2016 Stick Edition of afternoon
The 16th Edition of afternoon, a story was released in 2016, the same year optical disks were discontinued on Macintosh computers. It had been nine years since the 2007 CD-ROM Edition had been published and five years since Apple's introduction of MacOS X 10.7.5. When the new edition arrived in the hands of readers, it was packaged as a USB Stick produced with Storyspace 3.0 for Macintosh computers only. As of this writing, it is still not available for Windows computers. It is important to note that only three works from the 48 published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. have been published in this media format: afternoon, a story, Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl (1995), and Bernstein's Those Trojan Girls (2016).
A comparison between the editions Eastgate Systems, Inc. published on floppy disk with those published from the 13th Edition onward shows a marked difference of aesthetic, with the latter three editions offering a contemporary interface that readers of the early 21st century had come to expect from their interactive media. While the 2001 and 2007 CD-ROM Editions still display testimonials on the back insert of their jewel cases extolling the work as a hypertext, the 2016 Stick Edition does not have the space to include such information.
As with all editions of afternoon, a story, the work opens to a title page. This one is, however, identical to the 2001 CD-ROM Edition's, identifying it also as the "6th Edition 2007" with the two copyright dates "1987, 1992" also mentioned. Because screen resolution had continued to improve over the ensuing years, the 2016 Stick Edition's title page is wider than the previous editions, leaving more white space on the right hand side and further deemphasizing the logo and associated information. The typeface, though, remains the same. It should be noted that the graphic featured on the title page is the same one used for previous editions except when accessing the work with a computer running MacOS X 10.15.5 (Catalina). Readers with computers running this operating system will also notice the opening graphic is missing. Also of interest is that the graphic remains the black and white image of the woods used for both the 2001 and 2007 CD-ROM Editions.