''Nibble'' was a magazine for

Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...

personal computer enthusiasts published from 1980 until 1992. The nibble, name means "half a byte" or "four bits." The proper spelling for a half-byte is "nybble", riffing off of the term "byte". Most of the articles incorporated the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

of a small to medium-sized utility, application program, or game (each written specifically for the magazine) and a detailed description of how it worked. The headquarters was in

Lincoln, Massachusetts Lincoln is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 7,014 according to the 2020 United States census, including residents of Hanscom Air Force Base who live within town limits. The town, located in the MetroWe ...

History

The magazine was first published in January 1980 by Mike Harvey. Originally published eight times per year, by 1984 the magazine had attained a popularity that allowed it to become a monthly publication. It was published for more than twelve years; the July 1992 issue was the last. The magazine also published checksum tables that, with utilities available from the magazine, helped pinpoint the location of any errors in a reader's own typed-in copy. The programs were also available on disk for a small fee for those who did not want to spend the time to type them in. A technical highlight of ''Nibble'' was a regular column called Disassembly Lines, in which Dr. Sanford Mossberg presented assembly listings he had reverse-engineered from interesting parts of

Applesoft BASIC Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with Apple II computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in Read-only memory, ROM in all Apple II series computers after the ori ...

and the

Apple DOS Apple DOS is the disk operating system for the Apple II computers from late 1978 through early 1983. It was superseded by ProDOS in 1983. Apple DOS has three major releases: DOS 3.1, DOS 3.2, and DOS 3.3; each one of these three releases was foll ...

to illustrate how they worked. Later Mossberg turned his attention to the Apple IIGS and dissected its Toolbox and operating system as well.

Omnibus edition An omnibus edition or omnibus is a book containing multiple creative works by the same or, more rarely, different authors. Commonly two or more of the works have been previously published as books, but a collection of shorter works, or shorter w ...

s of the best articles from each year's issues, dubbed ''Nibble Express,'' were published annually. The magazine also published other books that repurposed magazine material on various topics, such as games, personal finance programs, and "Apple secrets." Mossberg's Disassembly Lines columns were also collected in four volumes. Harvey's publishing company, MicroSPARC (later MindCraft), published a number of Apple II programming utilities including an assembler and a BASIC-like set of macros for it. These were sold by mail-order from ads in the magazine. (Trivia: the company changed its name after

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

bought the name MicroSPARC for a new line of processors.) A spinoff Macintosh publication, ''Nibble Mac,'' was first a section in ''Nibble'' and then was published separately. Like the original, ''Nibble Mac'' focused on hobbyist programming, notably

HyperCard HyperCard is a application software, software application and software development kit, development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard com ...

. Most of the ''Nibble'' material, including ''Nibble Mac,'' is now available again from the publisher through his Web site.

References

External links

Official site
Monthly magazines published in the United States Apple II periodicals Defunct computer magazines published in the United States Home computer magazines Magazines established in 1980 Magazines disestablished in 1992 Magazines published in Massachusetts Eight times annually magazines published in the United States {{compu-mag-stub