Apple //e running source code loaded from an iPad

Stick with us here -- this is complicated but cool. So, Stewart Smith happened to see online that the Panic Software guys had an old Apple IIe (sorry, //e) sitting around their office, and he emailed to ask them if they could possibly use it to run an old text animation that he'd created for a song a while back. Being the considerate guys that they are, they agreed. There was a problem, though: Stewart's code was meant to be played on the old cassette deck source, and they didn't have one. "What did we have?" they ask, and the answer is, "an iPad."

You can see the results in video over on their site, and they are magical. There are a couple of amazing things here: one, that the old source code can be "read" just as easily coming out of the iPad's audio port as it was when coming out of cassette tapes back in the day, and two, that the //e runs it so well. Let's also remember that we're watching it happen across the Internet in full audio and video quality, possibly even on an iPad itself. For all of the new and shiny that Apple has brought us recently, you almost forget how much history is building here, and it's somewhat surprising that a connection can be made between then and now so easily and elegantly.