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Do people still actually use Apple 2?
People do. As they do use their other systems.
But I guess it's more a kind of "tinkering" than "really using" for _most_ of them. Of course there are some who maxed out their GSses with accelerator boards, ethernet cards etc. and really do have mail exchange, access the web etc. But I don't think that this is the "standard retro fan". Just a guess, though. A lot of it involves nostalgia which always paints a pretty picture in your head about the "good old times". But several retro fans are much to active to only have a pretty picture of the past in their head and don't simply relive the happy times. Here are some guesses: - In the ever rapidly changing computer world innovations and evolutions are being introduced faster and faster. This is in contradiction to the "good old 8 bit times" where you had the same system speed and features for years. In other words: You learn something for todays PCs or Macs and tomorrow you have to scratch most (or all) of that and learn something new. You could of course try to learn todays DirectX and do incredible things with it - but the next version will have completely new features and even more possibilities. - Apropos possibilities. The old systems do make some things easy for you in giving you not as much possibilities as a modern computer. Graphics are a good example: If you want to program something for an old Apple you don't have to choose among thousands of colors to begin with. Instead you have to find the best algorithm to bring the graphics on screen - and coding is maybe a bit easier than designing 3D-models and drawing textures which do look really good. Though I think that most enthusiasts do not program actively they probably could learn it and singlehandedly create something - with modern systems it is far more difficult to achieve a personally acceptable result as a single person. - The old systems are for the most part simpler to understand. There is no bulky operating system in the way, you can program hardware registers directly and though the CPU is primitive compared to modern systems you can easily access it directly, do what you want with it and get a nice satisfying feeling if it happens to function ;-) Then you can fiddle with your code even more and optimize it for speed or size. You have to cope with maybe 32-64K - in contrast to the gigabyte you have in your PC... - For some its the fascination to interface an old hardware with modern systems or use "kind of modern" software, like a webbrowser or an email client which were unheard of in the early eighties. I happen to have a 300 MB harddrive in my GS - the first harddrive I had then was a 20 MB one with a selfmade controller on my Amiga 500. So you can actually do more with old systems today than back in their "appropriate time" ;-) - The modern world is quite a bit less personal, too. Back in the old days you had several "programming geniuses" which broadened the horizon for everyone after them. These people were for a good part known by their name and really invented stuff like smooth scrolling, the first flipper simulation etc. Today you have John Carmack and thats about it, other celebrities are "just designers but no real programmers/hackers". I personally wouldn't even call myself "a real programmer" but I did know someone who has actually written a functioning RAM-disk for the Apple II in less than 256 bytes. He even filled the remaining dozen bytes with a certain opcode - the corresponding mnemonic represents a part of his surname... So maybe I appreciate someone who invented and actually realized a game principle (like Choplifter, Boulder Dash or WayOut for example) or something comparable much more than a "star designer" (and ex-programmer) like Peter Molyneux who claims that his ultimate role-playing-game Fable even allows you to watch trees grow (which they didn't realize because of the the limitations of the Xbox ;-) To clarify things a bit: I don't want the old times back and progress annihilated. I of course want to play the newest games with the best graphics & sound. I want my PC to record television, watch movies, have speedy web access etc. But on the other hand I happen to like the contrast I get when I play an old game with beautiful handdrawn pictures or ingeniously created ones with Graphics Magician. |
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In article . com,
"Kevin McMurtrie " wrote: Do people still actually use Apple 2? Why are there so many active groups for computers that have not been made in so many years. Serious questions. Kevin Everyday. I started keeping medical, financial and other database type information on my IIe and never felt the need to change. Appleworks 5 with an accelerator and hard drive does everything I need. One example: on my stock/mutual fund database, when I enter a value, the file will determine if the value is a new high/low and if it is, automatically set the new value and the date it became a new high/low. In Quicken on my Mac, I have to manually put in the new high/low values in its history. |
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