Tag: computing

Now Run System 6 and Mac OS 9 In Your Browser

A while back we linked to Infinite Mac’s surprisingly deep emulation of Mac OS Classic System 7 and Mac OS 8 (they’re both of the same line of operation systems despite the change in name) in web browsers. Since then they’ve also added System 6 and Mac OS 9 to their offerings, in addition to a Japanese version of System 7.

Mac OS 9

Features a good variety of software including games and productivity, a full-screen mode, built-in networking with friends on the internet by specifying the same subdomain allowing such tricks as online sessions of Marathon, and a fairly easy way of adding your own software.

If you use this and want to keep files between sessions, make sure that you move or copy them to the Saved folder, under The Outside World. Read the purple Sticky for more information on getting files into and out of the emulation.

I find that Classic Mac OS has a power to inspire nostalgia that OS X doesn’t. It might have to do with how so many of its conventions dated back to the original Macintosh release from 1984. Multitasking came to Macintosh after the fact, so when it arrived Mac OS used a cooperative multitasking paradigm, that meant one misbehaving program could bring down the whole machine. Yet the system felt smaller, like there wasn’t as much unfathomable technology between the computer and the user. And I still dig that crisp pixel art used for the icons. It is possible to have too much anti-aliasing.

Infinite Mac’s emulatons of System 6, System 7, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9 and Japanese System 7.

Recollections on the Creation of the Original Macintosh

Folklore.org hosts a whole bunch (123!) of stories about the creation of the Macintosh, and assorted other topics, from its creators.

Among the stories are on Steve Jobs’ “Reality Distortion Field,” the first image that Mac hardware ever displayed, Jobs’ enthusiasm for rounded rectangles, the creation of MousePaint for the Apple II, and many more things.

In related news, the source code to the Mac’s predecessor/sibling, the Apple Lisa, has recently been released to the public.

Folklore.org: The Original Macintosh

Video: The Sad End of Phil Katz

We mostly try to stick with games here, but just about everyone in the Windows ecosystem uses ZIP archive files. They’ve long become a de facto standard, with tools for working with them in Windows supplied by Microsoft as early as the Windows 95 Powertoys Plus! Pack. Nowadays, support for them is built right into Windows Explorer, and you can even open them like folders, which felt like some kind of magic when that feature debuted.

The ZIP format was once one of several competing compression and archiving formats, with others being LHA/LZH, ARC, ARJ, CAB, and of course on the Unix/Linux side of things Tar, Gzip and GZ. Other than the Unix types, those others are mostly dead now. There are some relative newcomers, RAR and 7Z, but most people just stick with ZIP without even caring to know of the format’s origins.

ZIP was the format produced by the shareware PKZip compression tools, named for its co-creator Phil Katz. Katz created it in response to a lawsuit from the company behind the (now obscure) SEA format. Rather than fight it, he and Gary Conway designed their own format and made tools to work with it. Then as now, the world loves an underdog, and many people flocked to the format. In 1989 they released the format to the public domain.

Phil Katz’s later life was ruined by alcoholism, which the above video from the Dave’s Garage YouTube channel is about. A sad end to someone who popularized a piece of technology that still sees use millions of times a day.

ZIP is so ubiquitous now that lots of people use it without even realizing. DOCX, ODF, EPUB, and JAR are all secret ZIP files under the hood.

Katz’s company PKWare remains to this day, although they’re now focused on data security, and as you can see from their website they now look exactly like the kind of faceless monolith that all tech companies eventually mutate into. They still steward the format, and in that tonedeaf way of corporations, now hold a forbidding number of patents, and claim, “The free license grant offered in prior APPNOTE publications has been discontinued.” Presumably people just use the last public domain version, since once something is in the public domain, it’s there forever, thank frog.

(EDIT: xot on Twitter mentions that Windows ZIP support first appeared in the Win95 Plus! Pack, correction made above.)

The Dark History of Zip Files (YouTube, Dave’s Garage)