[HN Gopher] Infinite Mac ___________________________________________________________________ Infinite Mac Author : bookofjoe Score : 600 points Date : 2022-04-26 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (macos8.app) (TXT) w3m dump (macos8.app) | beders wrote: | It comes with Civ preinstalled? Just one more turn.... | thomasfl wrote: | The biggest change to Adobe Photoshop since version 3.5, seems to | be the retail price. | amlib wrote: | 1 minute in and I'm already making delightful landscapes in | Bryce... | dhagz wrote: | This makes me realize how much I miss the old (spatial) Finder. | breck wrote: | I really like the Equation Editor in the Claris Works folder. | Specifically, I like the "holes" UI when writing an equation | using a summation editor, for example. I feel like modern | equation editors have lost that, but maybe I've just used the | wrong ones. Does anyone have any ones they'd recommend, or | pointers to more uses of 2D editors with "hole" UIs? | jasomill wrote: | While I'm a LaTeX person myself, the equation editor (Insert- | Equation) in Microsoft Word appears to work this way. | temp8964 wrote: | Strangely, my AT&T fiber gateway blocks this website and claims | spam risk. | doubled112 wrote: | It's exactly how I remember the Macs my grade school was using | back then. | | Click around a little bit, and boom, it is frozen. Do you wait? | Do you force quit? The watch gives little feedback. | gnicholas wrote: | Set the system clock to display seconds and then you can tell | when/how long it's been frozen. | Cockbrand wrote: | Hehe, you bet my menu bar clock on macOS 12 still displays | seconds, some 25+ years later :) | unpixer wrote: | Found another greybeard Mac user! I learned this trick under | System 6 and used it religiously until just recently. (My | clock keeps perfect time, but seconds don't update, under | MATE Compiz. Go figure.) | [deleted] | shadowgovt wrote: | Cooperative multitasking architecture. If the frontmost thread | doesn't `WaitNextEvent`, not even the OS gets a chance to | update the UI (with some key exceptions... I think the mouse | was interrupt-driven?). | | OS 8 started to add preemptive multitasking, but it wasn't | mandatory and apps had to buy-in to it (so they didn't break | backwards compatibility). | | Incidentally, games would squeeze a few more cycles out of the | computer by using `getNextEvent` or accessing the input drivers | directly, which wouldn't give other processes a chance to do | things. This would lead to the hilarious consequence | (especially when the networking era came along) that you'd play | a game for a couple hours, quit it, and be greeted by several | error dialogs as various processes that had been wanting to | poll for timed events discovered they'd missed their polling | windows because they essentially just came out of suspended | animation. | | The need for always-available network access finally spelled | out the death of the non-preemptive architecture; networking | simply couldn't tolerate the client dropping out of the | universe for ages at a time. | robotnikman wrote: | Hah same. If it had kid pix it would be just like when I was a | little kid. | idreyn wrote: | Check the Graphics folder! (It crashed immediately for me in | Firefox, though) | duskwuff wrote: | 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. | idreyn wrote: | I tried it again and was able to use it this time! | killingmehardly wrote: | stakkur wrote: | I would _still_ use OS 8 /9, warts and all, if it were practical | and worked reliably with modern software/hardware. | leonbailey wrote: | ghostbrainalpha wrote: | How do you shutdown? | | I'd lose my mind if this had "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" | animex wrote: | Tried to play Battle Chess and got some weird out of memory | error. Gaming on the Mac...true to form! xD | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | 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) | kirykl wrote: | This will be impossible to do with iOS and apps vaporized into | history off the App Store | whyenot wrote: | I wish one could get Macintosh Common Lisp working on this. My | introduction to programming was with MCL, and it was amazing to | use. So much has changed over the past few decades. I wonder what | it would be like to use it now. | mschuster91 wrote: | Oooh how nice! | | That digs up some memory from my childhood - an aunt had an Apple | with the OS looking very similar to this one, and there was a | game where you had to place railroad tiles and could then operate | a train. Anyone here remember that game? | adregan wrote: | I have really been missing window shading lately (and the control | strip). | | Working on OS X and beyond has always felt slower (animations) | compared to window shading. It's been 20 years and I still prefer | it. | yoyopa wrote: | yeah, there's no argument for getting rid of windowshade. it's | way better. | nevinera wrote: | Will it run bolo? | nevinera wrote: | The answer is "yes it's on