http://kokorononaka.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=35025

> Now let me go and search for that game you’re asking for…

You’ll never find it. I’ve tried for several years, posted on various forums and even wrote an email to our former Computer Science teacher (he never answered me, the bastard – but what can one expect from a Hillcrest-jerk anyway). But thanks for any kind of effort. :-)

Some of those needs (world traveller map) can also be fulfilled with a Nokia E-Series phone, btw. E71, E72. Come and I’ll show you next time you’re in FFM!

Now let me go and search for that game you’re asking for…

Apart from that, I keep on talking about the iphone with my friends and colleagues, many of whom already have one. But all it runs down to, is demonstrations about funny gags and addictive games.
The proper apps which actually make sense (for me) are currency converters, timezone-adjusted clocks, electronic loogbooks, or flight duty limitation calculators. All very well, but nothing which I couldn’t also do on my laptop.

For instance here, in the United Arab Emirates, I quite often need to know the sunrise and sunset times. Passengers usually ask for them, because of their compulsory prayer times.
Telling them the direction to Muq’qa (Mecca) is easy, it just requires one look at the compass. But the sunrise depends also on the moving aircraft’s geographic position and altitude – making a signifficant difference – it’s very embarassing to announce sunrise in “30 minutes from now”, and it’s still dark after an hour… ;-)
This calculation could be done by checking out the relevant tables in the Jeppesen-manuals and applying some mathematic interpolation, or by software. I have that on my laptop, together with a detailed worldmap I can view all relevant times for each city on the planet with more than 2.000 inhabitants (!), as well as using various additional features and options.
I’m sure an iphone could also do it, but would it be even better in any way whatsoever? Apart from looking cool, of course.

Well, as I said, I still can’t convince myself to buying it.

But I’ve had my first Apple-product much earlier than you, JKE, I’m afraid (although I’m not sure if that still counts after 21 years): An Apple //e :-)
It was, and still is today!, a fantastic machine! It beat any other kid’s equipment, back in the eighties, when everyone still used to have a Commodore 64 (or less).

Now comes the real connection back to today’s world: I still have an Apple // – emulator installed on my laptop, and use it quite a lot! You see, an old kid like me still depends 99% on ye good ole BASIC, to write any code.
So I have all sorts of self-written programs in Applesoft, using my acer-Notebook as a 1984-model Apple eight bit machine with (also emulated) 5,25″ floppy drives. It took nothing but a few hours of easy work to create software for ALL of the mentioned tasks above. :-)
Oh, and some of the old games, like “Aztec”, “Taipan”, “Star Blazer”, “Swashbuckler”, etc. are also unbeaten by anything else. Goddamnit, if I wanted to, I could even use “Applewriter II” for most of my letters, and scrap MS-Word. A bit far-fetched maybe, but try that with your smartphone.

Okay, maybe I shouolld just shut up and get back into the crypt of Z80-CPUs…

But anybody who can find and email me the game “XONIX” for the Apple IIe in .dsk-format, I’ll pay them a hundred Euros cash!
It is my all-time favorite on the IIe (don’t mention any other platform to me though), and I just can’t find it anywhere. It used to be extremely popular in my old school (Hillcrest Secondary), but on all the software-archives on the internet that claim to be “complete”, I just can’t find it anywhere.

Sorry for hijacking your blog, JKE ;-)