Mac OS 7 installed and running on the iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Mac OS 7 installed and running on the iPhone

macosiphone.co.cc

That is just more awesome than I can describe in words. Man, what memories of OS7

Sorry, I think I just accidentally down-modded you when I was trying to do the opposite!

Classic Mac OS has been 'ported' (that is to say, emulated) on many, many platforms. It can still play many impressive games and the original hardware wasn't terribly beefy, so it's a great candidate for emulation on weaker devices. That's not to say the iPhone is weak (it isn't), just that this has been done more impressively elsewhere.

For example, there's MinivMacDS: http://lazyone.drunkencoders.com/wordpress/?p=41

There was MinivMac for iPhone before: http://namedfork.net/iphone/minivmac/screenshots.html

Basilisk II for PSP: http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=3741

It also helps that a lot of the emulation materials are legally free. Apple gives out the disk images for System 6 and 7 on their website, for example.

...And with that, the iPhone gained Copy + Paste capability.

Mac OS 7 was the reason I hated mac's from 1996-1998. I am curious what virtues it could possibly have because I just remember having to run around the UCLA computer lab troubleshooting that OS futzing with the network printer daemon.

Virtues? It runs in comically small amounts of memory and on processors without much puff; yet is beefy enough to handle serious DTP, early Photoshop and the web.

I'm not saying it's something to switch to today, but System 7 has features that OS X still hasn't got around to matching, especially in Finder speed/snappiness.

It it is a problem to solve. Hackers need little excuse beyond that. I think that's why most people appreciate the hack.

Just keep in mind that the other major GUI available when 7 launched was Windows 3.0. It has multitasking, virtual memory and peer-to-peer networking. Quite impressive for the time.

Agreed, MacOS 7 brings back more bad memories than good. I think the virtue here though is not Mac OS 7 itself, but rather the interesting exercise in OS porting.

It's neat, but not particularly impressive or interesting. It's an emulator running as a user space application; The iPhone isn't running Mac OS 7 natively (of course, it can't, since they use different CPU architectures, etc).

There have been classic Mac emulators for OS X for awhile now, and porting it to the iPhone was probably quite easy.

Reminds me of the current Louis CK meme floating about. System 7 is running on your phone. While it in itself right now isn't the most amazing thing, the series of events leading up to it is.

How can you not like System 7. It introduces tinted 3D folders for goodness sake.

I believe that was OS 8, actually.

As I drift off to memory land, I still remember the System 7.5.3 update that made icons that were being dragged translucent. That was so exciting back then :)

Editor should probably switch link to the much less ad-happy source: http://www.macosiphone.co.cc/

agreed. Sadly, I cannot change the url, only the title. Editors/PG feel free to change to the less ad happy source RMS provided: http://www.macosiphone.co.cc/

Thanks, that is a much better link.

The article writer complains about not being able to enter text, but that's what the Key Caps desk accessory was for. It provided text entry via copy/paste for keyboard-less "kiosk" systems, which were common back in the day. (My university used them for printing stations and short term internet/e-mail terminals. Unlike Windows 3.1 (which could to be used without a mouse), classic era Macs could be feasibly used without a keyboard.)

Very Nice + here is the first serverside app, that let you watch TV on the iPhone without installing an app: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-RLkfBf4cw

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