there", but more meaningfully - does | it handle networking enough that we could have a massive bolo | lan party? | mihaip wrote: | 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/ | wk_end wrote: | Just as a heads up - | | I went to go create a new project in Think Pascal, and when I | tried to enter a name all my keystrokes came out as boxes. | | Using Chrome 100 on macOS Big Sur. English (Canadian) key | layout. | mihaip wrote: | This seems to work OK for me. Any chance a modifier is stuck | down (try pressing command, option and shift to reset their | state). If this still happens, can you file a bug at | https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/new? | kalel83 wrote: | I would love it if you could include the game lunatic fringe in | this. | mihaip wrote: | Lunatic Fringe was part of After Dark, which is in the | Control Panels & Extensions folder. If you drag that to the | "Control Panels" folder in the System Folder and restart, | it'll be enabled, and you can choose it. | bredren wrote: | In middle school, we had a math teacher with an old mac setup | that ran a physics simulator program. It came with a variety of | starter templates, one of them was this crash test dummy in a | car. | | It was all polygons, but you could hit run and the car would | accelerate and hit a wall then the circle head and arms would | sort of fly around. | | Anyone know what this software was? I remember running and re- | running little simulations repeatedly, with little | understanding of the science but very much enjoying the ragdoll | physics of it. | Throw6away wrote: | Working Model, by Knowledge Revolution. I used to work there, | and my first project was making the jump from 2D to 3D. | bcjordan wrote: | Any stories / surprising bits from working there? | Throw6away wrote: | https://www.design-simulation.com/wm2d/ | jrowley wrote: | Oh wow, I remember this for sure. What a throw back. What was | it called? | sirmarksalot wrote: | I remember two programs like that, one that my middle school | had called "Fun Physics," and one my high school had called | "Conceptual Physics." The interfaces were exactly the same, | and it wouldn't surprise me if Conceptual Physics was a | rebundled version sold along with Paul Hewitt's course. | Unfortunately, those names are so generic that I can't find | them on Google. | aasasd wrote: | Old software can frequently be found on archive.org--with | much more focused selection than 'the whole web'. | Throw6away wrote: | You could author workspaces in Working Model and I dimly | remember Fun Physics was built using WM. | gordon_freeman wrote: | MATLAB or something from MathWorks? | RulerOf wrote: | I caught this the last time it came around HN. Thanks for | making this. Browser accessibility of these classic systems and | the painstaking work you undertook to integrate all of the | third party software is really important for preserving the | experience we had growing up with these machines. | | My son regularly asks me to play Lemmings now because of this | app :) | smm11 wrote: | Can I update the System 7.5.3 machine to A/UX? | gattilorenz wrote: | A/UX is very picky about hardware. You can run it in the | Shoebill emulator | dillutedfixer wrote: | Thank you for the magnificent trip down memory lane! | samstave wrote: | HOLY SHIT! You have a working ver of Bryce KPT! from 1994! | | Jeasus - that brings back so many shitty 3D city scapes I made | back then/ | | Can you get Aldus Pagemaker (5.0 preferably, | /r/beggingchoosers, and all that) running on this please. | mihaip wrote: | I haven't tried this myself, but you should be able to | download and install it from | https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/aldus-pagemaker-50 (drag the | .sit on the emulator, and it'll be copied to the "Downloads" | folder). You can then use StuffIt Expander to unstuff the | .sit and Disk Copy to mount the install images (both are in | the "Utilities" folder) | jasomill wrote: | Incidentally, Apple reseller resource CDs[1] also contained | fully functional copies of PageMaker, licensed only for | customizing Apple marketing materials, along with the | assets (product photography, custom Apple internal-use | fonts) required to do so. | | Creating period-correct marketing materials for projects | like this emulator could be a fun art project. | | [1] https://archive.org/search.php?query=arple | samstave wrote: | Welp, I can sorta get it there -- but I cant figure out how | to install it after mounting: | | https://i.imgur.com/WRNDdjB.png | | https://i.imgur.com/Pedlilm.png | | --- | | Whats really interesting to me about this, was that just | ~last week or so, I was wondering what ever happened to Kai | (Kai's Power Tools - Kai was the inventor of it and it was | a revolutionary glimpse into the future of what 3D worlds | were going to be put into the hands of the masses via PCs.) | twoodfin wrote: | I poked around a few weeks ago and ran into a variety of errors | when I dug into the more hardware-specific bits. | | So I