So after years of losing market and mindshare, today’s announcement that Quark has been sold to a mergers & acquisitions company intent on selling off Quark’s IP portfolio should come as no surprise.

Those of us who have been playing around with computers for a bit longer than the average user probably remember Quark for more than just a powerful desktop publishing application. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff they produced for my favorite 8-bit home computer, the Apple II (and III!). Don’t worry, the list is short.

Catalyst

Quark was an early proponent of DRM and implemented draconian copy protection schemes in their products. Catalyst was designed as a program selector to assist users in loading their expensive business products from diskette onto their new, even more expensive hard disk systems while retaining their copy protection. They were going for the best of both worlds here, and didn’t really attain either.

A user would first install Catalyst onto their shiny new $5,000 Apple ProFile 10 MB drive and then, through a series of convoluted steps, load various pieces of software into Catalyst. During the install, the user’s original diskettes would be disabled and permanently tied to the Catalyst diskette so that the originals would no longer boot and could only be reinstalled to the hard drive through the specific copy of Quark’s program to which they were tied. Quark whimsically called these disks, “Catalyzed”.

Additionally, if your newly enslaved applications required access to your printer, Catalyst had to be manually configured through a quick, 30-step process… Okay, maybe not so quick.

Catalyst itself was also copy protected and featured a serial number so that once “Catalyzed” your applications couldn’t be loaded by a copy with a different serial number.

Great stuff!

A version of Catalyst creatively called “Catalyst IIe” was eventually introduced for the Apple IIe and IIc.

Word Juggler

Word Juggler was a popular word processor for the Apple II platform for many years.

Quark’s word processor for the Apple II line was known for its ease of use, extensive feature set and simple learning curve and matched up well against AppleWriter, which served as Word Juggler’s main competition until the AppleWorks suite was released by Apple in 1984. On the Apple III, Word Juggler was the first, and for years only, commercially available word processor.

Word Juggler ad from InfoWorld, Nov 30, 1981

Word Juggler wasn’t immune to Quark’s copy protection schemes and customers had to install a hardware dongle in their Apple II to get the software to boot up at all.

Lurking silently in your Apple II, protecting Quark's IP.

And that pretty much wraps it up for Quark’s 8-bit Apple software offerings. They also sold a number of minor applications, most designed to enhance Word Juggler. Lexicheck was an 8,000-word spelling checker; Terminus provided telecommunications functionality; Mail List Manager Interface also integrated with Word Juggler as did TypeFace, giving you access to typesetting equipment, should you have it.

And so we bid a not-so-fond farewell to the corporate entity known as Quark, Inc.

Rupert Lissner's /// EZ Pieces, the Apple III version of AppleWorks

I say this as much to focus my attention and hopefully help increase my creative output here, as to warn you off.  The three of you who read this rag with any kind of regularity probably don’t care much either way.

That said, I’ll start off with a couple of items that I should have already covered.  First, a slightly belated happy birthday to the Apple III+, which was introduced on December 26, 1983.  Apple gave one last, half-hearted attempt to erase some of the damage to its reputation caused by the original III with this much improved business computer, but it didn’t live long.  The III+ was discontinued in April 1984 on the same day that the IIc was introduced.

Next up, the photo caption contest.  I received a total of three entries for the contest.  They are:

Eric R.: “Noooooo! I was just working for 3 hours on that report, and my Apple III crashed!”

Wholly Mindless: “Dropping it did make it work!!!!”

Sean F: “After tedious hours of hacking, Lori gets Group 7 access and manages to contact Flynn”

While I found all three comments funny, I have to give it to Sean F (he of a2central.com).  Not only witty, but with the release of the completely awesome Tron sequel, timely too!  Congrats Sean.  I have… um.  I don’t know.  Something for you.  Maybe I’ll bring it to KFest!  Thanks to everyone who participated.

In other news, the latest Juiced.GS shipped recently and should by now be in the hands of readers everywhere.  My Apple III article made the cover this time (woo hoo!).  In it, I take a look at some of the technologies introduced in the Apple III that found more success in later Apple products.  Due mainly to space considerations, several of these ended up on the cutting room floor and I’ll cover them in an upcoming blog post.  Other topics I’m considering include the On Three 512K memory board upgrade for the III, and maybe some coverage on the Apple III Plus itself.

Stay tuned…

Boingboing picked it up and it had a moment or two in the viral internet sun.  Apparently, the Soviets were doing digital photo manipulation several years before the release of the first version of Photoshop, which is very cool.  But of course, what caught my eye was the Apple III the technician is using to control the PERICOLOR-1000, which is actually a French device running Russian software.  From the brief glimpses we get of the III, it’s hard to make out the keys but the “><” key in the upper right corner where the “|\” is normally found on every Apple III I’ve ever seen, would seem to indicate that it’s a non-US keyboard.  Also, from the position of the Apple keys, this is an Apple III, not a III+.  I wonder if they have to pick it up three inches and drop it to reseat the chips between every image…

While the video doesn’t provide any information or historical context for the III, it’s always nice to see something like this.  Other than magazine ads from the era, and videos made in the present day by Apple III enthusiasts, Apple III-relevant multimedia is scarce.  The III appears briefly here and there in Apple II ads made when Apple was trying to convince the consumer that the III was part of the Apple II family, company shareholder reports, and not really anywhere else.   I chalk it up to Apple trying to position the III as a business machine and the fact that it had a very brief – and very rocky – lifespan.

