In other words, it is a desktop program running an emulator that runs OS 8!įelix’s work consisted of putting the pieces together, install OS 8.1 and a lot of companion applications so you can have a feeling of what was to use a Macintosh back in 1991. Also, running the OS 8.1 is probably something trivial for seasoned emulator users, but for the general public is it a great way to try a new (old) technology with little effort and technical knowledge.Įlectron is a framework that allows developers to embed web applications and deploy them as standalone native apps (Slack itself works like that), so under the hood, you have Basilisk II, a Motorola 68K emulator that was compiled using Emscripten (a “magic” piece of software that transpile C/C++ code into Javascript so it can run in the browser). In one of those projects that people ask “why though?” and they get the answer “why not?”, Felix Rieseberg, a developer working for Slack, has created an Electron standalone app that contains a fully-featured Mac OS 8.1 running in it.Īlthough this was already possible in the browser, like the Internet Archive Macintosh Software library, deploying it as a standalone app makes it easier to integrate it with the host operating system, helping, for example, to copy new files to the emulated OS.

The 1991 reference came from the GitHub page mentioning the 1991 Macintosh Quadra running OS 8, which led me to make the mistake to assume the OS was from 1991-92. Update: I mistakenly said the OS 8 was from 1991, but it is actually released in 1997.

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