was shocked when I could use the Disk Copy utility to | image Macintosh HD right into the Uploads folder & onto my | (real) desktop. | | "It Just Works" in the best Mac sense. Amazing job. | royalewithchees wrote: | Is there a way to use appletalk on a LAN? I would love to get a | game of multiplayer bolo going in my office. | gr33nq wrote: | This took me on a trip down memory lane back to my days in | elementary school. I recall our class going to the computer lab | once a week and having an hour to spend on an iMac G3, of which | some were on OS8 and others OS9. Going back even further to | kindergarten, our logins on those Macs were forced to use a | simplified UI that displayed only icons/tiles of applications -- | no browsing files or anything sophisticated from what I remember | (edit: looks like they were called "Panels") [0]. The Incredible | Machine [1] was what I personally looked forward to playing most. | I'm sure nostalgia plays a big role in the feeling I get when | toying around with emulators like this, but I'm also convinced | that the simplicity, curiosity, and novelty of computing in the | late 90s/early 2000s is something that I may never be able to | replicate again in my lifetime. | | [0] http://toastytech.com/guis/macos9users.png | | [1] https://macintoshgarden.org/games/the-incredible-machine-3 | makerofspoons wrote: | Now if only someone could replicate the fan noise and that old | computer smell. | drewzero1 wrote: | Don't forget the grinding/croaking of those old hard drives! | doubled112 wrote: | The wurr chhkchkchk of floppies is what does it for me | drewzero1 wrote: | Chk chk.... chk chk.... chk chk..... chk chk.... dkdkdk. | Not ready reading drive A. Abort/Retry/Fail?_ | wlesieutre wrote: | I believe you're remembering "At Ease" | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease | gr33nq wrote: | This is exactly what I'm remembering. Thank you for sharing. | | We had one staff member in charge of both the library and | computer lab at my school, and I always admired her know-how | when we'd watch her demonstrate something or troubleshoot a | problem. Looking back now at the selection of software she | curated for us, the uniformity of the look-and-feel across | all Macs on campus, having a networked file share accessible | from the 2-3 iMacs/Macintosh LCs we had in each classroom and | in the lab, I appreciate how she really went above and beyond | for that period of time and fostered so much intrigue in me. | I really have to attribute a lot of my interest in tech to | her during those formative years. | wlesieutre wrote: | I don't have any specific memory of using At Ease on a | school computer, but we had a couple of them in the | children's section of the local library. | | My middle school is where they got really into computers, a | bunch of early G3 iMacs in each classroom and each student | had a networked home folder with a schoolname.org/~user | website, back in the early 2000s. | | I ended up not going into computers as a profession (so | far), but I poke around with hobby projects and really | appreciate how powerful the modern web tooling has gotten, | though it's also vastly more complicated. | kleer001 wrote: | OMFG Photoshop 3.0, I learned on that! Even bought 4 MB of ram | for $400 to run it on my PC. Damn! | sakex wrote: | Is that emulation or compiled to WASM? | em3rgent0rdr wrote: | According to https://blog.persistent.info/2022/03/blog- | post.html it is emulator. | | Note, the Mac OS and the apps in this emulator are running | proprietary code. So it can't be "compiled" because the source | code isn't available. The only options are binary recompiling | or binary translating or emulation. | robbyking wrote: | I'm not sure how many people will remember this, but macOS 8 came | with a program called Hotline, who's main activity was | "publishing and distribution of a multi-purpose client/server | communication software." | | Most people I knew used it to pirate software and MP3s. | | The way most of us used it was we'd find a server that had | something we wanted (software, a crack, or music), and the login | would be password protected. There would be a public readme file | with instructions on how to find the password, which was | typically behind a banner ad you had to click to generate revenue | for the file host. | | I was working as a web developer at the time, and the start-up | where I worked literally had a dedicated server just for | downloading music on Hotline, but Napster came along and we | mostly forgot about Hotline. | 0des wrote: | The network is still up! Check out the Preterhuman wiki for | some software listings and networks to join: | https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Preterhuman.net_Hotline_Server | | Most people use the KDX software, or PitbullPro, there are | other implementations as well. | carlmcqueen wrote: | I don't know why I never looked into it more but this comment | caught me off guard. I always wondered what hotline was because | a friend of mine in