Holy shit. Just seeing that written out turned a light on in dark corner of my memory. I had completely forgotten about that until you mentioned it.

I remember AtEase from when I was a kid. Somehow I discovered it on our Macintosh Performa at home and was totally fascinated by it. Kinda like Mouse Practice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Practice), which I must have played a gazillion times.

Ah, i thought they were talking about MiniFinder:

https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/MiniFinder

https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/c29050e2-809c-c2a3-24e2-80...

But that was a bit earlier.

From what i remember, MiniFinder was written for MFS, and did not support hierarchical directories. You couldn't use applications unless they were at a filesystem root.

I used to bypass AtEase using MacBasic or something like that. Write a one liner to launch Finder, done.

Compare AtEase to your iOS home screen. We have come full circle?

It was AtEase. In the earlier macs, those with a button to trigger a debugger in firmware, you could completely exit AtEase by entering the debugger and typing “G H”

I know it worked on System 7, and I think there was a variation that worked in System 8 as well.