David Pierini - page 40

Cult of Mac’s David Pierini traveled to KansasFest to meet Apple fans intensely devoted to the Apple II computer line. The machine turns 40 next year.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s rare we hear the term personal computer anymore. Yet personal is the only word to begin to understand KansasFest and a small but feisty community of preservationists who love the Apple II line of computers.

The 28th fest concluded Saturday and within the event’s first hour, attendees were already making plans to attend next year, the 40th birthday of the Apple II.

We’re doing everything on our smallest screen, even photography. But Adobe knows that bigger may still be better when it comes to reviewing, sharing and enjoying those pictures.

Adobe, renowned for its imaging and multimedia software, announced Tuesday it is bringing Lightroom to Apple TV. It is now available in the App Store for a free download, but it will require a fourth generation Apple TV and a Creative Cloud subscription login.

Cult of Mac’s David Pierini traveled to KansasFest to meet Apple fans intensely devoted to the Apple II computer line. The machine turns 40 next year.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – They say they travel to KansasFest to feel like kids again. Fest attendees stay up all night laughing, arguing and eating pizza. They program and play games on their Apple II machines and call each other nerd or geek.

Bullied and closeted as a boy, Martin Haye describes KansasFest as the childhood he wished he’d had.

“If I had this when I was 13, I would’ve been fine,” says Haye, 48, a programmer for the California Digital Library who lives in Santa Cruz. “I didn’t try to fit in but I was little, I carried a briefcase to school, I was a target. I have a good life now, but this week is the most intense, sustained, predictable happiness I’ve ever had.”

Cult of Mac’s David Pierini is at KansasFest this week to write about the community of people who celebrate the foundational Apple II computer.

KANSAS CITY, Mo – If you’re going to carry a torch for the Apple II computer, you better know how to control its heat and melt a little solder.

The Apple II will turn 40 next year. Many of these seminal machines will light up like new thanks to a community of people who have to be their own Genius Bar. So KansasFest is not just about love, but the labor of keeping that love alive.

Cult of Mac’s David Pierini is at KansasFest this week to write about the community of people who celebrate the foundational Apple II computer.

KANSAS CITY, Mo – Love is a chemical reaction and Javier Rivera has the formula to make love feel brand-new. He just mixes salon-strength peroxide, some arrowroot and OxiClean laundry booster.

At KansasFest, an annual gathering of loyal Apple II lovers, festgoers bring their yellowed computers to Rivera, whose special mix can remove the yellow staining on the computer’s plastic pieces and make them look like they just came off the assembly line.

Cult of Mac’s David Pierini traveled seven hours and (39 years) this week to Missouri to witness the annual celebration of the Apple II computer known as KansasFest, which runs through Saturday.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Yellowed keyboards, monitors and disk drives sat in orderly piles. It certainly wasn’t pretty to look at, not when you compare these ancient artifacts of personal computing to a shiny new MacBook Pro.

But 80 infatuated campers could only see their first crush and they were ready to pounce. In a matter of minutes the gear would be claimed, and this dash and grab Wednesday was the kickoff the 28th annual KansasFest. If you don’t know KansasFest, the short answer is found in a cheer shouted to officially open the event: Apple II forever!

The iPhone comes in handy on a long bike ride. You could record video of your trip, use GPS to find your way and track things like mileage and calories burned.

The rider just has to choose which function to use. A startup called Bycle has an answer to the question why not all of them?

The description “small batch” is often associated with bourbon and cigars. With those words come an expectation of a higher quality derived from artisanal techniques, not possible with mass production.

WaterField Designs refers to itself as “small batch” and the company’s bags and cases, especially for Apple computing products, fit nicely in the company of a fine cigar or whiskey. Its latest product, the Bolt Laptop Backpack, stands apart from its oft-sporty-looking backpack brethren.

A star of silver and television screens wants to help others become stars of the small screen – their iPhone screens that is – with an iOS app that lets users act out their favorite movie scenes.

Actor Edward Kerr on Tuesday rolled out ROLR, a new video collaboration app he created to help people connect around the world through a universal love of films. An in-app teleprompter feeds you your lines from scenes from a selection of classic films, you record your part and then invite members of ROLR community to be your co-stars.

The winners of the 2016 iPhone Photography Awards could have made their celebrated photographs with almost any camera. But the iPhone isn’t any camera and our amazement over it hasn’t waned.

And it won’t once you behold the incredible images of this year’s entries.

You wanted the latest iPhone, but you could only afford the 16GB model. By the time you install some cool apps, load some songs and shoot some pictures and video, you can expect something else to appear on your screen: the Storage Almost Full message.

You can go through the sometimes frustrating task of backing everything up to the cloud or you could drop a dime on your iPhone — an i.dime, that is.

The i.dime is a dime-sized magnetic storage device that can add up to 256GB of additional space on an iPhone and functions much like a thumb drive. Backers can get a 32GB i.dime with a case for $63.

