Turning an iPad Pro into the Ultimate Classic Macintosh (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Turning an iPad Pro into the Ultimate Classic Macintosh (2021)

blog.gingerbeardman.com

119 pointssurprisetalk35 comments

HN thread at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26854990

And some follow-on posts by the author

https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/tag/emulation/

MacOS System 7 looks like it would be a nice native interface for an e-paper tablet. I never used a Newton.

Yeah - having originally designed the interface for a very low dot pitch 512x342, it turns out to be practically made for fingers when you integer-scale!

I know people have swapped out the classic Macs CRTs for an LCD, but I wonder if anyone has tried it with an e-ink display? I've always thought the same thing regarding the classic pre-MacOS 8 systems on e-ink.

You can't show animations with e-ink, because the refresh rate is very low. How would you even show a mouse pointer?

Your information is badly out of date: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39198053>

Yeah, too bad that eInk can't handle the fast refresh needed for, as was pointed, out, even a moving cursor.

Knowing this limitation though, I created created a kind of eInk calendar instead - as a love letter to my Mac Plus from the 90's.

https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SystemSix

Your information is badly out of date: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39198053>

E-ink's quality and refresh rates are inversely related. Whilst generally it's preferable to use a high-quality mode and slow (0.25 -- 4 Hz) refresh rate, refresh of as high as ~8 -- 16 Hz is possible. Video and animation quality here are not great but they are usable in a pinch.

Video of an Onyx BOOX Note displaying video, which I can vouch for from a similar (Max Lumi) device:

<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XRDJv_-wWBI>

For a relatively static GUI display (such as the Classic Mac), e-ink displays are in fact viable, and there are e-ink devices sold specifically as computer monitors:

<https://shop.boox.com/products/mira>

For a demonstration of the capabilities of various e-ink displays (least capable are first), see: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=KdrMjnYAap4>

I'd want a B&W, line- or halftone-oriented graphics, and relatively static window placement in general, with paginated rather than scroll-based displays (that is, content updates a full screen at a time rather than scrolling). It's not that scrolling isn't possible, it's just that it's really annoying. And there's a reason e-ink devices tend to use line drawings or etchings as demo / sleep screens (see Diaspora* post below for example).

I've written numerous times on HN about what the benefits and affordances of e-ink are, e.g.:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31396797>

<https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...>

Clarifying my first point: it's often possible to select amongst a range of quality/refresh options for a given display, either globally or for a given app (as with an Android e-ink tablet).

In which case, higher display quality (more pixels, sharper boundaries, deeper blacks, whiter whites, and less ghosting) tends to come with slower display response.

When you're reading static text, page-by-page, that's an acceptable trade-off. If you want to scroll, zoom, or pan through content, or are looking at animations or video, you'll want lower definition & sharpness but higher refresh.

And remember that once an image is displayed, it will persist indefinitely without further power to the display.

Classic Mac OS all the way up through OS 9 handles 1-bit and grayscale displays quite well.

I’ve thought for some time now that if one were build a System 7.5/Mac OS 8 laptop with an e-ink or high quality transflective display (like that found on the Playdate[0]) and new 68k/PPC SoC built on a modern node with a modern battery, the resulting device would be surprisingly useful even if lacked connectivity. It’d sip power, with battery life likely measured in weeks or months and could probably be kept charged with a lid-sized solar panel.

[0]: https://play.date/

> It’d sip power

Are you sure? I think Classic MacOS effectively always busy-looped (WaitNextEvent would block, but only if the OS could run another event loop), never sleeping its (single) CPU.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/ma...:

“The Event Manager reports a null event when your application requests an event and your application’s event stream does not contain any of the requested event types”

If that’s true, that modern node CPU would not sleep most of the time, but just loop a lot faster.

Would a 68k on a modern node running at a fraction of its potential max speed burn through very much power? Apple managed to get multiple hours of battery life out of 68k chips on classic MacOS PowerBooks...

Would it be any different than, say, battery-powered portables like the TRS-80 Model 100?

As described at the time, the contemporary Sinclair Z88 had a separate bit of management logic that kept the Z80 CPU asleep until there was some interaction, in order to get ludicrous runtimes on 4xAA. (I wouldn't be surprised if the Model 100 did similarly, but there was no point in doing it on machines that plugged into the wall...)

You could do this to an emulated 68k Mac as well, software written after the PowerBooks shipped should all be ok with being held in sleep most of the time. A few things would need hacks like cursor blink (don't do it) and updating displays like clocks (wake every minute?). Interesting.

Note that that function has a sleep parameter. It doesn't return until an event has arrived or the sleep time has elapsed.

I may be mistaken, but I don’t think Apple ever stopped the CPU (a 68000 could be stopped and continue running on an interrupt, but I don’t think they ever used that)

Yeah, it might not have saved power, but it did allow the machine to spend time on useful things.

So the CPU on a PowerBook never went into a low power state? The maximum power draw of a 68020 apparently was 1.75W, so I guess it's possible.

Does the 68020 even have low power states? I couldn’t find a definitive answer, but did find https://www.manualslib.com/download/1342088/Motorola-Mc68020... and https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/MC68020UM.pdf, which dont’t seem to mention them.

I have 9.2.2 on an old imac with an SSD on it, it’s lovely.

I don't know enough about how e-paper is better than e-ink, bit it would need to support 60fps for smooth cursor movement and animation. I don't see the benefit myself, because even though System 7 looks best in black and white the apps you run can and do still display in colour.

Newton can be emulated on your iPhone or iPad using an app called Einstein, but you'll need a stylus as the interface elements are tiny and require a great deal of precision.

NB, "e-ink" is a special case of "e-paper".

The terms "e-paper" or "electronic paper" tends to be a generic label usually applied to electrophoretic displays, though there are numerous other technologies (Gyricon, electrowetting, interferometry, plasmonics).

E-Ink[tm] is a specific technology and trademark owned by E-Ink Corporation, covered by numerous patents, and to date has relied on electrophoretics.

I've addressed display characteristics in another comment to this thread here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39198053>.

I can assure you that if e-ink characteristics and strengths are addressed by UI/UX design, e-ink can be quite satisfactory and is often preferable to other display options.

My formative Mac experience was System 7, with the 8-bit and 16-bit (in the UI it was named "256" and "Thousands") color display. The icons and desktop UI was wondrous.

Ah, you’ve brought me back to the first time I saw a Mac LC with those options in the Monitors panel, after years with monochrome IIcx, IIsi, and SE/30s. The color bloom, the beautiful gradients—indeed, it was an age of miracle and wonder.

This kind of stuff is why I can’t wait to be able to sideload apps soon in the EU

This. Came here to say this.

I wrote this blog post and I'm currently waiting to see if I need to renew my Apple developer membership or not!

I used mini vmac a couple of years back to play prince of persia, dark castle and fools errand on my ipad, it was amazing how it transported me back to another time.

What's the advantage of this? Can't you use a modern paint program? What am I missing? Is it just coolness factor?

A bit of nostalgia.

No, it's much more than that. It's form, function, utility, and possibilities not present in modern software. Newer isn't always better.

A lot of software or features have been discarded in the name of "progress".

You can use modern software bit it's not a given that you'll be able to do everything that you could in the past, or that it will be as easy and straightforward if you can still do it.

Perhaps it's surprised to hear that there are things these old apps and operating system can do that no modern software can do as well? Drawing in dither patterns is one (useful today for platforms such as Playdate), but there are many more.

Very interesting.

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