A month ago, while I was wondering about the best way to repair my old vintage Macintoshes, I started playing around with SheepShaver, a Classic Mac OS emulator.
Mac OS Classic was the operating system for Apple Macintosh computers from 1984 to 2001. It was the first to offer a windows / mouse / point-and-click graphical interface, extremely easy to use and devoid of any command line.
What started as a simple, fleeting obsession allowed me to rediscover the long-forgotten sensations of Mac OS 8.6 and Mac OS 9, which I hadn’t used since the early 2000s… almost twenty-five years ago!
A little bit of history
The year is 1999. After years of resisting and usingAmiga computers for my graphic and video creations, I had to move to a more modern system.
My choice, most certainly influenced by Apple’s subtle and effective marketing, fell on the brand new Blue and White Power Mac G3.
It was my first Mac, and I still remember unboxing this impressive machine with its very unique design. I had ordered a custom configuration: a 400 MHz G3 with 256 MB of RAM (later upgraded to 448 MB), an ATI Rage 128 card, and two SCSI cards… A powerful and imposing monster.
A formidable creative tool.
But there was a catch: while I had enjoyed tinkering with Mac OS 8.6 in emulation on my Amiga 4000, owning a computer that ran only on Mac OS Classic was a whole different story. This was something I was about to find out the hard way.
The first problem I quickly faced was the lack of software. Back then, the PC reigned supreme, and Apple users were few and far between. Except for Photoshop (at least there was that!), I didn’t have many apps at my disposal. Sources were rare and never very well-stocked…
Then, I had a problem with the OS itself: Mac OS was very closed-off, without true multitasking, and had a very specific way of operating—let’s say spartan and constraining, a bit too rigid for me. What’s more, its unprotected memory was prone to splendid crashes: a single software crash could force a complete system reboot…
Of course, that didn’t stop me from using this machine, both professionally and personally, for two years. I produced many graphic designs and websites with it for the electronic music label I was running, burned tons of CDs, etc. This G3 was a very good production machine; it did what it was told, one thing at a time, but it lacked a bit of flair (colors aside).
On the other hand, Windows XP / which I had tried so hard to hate for so long / seemed extremely fluid to me and came with an incredible software library. All my friends were on PC, and they could enjoy an endless supply of software to do anything without constraints: internet utilities, video, 3D, DivX, MP3, CD burning in all formats, etc. All this on very affordable hardware that was getting more powerful every month.
I had to face the facts: being on a Mac limited me and made many things far more complicated. This G3, which had cost me an arm and a leg, was perhaps very beautiful and powerful (as Apple’s marketing claimed), but it wasn’t really the creative ‘tinkering’ machine I had envisioned.
Meanwhile, Apple had moved on to the G4, whose magnificent graphite colors made my Blue and White Mac look like a toy…
The coup de grâce came with Mac OS X, the one the magazines were talking about, the one that was going to save the Mac, bury Windows, and revolutionize computing. Announced as early as 1998 as a fusion of NeXTSTEP and Mac OS, it was, in fact, the system I had hoped for when I originally bought the machine (modern, multitasking, protected memory, Unix…).
The Mac OS X Public Beta was released on September 13, 2000. A few months later, I finally managed to get my hands on a copy… and it was a very, very big disappointment. Aside from its flashy user interface, which did have that ‘Wow’ factor, the original Mac OS X was completely unusable on my good old G3, which was barely two years old: the OS was painfully slow and totally devoid of software. I was defeated.
Disheartened, and unable to upgrade a machine where even the simplest card required an Apple ROM sold at a premium, I ended up selling it in 2002. By then, I had already been sailing under the Windows flag for a few months on an AMD Athlon PC…
My Mac OS Classic experience was over for good… or so I thought.
And yet, here I am today, back in front of this 1990s-2000s Finder.
Despite everything I could hold against it back then, I find myself strangely captivated by this old OS, which I had long ago relegated to the dusty corners of my memory. It’s a real pleasure to rediscover these windows, these sounds, and this perfectly retro-vintage look and feel.
