It’s festival season and there’s a festival for everything – even one for Apple II users.
It’s called KansasFest and it has been going since 1989. It’s one of the longest-running computer festivals out there and the amazing thing is the Apple II was discontinued in 1992.
The endurance of this machine is the subject of this week’s Kahney’s Korner.
The Apple II was the machine designed by Steve Wozniak and it’s the machine that made Apple what it is today. It was its first big hit, even before the Macintosh.
It had a command line interface and, by today’s standards, was not the most user-friendly machine. But’s it’s still going.
There are factories and workshops all across the country that are stilling running on Apple II’s. I know of one psychiatrist who still uses an Apple II for his billing and bands that record music.
This is a testament to this machine. It is bulletproof.
I am delighted there is a festival of people, mostly hobbyists, who swap software and hardware and tips to keep these things going.
But even though I am delighted by this, I’m glad I don’t have to use the Apple II day to day. So thanks, Steve Jobs, for inventing the Mac.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
7 responses to “Kahney’s Korner: The Apple II deserves its own festival”
Please do something with that back window. It’s horrendous. At least pretend to care about the video quality. Also, don’t ever leave those glasses on your head like that. It’s distracting and promotes laughter in a bad way.
Aside from the computer I always wanted (especially for engineering work at HP) the arcade video game industry had started with Atari. All the games were on black and white TV’s and were hardware, with wires connecting chips and no software. The Apple II brought color and software to gaming, along with built-in game features like paddles and sound. More than that, commands in my BASIC language allowed a youngster to program moving objects. Video games were now software forever.
I just read your book iWoz and you gave so good desription of that time it made me feel like i was fly on the wall absorbing all this info. Amazing time it must been :)
Thanks. It’s hard to describe to people who were not there how exciting it was in ways that you don’t see so much now. But I’m probably wrong and every new innovative idea of young people could be just as exciting. Maybe everyone thinks they are changing the world and in a lot of cases it just doesn’t go.
You are abolutely right. It is somewhat diferent this days because you basicly need a team of engineers and (big) budget to even think about world changin products. But there is still fun to be had and big oportunities with small indie developers for iOS (mostly fun and inovative 2d games that can be made by only one person in couple of months). And it was all made posible with Apple I and Apple II. What an amazing machines they were :) I learned programing (I am eletrical engineer) because of Apple computers and is currently my job and hobby :) I am living my dreams. Thank you very much :)
It was exactly for this to happen that I created the Apple ][. Very similar sentiments today in the first pages of the book on Raspberry Pi, which is a good sign.
Boris, next year, meet the Apple II visionaries who still attend KansasFest in July every year and others names you will recognize. Next year is July 19-24, 2016. We have a Facebook group called Apple II Enthusiasts
Woz has seen fit to visit us in Kansas a couple of times over the last few years and it was thrilling for those who were there! This year we had 74 people, which is, the biggest gathering in about 10 years.
Perhaps one day we’ll see Woz again. Here’s wishing!
We’ll see you on Facebook!