The Apple III also gets a brief mention in this recent interview.  Eyal Akler of DaniWeb sat down with Woz and unfortunately, their discussion of the III is limited to the same old thing: its flaws.  It would be nice to see an article or interview that didn’t just rehash the technical problems suffered by the III and took a look at all the other stuff that was actually really great about Apple’s first business computer…  From an Apple II standpoint, there’s nothing new in the piece and, is it just me or do you get the sense that Woz is beginning to tire of the same old Apple II questions again and again?  Not that I blame him…

When the first Neverwinter Nights was released in 2002 (no, not that first NWN), it came with a very cool mod editor, the Aurora toolset, which allowed users to build and release their own content.  NWN isn’t the first game to come with mod tools, of course, but Bioware and Atari took it further than most other publishers had up to that point by actively promoting community content and even releasing user-created mod packs over the years following the initial release.  I played a handful of these mods, and my favorite had to be the various Ultima IV remakes.  These were basically total conversions aimed at modernizing the Ultima IV experience with the NWN Aurora engine.  While the actual playing experience of the early versions I played was hit-or-miss (the maps and models were great; the NPC dialog not so much), it was a great bit of nostalgia and a chance to replay one of my favorite Apple II games from a totally different perspective.  Development of the mods continued for quite some time – long after I’d moved on to other games – and some made the move to Neverwinter Nights 2 after its release, though I never played any of these.

This was all brought back to me this morning when I visited Retrogames and saw that a remake of Ultima VI using the Dungeon Siege game engine is available.  Ultima VI, of course, was the final version of the series released for the Apple II line.  Origin took a look at continuing to make new Ultima games for the Apple IIGS, but rightly decided that Apple wasn’t doing enough (or anything, really) to promote the IIGS and that the potential market would be too small to justify investing in development for the platform.

A little bit of Googling revealed that Ultima isn’t the only Apple II adventure title to get the remake treatment using a modern game engine.  The Bard’s Tale also appeared for the Aurora engine.  (I also came across Ultima: The Reconstruction, a page dedicated to tracking every remake effort out there., though it hasn’t been updated since 2007).  This got me thinking about two things: one, that I need to dig out my NWN and NWN 2 discs to give these games a second look; and two, what other Apple II games would be good candidates for the remake treatment?  The first that springs to mind is the unfinished Alternate Reality series.  Not only would it be neat to revisit a couple of my favorite titles (The City and The Dungeon were the only games that were completed), but it might be really great to finish the remaining titles that Philip Price and Paradise Programming were never able to get to.

Yes, I know that certain Apple II games have already been “remade” in various forms – Wasteland reappeared (sort of) as the Fallout series; The Oregon Trail is starting to show up on modern platforms.  Even The Bard’s Tale got a crappy remake in 2004 and there was talk as recently as a year ago of a possible Choplifter update, though there hasn’t been anything since the Gamespot post.   But it’s really neat to see some of my favorite adventure games redone by fan communities using mod tools.

What about you?  What titles would you like to see again?

The Britannia Height Map from the Britannia Cartography Project

Interestingly, this is one of the only pieces of Apple III advertising, other than scanned magazine print ads, that I’ve been able to find.

Apple II Forever!

The dates for next year’s “Summer Camp for Geeks”, KansasFest 2011 were announced today.  The annual celebration of all things Apple II will once again take place at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri.  Make sure you mark off your calendar for July 19 – 24.  No further details have been announced yet – hey, it’s still 11 months away – but stay tuned!  KansasFest has happened every summer now for more than 20 years and is still going strong, and as an Apple II hobbyist and lover, you really have no excuse not to be there.

Prices haven’t been posted, but if KansasFests past are any indication, saving for registration will cost you just over a dollar a day, if you start  putting your pennies away now.  And really, what can you buy these days for a dollar?  Not much, that’s what.  Where else will you have the opportunity to rub shoulders with your fellow Apple II geeks and luminaries past and present?  Nowhere, that’s where.  So start saving today, so you won’t have to come up with empty excuses next July.

Need more convincing? Take a look through the KansasFest Photo Galleries for a peek at what you’ve already missed.

To paraphrase one of my favorite Apple II geeks, there won’t always been a KansasFest, so make sure you get there!

Jason Scott‘s latest epic documentary “Get Lamp” arrived in my mailbox this afternoon.  Needless to say, life has been put on hold while I delve in.  I’ll post a full review later this weekend.  For now, I’m enjoying the return ride through the Great Underground Empire!  Thanks again, Jason!  Oh, and my coin? #0571.  Not too bad, I think.

Edit (8/12/10): my review is now scheduled to appear in the upcoming issue of Juiced.GS.