But beyond simple nostalgia, I am mostly rediscovering the clarity and simplicity of these old interfaces: a clean look compared to today’s messy, cluttered interfaces. I love macOS X, but little by little, it has become harder to read (God help us with the new System Settings and the new macOS TahoeVista).
The pace is also quite different. Back then, Mac OS took its time. There wasn’t a new version every year (what madness!). In the end, doing one thing at a time and taking the time to do it right—isn’t that the very quintessence of luxury today?
Memories came flooding back, particularly those of my first experiences with Mac OS during the 90s.
I was traveling across Europe back then, the young cyberpunk rebel that I was. I would often bring a floppy disk containing my latest graphic designs and flyers to be printed at desktop publishing (DTP) shops, which were filled with powerful, gleaming Macs. The Macintosh was the machine for printers and copy shops back then. (And I visited plenty of them: in France, Italy, Germany, Holland, and Czechoslovakia…) Very expensive machines, operated by very serious professionals. Quite a contrast with my look, my dog, and my Amiga 1200.
I have a special place in my heart for a Dutch graphic designer who helped me several times to optimize my images for printing with QuarkXPress, giving me some precious digital advice along the way. It was in Amsterdam, in 1995, in a major DTP firm somewhere around Amerikahaven…
I also particularly remember my first true hands-on experience with Mac OS. It was in a posh apartment in Vienna, Austria, around 1997-1998, on the Power Macs belonging to a friend’s parents… yes, they had several. I discovered the unique philosophy of System 7 : powerful, sophisticated yet archaic, austere and elegant all at once. For a few hours, I was able to enjoy these luxurious machines, trying out Photoshop, Illustrator, Myst, and Marathon…
Today, using a Classic System is as simple as launching an online emulator. The website https://infinitemac.org offers an incredible collection, from System 1.0 to 9, as well as versions of NeXTSTEP and OS X up to 10.4 Tiger.
You can also use UTM or download a ready-to-use SheepShaver image for modern macOS that launches with a single click—which is what I finally decided to do.
The website https://mendelson.org offers several very complete versions, with plenty of pre-installed software: link 1 and link 2. These aren’t easy to find anywhere else. Windows and Linux versions are also available.
Emulation is really amazing! As long as the software exists, my small but powerful 14-inch MacBook Pro M1 Pro can run every machine from the last few decades, sometimes even faster than the originals… When you’re short on space, or when certain vintage parts become too fragile or unaffordable, it’s the ideal solution.
But you quickly see the limits. That’s exactly what happened when I tried to play Warcraft 2, a game I absolutely loved back in the day. Emulation struggles with processor interrupts, which causes the game to freeze. I’ll let ChatGPT explain: :
«CPU timing drift’ refers to an emulation phenomenon where the emulated system loses its temporal synchronization. This leads to pauses followed by sudden bursts of speed as the emulator tries to catch up with lost time. This issue is particularly common in full-system emulators like Mac OS Classic, but remains rare in console or micro-computer emulators that strictly control their clock cycles. »
On top of that, I had 3D driver problems, games that refuse to start, and other small ‘désagréments’. All these frustrating complications were ruining the whole experience. In that case, you might as well use a real Macintosh. And so, just out of curiosity, I started to check some second-hand websites…
To be continued…
Postscript: Two weeks after writing this article, I stumbled upon a forgotten archive at the bottom of an old backup CD. A text I wrote on January 14, 2000, at 1:47 PM, on that very same Blue and White G3. Back then, I was in a completely different headspace. Selected highlights:
“I am deeply disappointed by Mac OS… It might be simple to use, but as for stability… forget about it. My Mac crashes 2 or 3 times a day, minimum… When I use my graphics tablet in Photoshop, when I use Outlook Express 4.5 or Dreamweaver… It’s 12:30 PM right now… the Mac has been on since 10:00 AM, and it already crashed once for no reason… In my office, there’s also a PC running Win 98… that one crashes maybe once a week at worst. […] Come on Steve, OS X quick ! “