
MacOS System 6, Version 6.0.8: run in browser - akeck
https://archive.org/details/mac_MacOS_6.0.8
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cm2187
One thing that I still miss from the system 7 area is an OS where the system
folder is simple and accessible, with readable full text folders. Installing a
driver was a simple as moving a single, self contained, extension file to the
extensions folder. Uninstalling was moving it out. You could observe the full
state of the system and manipulate it.

~~~
wsc981
I miss it as well. Mac OS 7 was awesome in it's simplicity. I also thought
maintaining the machine was pretty simple in case there was some driver issue.
Just do a kind-of safe boot (by pressing shift on start-up IIRC) which would
disable all extensions and control panels. And then one could try to disable
all or some extensions during the next start-up and see if that would solve
the issue. All in all it worked rather well and that was pretty much all there
was to managing the system.

Though nowadays I would miss having a decent terminal. Perhaps A/UX [0] was
decent, but I never tried that.

\---

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX)

~~~
chongli
Yes, and I really miss the classic Mac OS finder with its spatial metaphor.
Icons stayed where you left them, every window remembered its position, shape,
size, view settings, etc. You could recognize, at a glance, what folder a
window belonged to based on these strong visual cues, without needing to read
any of the text on the screen.

For anyone reading who never used a spatial desktop before, it's kind of
difficult to describe how good it was. There is this incredible feeling of
solidity, reliability, etc. Things don't move around behind your back;
everything is right where you left it. I miss it so much!

~~~
chuckdries
Surely, such file browser can't be _that_ hard to develop as a user space
application, right? I mean there are explorer alternatives on windows, a
plethora of GUI file browsers on linux, and I have no idea but I can only
assume there's at least one finder alternative on mac. I wonder why this
hasn't been done yet.

~~~
yrro
For a while nautilus had this, I believe it was referred to as "spacial mode".
It wasn't popular and eventually it was dropped. Which was a shame because as
a former Mac user I was really excited by the idea. I think though that I have
a much different relationship with my files and folders across a dozen
computers these days than I did back when I only had one Mac desktop... if
nothing else there are a lot more of them and in a way I guess I feel less
"ownership" of my storage. And so I am less interested in keeping things
nearly organized. And modern operating systems have much better search
features which means that careful file organization is less important too.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> I guess I feel less "ownership" of my storage.

Why wouldn't you when developers have the opinion that their way is the right
way to do things and you're retarded if you don't let their software organize
your life for you? No comrade, you can't install software directly from the
vendor! You must use almighty package-manager and hope The People have deigned
that software worthy of inclusion in the repo. If you're lucky it might only
be a few versions out of date! You don't actually want icons on your desktop,
just use the application menu we built for you. Our AI assistant will choose
an appropriate time to automatically install OS updates and reboot your
machine, citizen. If it does so in the middle of your work or when you really
need to use it, that's your fault for not training it well enough!

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mambodog
For anyone who is interested in some technical background, I wrote about
porting this emulator to browser a little while ago:
[https://jamesfriend.com.au/porting-pce-emulator-
browser](https://jamesfriend.com.au/porting-pce-emulator-browser)

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mchannon
This takes me back. 6.0.8 was the last version of the Macintosh System and
Finder that I really loved.

System 6 did support color as well as larger screens, and I fondly remember
phonebook sized white gloss books called Inside Macintosh. This _was_ Stack
Overflow at the time. You had to crack a manual or know somebody if you got
stuck.

Before even Xcode's progenitor Metrowerks CodeWarrior came along, Symantec
Think C was my favorite coding environment. Microsoft Basic was a thing, as
was Hypercard.

System 7 was ushered in with Inside Mac volume VI, a boat anchor of a
paperback (never seen another this heavy) that threw everything akilter.

I look at the Macintosh SE on the shelf (no 30) and look forward to firing it
up again. Hope its caps and hard drive haven't died. System 7 was basically
unusable on the 68000's- too dog slow, and virtual memory was just a bad
tradeoff. There's a kind of "snappy" about the old single threaded Mac that
newer computers just can't pull off.

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hliyan
Does anyone else feel that these interfaces now look a lot less dated than
they did five years ago (as we move away from skeuomorphic designs toward more
flat, functional designs)?

~~~
scroot
I still think the Platinum look is one of the best ever

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thefurman
I pressed ⌘-Q and quit my browser. Good morning.

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colmvp
Might be nostalgia speaking, but I recall as a youngter crawling every folder
to figure out what the heck each thing did. Without the internet or search
engine, I resorted to reading text files, manuals, etc.

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geuis
SO many good memories. Treats mobile touches as click-drags though.

~~~
kkylin
Many happy memories of my SE/30 running System 6... (System 7 started to feel
a little slow on it.)

~~~
macintux
The SE/30 was a remarkable machine. My mother used hers for many years.

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EamonnMR
Classic Mac OS was where I had a lot of my initial experience with conputing,
so I'm excited to see that the fine folks at the internet archive have turned
their attention to it.

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pmarreck
Wonder if there's any way to have it emulate the earliest Mac II color screen.

