CLIQUES : Apple Corps
The infobahn is bumper to bumper with hot-rodding computer owners zooming around with their Pentiums and Power Macs and every high-speed peripheral they can afford. Computer vendors call them heat-seekers.
What, then, to call the Valley Apple Computer Club? This small but dedicated group of Apple addicts in the San Fernando Valley is happily sticking to the computer backroads and Model Ts of yesteryear. No Macintosh owners need apply: This clutch of retro-hackers consists only of Apple II owners.
Why such passion for a computer whose main users these days are students in districts too cash-strapped to upgrade? For these 30 or so stalwarts, Apple II computers and AppleWorks, the word- and data-processing program created for the II series, are still the best--and simplest--ways to store and retrieve information. “If your needs are a VW Bug,” says Howard Bartnof, “it’s a great car.” Echoes Dave Johnson, who operates the club’s electronic bulletin board: “They still do the job for us like they did in 1984. Bigger is not always better.”
They watch with glee as their power-user buddies wait and wait and wait for their more powerful but more heavily burdened Power Macs to boot up. They snicker as their friends’ state-of-the-art, feature-laden, memory-grabbing word-processor or spreadsheet slogs its way through miles of code before it can be used. Bartnof, a tax attorney, has tried the modern spreadsheet programs and they try his patience. “With AppleWorks,” he says, “I can be in and out in five minutes.”
The club members meet once a month at Aggeler High School in Chatsworth to trade stories about their IIs, give lessons on AppleWorks and other programs and offer advice on fixing the aging guts of the computers. The club and its newsletter also keep members up to date on, gasp, progress in the Apple II world. One recent article, for example, alerted them to an updated version of AppleWorks. Another writer told how his Apple II was keeping up just fine with newer vehicles on the information superhighway.
Only a few years ago, there were several Apple II clubs around L.A., but the Valley club is now the area’s only organized outlet for II-series users and their questions. Even so, membership is dwindling. Ten years ago, the club had 160 members, more than five times its current number.
You can forgive them for feeling like the world is ignoring them. When Apple Computer gets calls from panicked Apple II users, it sometimes gives out Bartnof’s number.