high school's dad was a bartender part time | in the carribbean and during the summer in chicago and he would | source things his son needed or wanted through 'hotline' and I | could never find it as a windows user. | AyyWS wrote: | I used it on windows and it had a chat feature. It's how I | learned about the band Yellow Magic Orchestra from some | random person that I'll never meet again. | fintler wrote: | A few developers of the original Napster for Mac client usually | hung out on FORTYoz's (RIP) Badmoon Hotline server (e.g. | catalyst). My teenage self always had fun watching them work | through some problem they were facing. | | On a side note, the https://hx.fortyoz.org link still works | (although it points to a mostly outdated clone of ror's | original hxd). | radicaldreamer wrote: | Hotline was amazing! I remember downloading software mostly. | guywithabike wrote: | Hotline was full of warez and such, but it was also home to a | number of vibrant, welcoming communities. I was a little bit | late to the BBS heyday, but Hotline served that purpose for me | and for many others. There was one called REALbasic Cafe | centered around a commercial cross-platform programming | language that I spent a lot of time it. I even attended | conferences with other members, flying across the country alone | as a high school kid. I have nothing but fond memories of | Hotline. | flemhans wrote: | Hotline didn't come bundled with the OS but was definitely good | times. | | Edit: oh and Carracho! | robbyking wrote: | What's funny is I didn't remember it coming bundled, but it | was on the linked site so I figured I just forgot. | smm11 wrote: | I was at a place in the very early 2000s, and ran into our | 'music server.' Everyone seemingly brought in and ripped | all their CDs to this folder, and it was basically Spotify | or something. Several terabytes - we were a re-seller of | computers, so had the room for it. | | This may have been during the iPod times, I recall having | all the music I'd ever need. Knowing who was there, I have | no doubt that's where a lot of Spotify came from. | steffen84 wrote: | http://www.carracho.com/aboutus/index.html | | Website is still online, great times. | david422 wrote: | Hotline impressed me most because they wrote cross platform mac | and windows servers and clients. | | If I recall correctly - back when MacOS didn't have true pre- | emptive multiprocessing, holding down a menu or a button would | stall other processes/tasks. Hotline wrote custom controls so | you could hold a button and things would still run. | Davertron wrote: | I definitely remember Hotline! Got me into trouble in | college...a friend and I opened up Hotline servers on our | machines and threw a piece of software on there (probably a | cracked version of Macromedia Flash or something like that...) | and a README that said "please leave something if you take | something". A few weeks later, we both got calls from the sys | admin at our school asking us to come in for a little chat...we | hadn't really been paying too much attention, and apparently | people had put all kinds of software/games etc. on there and | that we had been serving up from our machines (I believe the | admin said "millions of dollars"...but he may have been trying | to scare us straight...). We didn't end up getting into too | much trouble for it (I believe we were banned from using the | internet for a few weeks) and ultimately I got hired to work in | the IT department, so it worked out for me at least... | samstave wrote: | Heh, in HS I convinced the Drafting Department (1988) that if | we were ever going to draw anything in the "real world" (I | was in 8th grade, but took HS level drafting) that we would | only ever do it on a computer. | | I pitched the school board and we were funded to set up a CAD | dept - which of course I needed a server to share cad files | etc... | | I setup the system, and then my buddy and I setup a BBS on | the server and were running a warez site frm the HS CAD Lab. | birdyrooster wrote: | It was BBS for the rest of us | [deleted] | prawn wrote: | That banner-password trick was how I made my first money | online, decades ago. I'd password protect a zip of Pamela | Anderson photos. | | Made $2k in a week for a few minutes of effort, used it to buy | my first computer, taught myself web development and went on | from there. | alphabet9000 wrote: | anyone still using KDX? i have a server running on telnet.asia | exikyut wrote: | This was followed up with KDX, an idiosyncratic, extremely | curious program that even offered a native Linux binary (that | still works!). The program was (closed-source) freeware, and | without a viable business model behind it, the developers | eventually moved on. But I think that dynamic supported a | refreshing alternative experience that flew beneath the radar, | took the path less traveled, and achieved closure: my memory of | KDX is of a quietly efficient program that felt largely | _finished_. My goodness literally nothing feels like