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.

Why am I bringing this up?  One, to remind my two loyal readers that there’s no lack of ventures any one of us can choose to be involved in.  There may not be much going on in software or hardware development these days, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do.  The Apple II community these days is a civil place filled with smart, knowledgeable people willing answer any questions, and I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t welcome another helping hand with whatever project they’re working on.  All you have to do is ask.

The second reason I’m writing this is to remind myself that I need to post here more often.  I have a basement full of Apple II projects just waiting to be started.   (My wife would likely point out that some of those projects are beginning to creep upstairs and into the living room.)  Briefly, my to-do list looks something like this:

- Repair or cannibalize the Franklin ACE 2100 damaged in the shelf collapse.

- Break out my new, still unopened soldering iron and start to re-learn soldering.

- Clean and re-align a handful of Apple Disk III drives.

- Troubleshoot and repair two dead Apple IIIs.

- Learn Apple II assembly language and Pascal, and refresh myself on Apple Logo.

- Finish at least two partially-complete articles for upcoming Juiced.GS issues.

- Figure out how to get myself to KansasFest this year.

- Finish several on-going scanning projects for apple2scans.net.

- Finish the Apple IIe Card set up in my Macintosh Color Classic.

So here’s my little kick in the butt from me to you (but more to me): get involved, do something.  The late Ryan Suenaga used to say, if you’re a programmer and you come to KansasFest without something to show, you suck.  I’m going to modify that slightly and say, if you’re an Apple II user and you’re not actively involved in your chosen hobby, you suck.

What does your Apple II to-do list look like? And how many items have you already crossed off your list?

It didn’t take long for us to hit on the idea of doing a co-hosted podcast together.  Just a couple of Apple II fans hanging out and talking about the hobby we love.  And so, the Open Apple podcast was born.  This past weekend, after a test run and an aborted first attempt, we wrapped our first episode.  Since then. Ken has been hard at work behind the scenes, setting up the website, editing the audio streams and advertising the heck out of it.  All I can say is… Wow!  Thanks, Ken.

So anyway, the first episode of the Open Apple podcast is now available in iTunes, the Kindle Store (note that it’s currently listed for $1.99 – this is incorrect.  It’s free.  Hopefully, Amazon will correct this quickly), or directly from our website.  Check it out, if you have a few minutes.  I think you’ll like it. (And if you do, we’d appreciate the feedback!)

Update: Ken just forwarded me the following info, regarding the Open Apple Kindle listing.

“A note about the Kindle listing, though: it isn’t, and won’t be, free.  When I said the price would be corrected, I should’ve specified that it’ll drop from $1.99 to $0.99.  Yes, our RSS is free, but to the best of my knowledge, Amazon doesn’t offer RSS subscription functionality via its hardware as a free feature. :-\

“Also, AFAIK, Amazon will deliver to its customers the blog text only, not MP3 episodes.

“It’s really not a very functional service.”

So, there you have it.  Personally, I’d stick to iTunes or our webpage…

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.