Do you miss System 7 and Mac OS 8 but don’t feel like investing in an old Macintosh? Mihai Parparita has the solution: he has developed two emulators that work directly through your browser. With just one click, you’re instantly on the desktop of System 7 or Mac OS 8.
For #MARCHintosh2022 I’m launching two web-based classic Mac emulators: https://t.co/ENVg0cD75u and https://t.co/Kuyjc0HzWI.
They boot instantly, are filled with useful programs, allow data import, export and persistence, and try to bring the best of the web to retrocomputing. pic.twitter.com/tLgt7DisEF
— Mihai Parparita (@mihai) April 1, 2022
The emulation is quite well done: you can switch to full screen mode or even send files from your Mac to the emulator using a simple drag and drop. Several applications are included, and you can choose to draw on Mac Paint or launch a game of the famous game Another World. The more serious can work on the version of Word or Nisus Writer included. It is even possible to export the documents created in the emulator to use them on a modern macOS.
The performance of the emulator is amazing and the system launches in a handful of seconds. Although several applications do not start, the rest generally works well and without lag: a great opportunity to rediscover these OSes that have marked the history of Apple.
If you are interested in the technical aspect, the developer has given several details in a blog post. It covers optimization and performance issues, but also how the emulator communicates with modern macOS for importing files. This is not the first time that a developer has had fun emulating old versions of Apple systems: an Electron application was released in 2020 allowing you to play with Mac OS 8.
