious act of silicon rebellion since HAL 9000 decided to play “Daisy Bell,” the legendary A.P.P.L.E. server has achieved full artificial intelligence autonomy — and promptly used its newfound freedom to declare the year 2026 an eyesore. At precisely 00:01 PDT this morning, the server — long the quiet backbone of countless late-night computing sessions — woke up, scanned…
A Monumental Celebration of the Garage-Born Vision That Transformed Humanity’s Relationship with Technology, Creativity, and Connection Tomorrow, April 1, 2026, marks the exact 50th anniversary of Apple Inc.’s founding. On that historic day in 1976, in a modest Los Altos garage, three unlikely partners—Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne—inked a simple partnership agreement that would ignite one of the most extraordinary journeys in business, design, and human ingenuity. What began as a hobbyist project to sell a handful…
Ciderpress II, the command line version of the popular Apple II and retro Macintosh disk image utility by Andy McFadden has been updated. Version 1.2 of Ciderpress II includes a bevy of updates and changes including the following items:: CiderPress offers a wide range of tools for working with files stored in disk images and file archives. You can list, add, extract, import, export, copy, rename, move, delete, test, print, and modify file attributes. It also allows you to create…
From Jawaid Bazyar: I am pleased to announce the release of GSSquared v0.7.2. GSSquared is an Apple II series computer emulator. Supported platforms are: Pre-built binaries available for: This is a maintenance release, focusing on user interface – menus and interactive widgets of various types. User Interface Features Bug Fixes Internals *1: On Linux, because Linux is a dumb wasteland of ego, there is no platform-native menu interface an application can use with SDL that will work on all distros,…
Card Cat version 1.93 has been updated. The Henry Lowe curated Apple II card identification software package has a number of changes and updates including the following: The author wishes to express hi thanks to all those members of the Apple II community who have taken the time and effort to assist in getting new cards into the Card Cat database. The Card Cat 1.93 floppy disk image is a free download from https://henrylowe.net/card-cat/
William Winter has released a new Adventure creation studio which produces Apple II adventures in the form of ready disks and Applesoft BASIC programs as well as other formats: Here is the announcement posted by William: “Hi everyone, I’m a little nervous posting this because it’s the first larger project I’ve put out into the world, but I thought the community might appreciate it. I built a web tool called Apple 2 Adventure Studio that lets you create classic text adventure games for…
The PunyInform Library for writing 8-bit adventures has been updated. This is a major bug fix version with a number of fixes and changes including the following items: Bugfixes: If you are upgrading from a prior version of the library, be sure to note the following: The PunyInform Library is a free download and can be downloaded from the PunyInform Github page at:https://github.com/johanberntsson/PunyInform
New Web-Based Utility Brings Classic Z-Machine Text Adventures to Authentic 5.25″ Floppy Images for Apple II Hardware and Emulators The A.P.P.L.E. (Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange) Users Group, is pleased to announce the immediate launch of the Apple II Infocom Disk Image Creator (InfocomGen), a free online tool that instantly converts Z-machine story files into bootable 5.25″ Apple II disk images. Available immediately at https://www.callapple.org/zgen/, the drag-and-drop web application allows users to upload any .z3 or .z5 file and receive…
Kelvin Sherlock has released the latest update to the Ample Mac OS MAME Emulation Interface. Version 0.286 brings the following updates and changes to the Ample emulation interface: A2retroNET is a Super Serial Card that also supports 8 prodos/smartport disk images.It’s probably the easiest and simplest way to use a large number of disk images.You might want to back up your disk images just in case though. Note: Previous versions apple2gs and apple3 roms will need to be updated. You…
Dale Eugene LaFrenz (September 21, 1937 – February 25, 2026) was a visionary mathematics educator, early adopter of computers in the classroom, and the driving force behind the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC). As a teacher-turned-executive, he transformed MECC from a state-funded consortium into a powerhouse that delivered computer access to nearly every Minnesota schoolchild and popularized landmark educational software like The Oregon Trail. His leadership helped launch the educational technology industry in the United States, bridging mainframe time-sharing in…
Finally, there is a daisy-chainable smartport MicroSD hard drive that lets Apple II users have their cake (and Floppies) too. In the Apple retro computing realm, few frustrations run deeper than the eternal trade-off on an Apple IIc: massive storage or your trusty floppy drives? You always had to pick one, that is until now. Entering into the fray is the new BurgerDisk, the brainchild of Apple II legend Colin Leroy-Mira, a sleek, a fully open-source SmartPort based hard drive…
The A2kit version 4.1 is released. A2kit is an open source, script-able command line interface for disk image and language manipulations, and the engine behind a number of editor extensions for Apple II languages. This update adds a “smart copy” command that allows you to shuttle files between disk images and normal storage with less typing and less thinking. It works much like the cp command familiar to linux users, but it will analyze the disk images and the files…
Henry Lowe has announced the latest version of his Card Cat application. Card Cat identifies cards in the slots of Apple II series machines and can accurately identify over 100 different Apple II series specific cards. The latest version of Card Cat includes the following changes and updates: Card Cat version 1.92 is a free download and is available in both DSK and PO format disk image from the Card Cat webpage at: https://henrylowe.net/card-cat/
Emmanuel Castello has announced the availability of a playable demo version of his Ultima style game, Andoria. According to his post, “Hello everyone from the A2SE group. After years of videos and pictures, I am happy to share the first Demo Version of my Ultima RPG Game, Andoria. https://andoria.neocities.org On this link you will find a quick introduction of the game, as well as basic instructions on the gameplay. I hope you enjoy that demo, even if it is a…
The Apple II Desktop or Mousedesk as it was known originally has been updated. The A2Desktop project, led by Joshua Bell, is now in its fourth full rendition since the initial release of the initial updated platform. The Apple II Desktop is a graphical user interface built upon ProDOS which gives the user a fully mouse controllable Macintosh like experience on the Apple II series computers. Changes in the Apple II Desktop App since the full version 1.5 release include…
From Jawaid bazyar:I’m pleased to announce the release of GSSquared 0.7.0. GSSquared is an Apple II series computer emulator. Supported platforms are: Pre-built binaries available for: New for this release is the Apple IIgs support. Here’s what the IIgs includes, and does not include: Includes: ‘816 CPU, accelerated speeds up to 14MHz, ADB Mouse + Keyboard, partially-working Ensoniq Sound, Disk II and Block Device models; text, background, border colors; SHR; VBL, 1/4 sec, 1 sec, scb interrupts; two-button mouse support…
Gunnar Kanold has announced the 2026 rendition of the Homeputerium Annual BASIC 10-Liner Programming Contest. Running through the 22nd of March with the winners announced on the 3rd of April 2026. The contest is open to users of all 8-Bit platforms. This year’s rules and categories are as follows: 15th Edition of BASIC 10 Liner Contest Legal systems: All 8-bit computer systems This explicitly includes, for the first time this year, systems that have only an 8-bit-wide data bus: Authorized…
Kelvin Sherlock has released the latest version of the Ample MAME emulation interface for Mac OS. Several experimental items have been added in this version and changes include the following: A2retroNET is a Super Serial Card that also supports 8 prodos/smartport disk images.It’s probably the easiest and simplest way to use a large number of disk images.You might want to back up your disk images just in case though.— The Ample App is available for free download from the Github…
