Category: News

APRIL 1, 2022 — LEOMINSTER, MA — Microsoft, hot on the heels of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, has announced that it will be acquiring Apple II magazine Juiced.GS from publisher Gamebits.

“Just as Steve Wozniak likes repeating numbers, we prefer round numbers,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “After spending $68.7 billion on Activision, we thought, what are we going to do with the other $31.3 billion? We let our employees enter their ideas into a raffle, and someone in the gaming division thought this was a good idea.”

Microsoft, best known for Applesoft BASIC and the Z-80 SoftCard, previously published MSDN Magazine, which ran 2000–2019. Its newest brand, Juiced.GS, was founded in 1997, in an era when other Apple II magazines were being shut down by major publishers such as IDG, Ziff-Davis, and Quality Computers. As the longest-running Apple II print magazine, Juiced.GS has enjoyed independence and autonomy, empowering it to succeed where others have failed.

“Being a person of editorial integrity, I always said that there was no price for which we could be bought,” said publisher Ken Gagne. “Turns out I just hadn’t seen that many zeroes before.”

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer was equally enthusiastic. “I was looking at the staff list, I mean, let’s go!” Spencer said. “Ivan Drucker, Ewen Wannop… I should know this, but I think they got Max Jones.”

Future production of Juiced.GS will benefit from the many excellent tools in Microsoft’s portfolio. The seasoned staff of retrocomputing writers will abandon traditional team collaboration tools Slack and Trello in favor of Skype and Microsoft Teams. In a shift from Google Docs, article revisions will be tracked using the version control features of Microsoft subsidiary GitHub. And, in a move sure to please many long-time subscribers, new issues will be immediately available in a digital format. (Xbox Game Pass subscription required)

“This may seem an odd marriage on the Surface, but it will really give us an Edge,” endorsed Gagne.

As part of the buyout, Gagne will remain in his position for the duration of the transition, which, let’s be honest, shouldn’t take more than a week. He’ll then be relocated within Microsoft to a position where he can bring his decades of writing and gaming experience to the table.

“I always thought dropping Z-machine in favor of Eamon would’ve kept Infocom alive,” mused Gagne, referring to a division of Activision now owned by Microsoft. “Now I can finally make that happen.”