What Apple Giveth So Shall Apple Taketh Away Again

This just in: Apple has pulled the C64 emulator from the App store just hours after it went up. Apparently their original objection was to the emulator's inclusion of a BASIC prompt. This was disabled to get approval for the App store, but some ingenious geek found a way to re-enable BASIC access... prompting Apple to pull the app (and thereby ruining it for everyone else).

I'm not quite sure what possible damage the BASIC prompt could possibly do, but there's no arguing with Apple. Previously only the Pope claimed to be infallible... it seems Steve Jobs has joined him.

Flashback

A Commodore 64 emulator has just been released for iPhone (apparently after a number of rejections from Apple). Which takes me back to my very first computer... a C64 with tape drive that appeared under the Christmas tree more years ago than I care to admit.

Sadly, William Shatner never did a TV ad for the C64 like he did for the Vic 20 (although the C64 ad is pretty bitchy) but many fond hours were spent on it learning the skills I would one day need to take over the world. Actually, most of those hours were spent waiting for the tape drive to load a program. But it was still better than going outside and playing football.

When I was in university I finally bought a second-hand floppy disk drive (something I had coveted for years as a kid) but mostly the poor old C64 sat in a trunk, until we moved to Australia and my partner decided it wasn't worth the cost of freight and dumped it(!). Mark my words, that's going to be a sorely-missed exhibit when they set up my museum.

So I'm going to have to settle for the emulator (available now on the iTunes App store). It comes with 5 games, but I'll be keeping an eye out for my favourites in future releases.

I guess its a sign of getting old, all this retro hankering. Kids these days don't know how good they got it - why, in my day....