| Cult of Mac

Run every version of Classic Mac OS in your browser

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Infinite Mac running Macintosh System 1.0 in Safari on macOS Ventura
Experience 1984 from the comfort of 2023.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

You don’t need to buy an old Macintosh to experience classic Mac OS anymore. In fact, you don’t even need to fiddle around installing an emulator and downloading ROMs. Thanks to a new project, you can boot up every major release of Mac OS from the 1980s and ’90s right in your web browser.

With more than 25 Apple computers and devices in my collection, I’m something of a vintage Mac collector. It’s an expensive hobby that few can indulge in, but the Infinite Mac website lets you experience one of the joys of collecting vintage gear: Taking ancient software for a spin on a vintage Mac.

Front and Center makes the Mac Finder behave like it should

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Front and Center screenshot
The window 'manager' you never knew you wanted.
Photo: John Siracusa

If you’re at your Mac, go ahead and click a window for another app (don’t forget to come back right away). Clicking an app’s window brings it to the foreground, of course. But did you notice that only the window you clicked came forward. If that other app has any other windows open, they will stay hidden. It wasn’t always this way. In pre-OS X days, the default behavior was to bring all those windows to the front. And now, thanks to a new app called Front and Center, from John Siracusa, you can get this behavior on a modern Mac.

Vintage computer museum on sale with 80 classic Macs

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Benj Edwards Computer Collection
This is about half of Benj Edwards‘ computer collection
Photo: Benj Edwards

Many people can’t bear to part with their old computers, and slowly build a collection of aging models in their basement. Benj Edwards took that impulse to the next level: He owns at least 228 unique devices, many of them classic Apple products going back to the 1980s.

Now he’s put them all up for sale. Ready to start your own computer museum?

Every Classic Mac Design, Beautifully Distilled To Its Essence [Gallery]

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Aakash Doshi is a third-year student at the Srsihti School of Art, Design & Technology in Bangalore, India, and he has a wonderfully hobby: he distills Apple’s Mac line-up down to their essence in bright, colorful, beautiful abstractions of their classic designs. I love them. We’ve put more after the jump, but be sure to check them out in hi-res on Doshi’s Tumblr, where he’ll be adding more over time.

Check Out Susan Kare’s Original Graph Paper Designs For Classic Mac OS Icons [Gallery]

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Screen Shot 2011-11-23 at 1.30.14 PM

I’ve always had a little crush on Susan Kare, the graphical interface pioneer who designed most of the original Mac OS icons and also designed the first proportionally spaced digital font, but this incredible piece on her over at PLOS had me wooed all over again, especially when I saw her incredible original sketches of the Mac OS icons we all know and love, which Susan laboriously designed on graph paper.

Check out some of her work on icons both familiar and foreign below, it’s the best thing I’ve seen all day.

Macintosh SE/30 Resurrected As A Server And Mac Emulator

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This is a huge hack: a plucky modder has resurrected a Macintosh SE/30 using a Seagate Dockstar, a small Linux server running a 1.2GHz ARM processor, a few USB 2.0 ports and 128MB of RAM. Not only does it work as a server, but in runs a Mac emulator, and even the floppy drive works… but it reads SD cards mounted on a floppy-shaped protoboard instead of ancient 5.25 discs! He even restored the Mac to pristine condition by bathing it in chemicals to return it to its vintage, unyellowed color. Amazing!