> Infinite Mac is a collection of classic Macintosh and NeXT system releases and software, all easily accessible from the comfort of a web browser.
One of the most intriguing items in the article is a link to a PPC CPU emulator in less than 700 lines of code:
https://github.com/kwhr0/macemu/blob/master/SheepShaver/src/...
You see that kind of succinctness in 6502 emulators, not usually relatively modern architectures.
I can't imagine what it would feel like to be a 20 year old tech enthusiast today confronted with OS X 10.4 (or .5 or .6)
In my bitterness, it makes me think of someone in the Dark Ages, standing before a Classical sculpture: "how was it that humanity was once capable of such works?"
But tastes change. In the Dark Ages, what they actually thought was probably "what heathen decadence is this?", and today maybe they think "photo-realistic icons: cringe!"
The screenshots... wow!
To me, Mac OS X looks so much better than todays Mac OS. It looks clear and orderly and I feel like "Great in this environment I can get some work done!".
Current Mac OS feels like "Help, I fell into a sack of candies, how do I get out of here?" to me.
Does anybody else feel like that?
Oh looky looky some of my fondly-remembered UIs: Platinum circa Macintosh OS 8. MacOS X lickables refined circa 10.3, 10.4.
I also fondly recall OpenLook on SunOS/Slowlaris and NeXTStep/OpenStep UIs and peak Microsoft Windows right on 2000 before the playskool never-ever-mix-orange-and-green Winblows XP. IRIX and plenty of Motif-esque joy on SGI.
UI elements were almost always distinct, understandable, consistent. If I was to actuate a standard UI control, I always knew exactly what I expected to happen before, and it happened exactly as I expected after.
Making them customized, themable, replaceable, more cool, well, that's what we have today, kind of in exchange I suppose..
Surprising that he had success with a project (pearpc) that had its last commit 10+ years ago: https://github.com/sebastianbiallas/pearpc
His fork is at https://github.com/mihaip/pearpc
I suppose it retains x86-64 support despite adding a webassembly target.
Edit: he also blogged about adding NextStep to Infinite Mac: https://blog.persistent.info/2024/03/infinite-mac-nextstep.h...
I love things like this. Aqua was such a revelation at the time.
Those early OS X years were a real golden age for the Mac - the hardware was quite competitive with x86, and the OS was as good as it's ever been. Eventually the wheels started coming off both.
We're in a second golden age of hardware, so I can dream that maybe one day soon Mac OS will be amazing again.
(Despite the new hardware golden age, the emulation performance here is pretty close to unusable on an M1 with Safari, unfortunately.)
> It’s not particularly snappy, but as someone who lived through that period, I can tell you that it wasn’t much better on real hardware
As a Hackintosh user around ~2008, I can only second that. It adds even more to the realism that it's just as sluggish as it was on my computer back then. Luckily I didn't have to wait ~24 hours for installation to finish.
Oh what lengths I went through, just to be able to build some crappy Apps for my iPod Touch back then.
I went through several sections of the article and I am still none the wiser about what this project is. Is it a software emulator? If so, on which platforms does it run? How do I download it? Or is it a hardware device? The article jumps right into the middle of things and bombards the reader with jargon without explaining anything for the HN user like me, who just stumbled upon the link on the home page and is trying to understand the project.
Dark Castle!
Dad had an Apple Lisa when I was young. Apple kindly gave it to him as he was developing an accountancy suite for Apple.
I took this incredible machine for granted, and only used it for games and MacPaint at the time. Among Dad's collection of 3.5" disks was one labelled "Dark Castle." For reasons I don't recall, it wouldn't work on the Lisa, but I guessed it was a game, and it killed me that I couldn't play it. I was beguiled by this mysterious disk.
Well fast forward to 2025... I just launched the Infinite Mac System 7 emulator https://infinitemac.org/1991/System%207.0
My heart skipped a beat. Inside the "Games" folder - there it is! Dark Castle.
Three decades later, I'm finally able to play this game!
The graphics are charming. Elements of a Sierra classic, Kings Quest, and some Prince of Persia too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Castle
That's my evening sorted!
I think this is one of the things that makes systemd popular. A consequence of it being such a baseline of cross-cutting functionality is it necessarily goes against the classic unix philosophy.
> [PearPC] did this successfully for a few years, until interest waned after the Intel switch
Well, until the original maintainer was hit by a train and killed. It lost most of its momentum after that.
I was an avid user and community member at the time. It still brings a tear to my eye thinking about it.
https://www.wired.com/2004/07/pearpc-coauthor/