Alex Stone

Seeing this laptop in my Dash brought back a ton of memories.

Not only do I have one of these Powerbooks lying around in my parents’ house, but it still works and still runs Hypercard and KidPix, last I checked.

This was “my” (they were my dad’s, but I was allowed to use them) second computer, the first being an Apple IIe, purchased around the time I was born. I ran Hypercard and made little programs and adventure games.

When you hit the power button in the back, it makes the classic Apple start up noise, which continues to translate as a “we’re about to make stuff!” chime to me, even today.

Hypercard stacks I can remember off the top of my head:

• Simple rolodex app that was able to play dial tones, so you just held your phone up to the computer and hit a number and it’d dial it for you.
• A point-n-click adventure game where you explored my elementary school, looking for secrets. My first narrative, I think!
• Once I learned how to accept input from the keyboard and move things around by changing their x and y values, I took a stab at some super primitive puzzle games.

Alex Fun Factoid: The Hypercard days were followed up by HTML 1.0 web pages and the locally-popular Ti-Basic game, “Starwolf” (an ASCII-based Starfox clone).

Next time I’m at my parent’s house, I’ll try to dig these up and, if I can’t get runnable versions, I’d love to get little videos of these things.

(via minimalmac)