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Infinite Mac

macos8.app

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Re: Infinite Mac

#241

Post by layer8 »

perardi wrote: post #227
PortiaBerries wrote: post #208

Sigh, this makes me realize how much I loved computers when I was a kid (1990s) and how much I hate them now.

I can’t tell if it’s just simple nostalgia, but I feel it too. I got my first Mac when I was in 4th grade in 1994. (A Performa 630CD, which is so slow that I assume my AirPods have an order of magnitude more computational power.) By god I loved that thing. And I think in part it’s because I could poke at it. You could fiddle around inside the System Folder. You could modify application resources with ResEdit. You cou…

It was a uniformly designed tool and simple enough that you could feel to have full control over. Nowadays not so much, either because of walled-garden aspirations (Windows, macOS) and/or increasing complexity and fracturedness (on Linux for example the whole X/Wayland, DE, GUI toolkits, hi-DPI and font rendering mess, package managers vs. snap/flatpak and containers, …).

Re: Infinite Mac

#242

Post by grishka »

PortiaBerries wrote: post #208

Sigh, this makes me realize how much I loved computers when I was a kid (1990s) and how much I hate them now.

May that be because most of the modern software, including operating systems, is a royal clusterfuck of superfluous abstractions and arbitrary design decisions prioritizing looks over function?

And games. Games back then were definitely better.

(I've never used classic Mac OS when it was current — almost no one here could afford a Mac, and those who could didn't buy one either because everyone else used Windows)

Re: Infinite Mac

#243

Post by idreyn »

duskwuff wrote: post #118
idreyn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the Graphics folder! (It crashed immediately for me in Firefox, though)

FWIW: The emulator dynamically loads chunks of the hard disk over the network, and will usually crash if that fails -- which can happen if the site is busy.

I tried it again and was able to use it this time!

Re: Infinite Mac

#244

Post by fernly »

dylan604 wrote: post #14

Just for giggles, I tried launching with extensions disabled, and it worked so that "Extensions Disabled" appeared in the boot screen. Didn't click around enough after that to see if things no longer worked without these extensions. Also noticed the scroll bar when navigating folders did not behave as expected. It's the only thing I noticed that made me notice which I find very impressive.

Amen to scrollbar not right -- although the folder contents do scroll, the "thumb" never moves from the top position. It should reflect how far you have scrolled, and be draggable.

Re: Infinite Mac

#245

Post by chrisbrandow »

I love this, and my first legitimate thought after using the word 5.1 app (my favorite of all time) is that this might make it possible to create a workflow where I compose documents in word 5.1 and could find an intermediate emulator would allow me to export them and translate them into a modern format.

Re: Infinite Mac

#246

Post by mr_toad »

necovek wrote: post #221
dkarl wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vectors will scale to any pixel density, but they look irritatingly fuzzy at the lower pixel densities you commonly see in large widescreen monitors. Obviously it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but decades ago bitmapped fonts could give you crisp text on any monitor, and in 2022 I'm using a popular, >$1300, very favorably reviewed monitor, and the text is ever-so-slightly fuzzy. It's plugged into my Macbook Pr…

To mitigate the issues you mention, I've long wanted higher res screens since forever (I had one of those early Vaio VGN-Z that was the only 13-14" laptop with 1600x900 displays when 1366x768 dominated; they were also the first to move to 1920x1080 with their next model). And I had that Dell's first 24" 4K screen that required DP MST to go past 30Hz. I've tried disabling subpixel rendering to see if that resolution w…

You’ll also need HDMI 2.1 compatible gear if you want 8k at 60Hz, and there are caveats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Refresh_frequency_limits_...

Re: Infinite Mac

#248

Post by accountofme »

mihaip wrote: post #99

Creator of the site here. There's a blog post with the technical details if you're curious about how it works and whose work it builds on: https://blog.persistent.info/2022/03/blog-post.html There are also a couple of variants that boot either System 7.5.3 or KanjiTalk 7.5.3 (the Japanese version of MacOS): https://system7.app/ and https://kanjitalk7.app/

Really awesome work!

Re: Infinite Mac

#249

Post by imiric »

gfody wrote: post #234
commandlinefan wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, that's funny. I never really thought about it, but I kind of feel the same way now that you point it out. Or rather, I used to love computers just for the sake of being computers and was always a little annoyed by people who saw them rather as a means to a different end. However, today, I definitely see my macbook pro, ipad and iphone as nothing more than a means to an end, the way people saw old PCs.

same. it's hard to describe how 10-year-old me felt about 8bit dithered graphics sparkling through phosphorus but 30 years later the magic is gone. I can't point to any one thing (maybe the advent of webapps) but it has something to do with software just generally becoming more and more sucky.

How user hostile technology has become killed the magic for me.

I constantly have to think about not being tracked on the web, manipulated by an ad or astroturfed, scammed by companies with fake reviews, exploited by "algorithms", dodging dark patterns, fighting my OS to do what I want, protecting my data and privacy, hackers stealing my data from companies I entrusted it with, cryptoscams, IoT devices leaking my data, malicious libraries (npm, etc.), hardware exploits (Meltdown/Spectre), obscure firmware, PC in my PC (Intel ME), etc. etc. etc.

The worry about viruses and trojans in the 90s pales in comparison.

I still enjoy tinkering with technology, but most days it feels like a chore, and I do it less in my spare time.

Re: Infinite Mac

#250

Post by jzer0cool »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #228
animex wrote: post #198

Tried to play Battle Chess and got some weird out of memory error. Gaming on the Mac...true to form! xD

I was able to start Marathon 2, but couldn't figure out the controls. (I didn't play it back in the day but knew of it)

This was my first multiplayer game on Mac and teaching myself AppleTalk, IP Addressing, etc — didn't work well except on a good school LAN. I can still hear the ... "they're everywhere, ahhhhh".

I believe (or I want to believe) this game was a predecessor to Bungie's more popular console game Halo, but not sure.

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