Re: Do people still actually use Apple 2?

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

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.

In my personal opinion there are several important reasons why some
people like these old boxes:

- 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 do/learn
it and singlehandedly create something - with modern systems it is far
more difficult to achieve a personally acceptable result as 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 "loudmouth" like famed designer
(and ex-programmer) 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.