An AI-powered app that turns any boring photo into an art masterpiece is taking the app world by storm.

Prisma is an iOS app that not only transforms an ordinary photo into a painting, it does so in the styles of different famous artists, from Van Gogh and Picasso to Edvard Munch of “The Scream” fame.

Developed in Russia, the app is taking off like a rocket, doubling its servers, topping the charts and inspiring the #Prisma hashtag. It even counts the Russian President among its enthusiastic users.

Apple guaranteed the iPhone would reinvent the phone. But filmmaking?

Writer and director Conrad Mess said the iPhone’s red record button turned him into a filmmaker. It helped another cash-strapped director win praise and wide distribution for a feature film he shot on the iPhone 5s that was the buzz of last year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The iPhone also is reshaping video journalism, especially across Europe, where news organizations are using the iPhone video camera for an increasing number of stories — and live stand-ups, selfie stick in hand — because the mobile journalist can shoot, edit and share on one device.

The photographers were assembled with all their heavy camera equipment, about to walk 18 holes under the hot Florida sun to cover The Players Championship in Ponte Verde Beach when in strolled their colleague, Brad Mangin.

“Where’s your gear?” Mangin was asked. He pulled out his iPhone 6s to a chorus of groans and curses.

Accomplished photographers tend to bristle when asked to talk about equipment. It’s not the camera that makes the picture, it’s the photographer.

Acclaimed photographer Richard Koci Hernandez would tend to agree, but he’s likely to gush about his camera anyway. That’s because some of the most interesting and satisfying work of his career has come from shooting with his iPhone.

The kind of gear that once helped Hernandez garner Pulitzer Prize nominations now rests idly in a camera bag.

A New York City mom has created an Uber-like iOS app that makes finding a babysitter as simple as finding a ride.

But we’re willing to assume some risk when catching a lift to the airport. Turning a young son or daughter over to algorithm-matched childcare is another matter. Hello Sitter CEO Lauren Mansell personally vetted each of the more than 200 qualified sitters available through the app by answering this question — Would I leave my daughter with this person?

The human race shows no signs of photo fatigue. Unequivocal proof comes from Instagram, which just announced it reached the 500 million membership milestone.

The photo-sharing app more than doubled its monthly user base over the past two years and Instagrammers now share some 95 million photos and videos each day.

From opera to tattoos, Apple founder Steve Jobs is a subject for artists cross many mediums – even coffee.

Kohei Matsuno, a rising star in the latte art world (yes, that is a thing), added a dollop of foam to Jobs’ legend when he created a portrait of him using espresso, milk and a fine-pointed tool made especially for the most creative baristas.

Forget political polls. The real horse race is in iPhone cases — and Donald Trump is dominating the field.

Whether it is the proud, orange face of Trump as Uncle Sam or a slogan that encourages others not to vote for him, The Donald is yuuuuuge.

If you feel cheated over Apple not rolling out new hardware at WWDC this week, legendary optics company ZEISS has a little something to ease the suffering of iPhone users who love photography.

With the iPhone considered by many to be the world’s most popular camera, ZEISS brings its 170 years of lens design to mobile photography with wide-angle, telephoto and macro attachments for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. ZEISS partnered with accessory brand ExoLens and boasts the new mobile lenses will bring “gold-standard gear” to iPhone shooters.

Television and cinema have mostly failed in presenting a Steve Jobs story that earns the approval of knowledgeable Apple fans.

Now it’s opera’s turn to make something compelling.

Varun Shenoy is so busy with high school clubs that require him to keep on top of current events, he has no time to do the reading to keep up with the news.

So Shenoy came up with a solution, an iOS app with a language-based algorithm that distills the essence of news stories and presents the user with quick summaries. His app, Summit, earned him a highly coveted young developers scholarship to next week’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

If you like how your Mac keyboard feels to the touch, you may like the way some of the keys look and feel as wearable art.

Pennsylvania artist Stacey Peterson salvages the keys and even the power button to make necklaces, cufflinks, and other wearable keyboard pieces that she sells to eager Apple fans on her Etsy site. In most cases, the key or power button engages in that satisfying click.

While Apple continues to produce desirable electronic devices, other support industries have emerged to provide cases, sleeves, and peripheral hardware accessories. Like the T-shirt or toymakers who celebrate Apple culture, Peterson is part of a cottage industry that engages the Apple fan’s emotional motherboard, the circuits that spark that loyalty, nostalgia and a sense of coolness.

Apple’s business model is based on the future, but sometimes a fan pines for the machine they had as a kid.

Self-taught hardware hacker and 3D printer artist Charles Mangin happily tries to satisfy those vintage tech longings by recreating pieces of Apple’s past in miniature. He even brings the screens to life — sort of.

Two dating Mac geeks set a gift ground rule one Christmas: presents must be handmade.

Roberto Hoyos, with the ability to sew in his DNA, crafted seven throw pillows in the shape of the Mac OS X icons. The Apple fan couple is no longer an item — but the pillows are.