that | anymore. | | It's still offered for download by some of the few remaining | Hotline/KDX-compatible file servers that are still floating | around out there, like | https://preterhuman.net/gethotlinekdx.php (scroll down to the | KDX heading). | | I definitely recommend downloading it for the sole reason that, | connected to a server, bunch of windows open (what do you | expect, it came from Mac OS, of course it's a GUI program), | transfers flying along... it'll be using 8MB of RAM. Yes, on | Linux. | | Finished. Compact. Efficient. | | I wish I could pull out some references for similar programs | like it, but I have none :( the closest I can come | ideologically is LIST.COM for MS-DOS (!). Ha. | | But on the subject of file transfer itself, if anyone's | curious, a very obscure alternative to Bittorrent and news | servers besides Hotline/KDX is DC++. There are _quite_ a few | DC++ servers still out there, mostly in Russia (or at least | there were when I last checked). I don 't remember what client | I used when I played with it a while ago, but I remember one of | its features was that it would show the total amount of data | available across all of the servers currently connected (the | protocol works very similarly to Bittorrent but users send full | directory trees to the "trackers"). Well, after connecting to | _every_ server I could find >:D my client started having | serious swap issues so I had to give up, but for a little while | there I think the statusbar was showing something like 4 PB+ | available. Fun times. | ellisd wrote: | Just seeing the logo gave me flashbacks to hogging two phone | lines at night downloading - | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications | webscalist wrote: | now I can install protools and produce grammy award winning album | all in internet explorer | ubermonkey wrote: | Some of y'all are YOUNG. LOL. | | I first used a Mac in about 1989, in college. I first got DEEP | into one, for desktop publishing, a couple years later. I didn't | OWN one until my late 20s, which by that point was an OS 9 | environment for a couple years until OS X happened. | | I never loved the old System like some Mac people do. It was | faster and more stable than Win98, and definitely worked better | on laptops, but that was a low bar indeed. It wasn't until OS X | that the Mac got crazy stable and attracted the attention of web | devs, which in turn drove the renaissance of the platform. | endemic wrote: | Yeah, I remember thinking how awesome it was to open up a bash | shell and ssh into a server while using a Macintosh. | ubermonkey wrote: | That's cool, but even cooler was that for many things you | didn't even NEED to do that. | | OS X shipped with regular Apache, and builds existed for all | the dev tools and server languages you could want. I ran | Mason on my Mac for a project I was on. I could develop | locally, and then just rsync to my dev server to do next | level tests, etc. | smm11 wrote: | My Apple IIe was a BBS in 1982. | spike021 wrote: | Whoa!! This is amazing. | | My brother and I used to play the FA-18 "sim" all the time. | Thanks for the blast from the past. | | Now if only I still had the joystick controller... | julienb_sea wrote: | Damn Simcity 2000 crashes, that's disappointing | based2 wrote: | macbugs is not installed... | duxup wrote: | Netgear's Armor software considers that site "Spam". | | I wonder why. | jbverschoor wrote: | Mouse is lagging | martopix wrote: | That is accurate experience | scarface74 wrote: | Back in the day, the mouse never lagged. It was using a | hardware interrupt. | digitallyfree wrote: | This is probably because the emulator is using relative mouse | coordinates, rather than absolute mouse coordinates. I use a | high-DPI/sensitivity mouse and as soon as my cursor touched the | screen of the Mac the response was off. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | That's pretty damn complete. It has Think C, CodeWarrior, etc., | and they seem to work. | | It's awesome, but I could see the copyright police coming after | it. | mistrial9 wrote: | MetroWerks has a lot of reason to be annoyed at this | | source: I wrote the MPW setup scripts for MWerks on a contract, | presented to MWerks VP of Engineering; subsequently Jobs+black | ops locked them out | zippergz wrote: | Metrowerks doesn't even exist anymore does it? | housel wrote: | The name CodeWarrior is now used by NXP for development | tools targeting legacy (old Motorola/Freescale) platforms; | see for instance | https://www.nxp.com/design/software/development- | software/cod... | ok123456 wrote: | It loads very fast and the performance is alright. What | optimizations did they do to pull this off? | marcodiego wrote: | I could not run create a new file with PowerPlant Constructor. It | complains "because selected printing resource could not be | found." | kornork wrote: | I was hoping to find Enchanted Scepters in there (I'd guess it | would be in the system7 version), but no luck. I tried a few | years ago to get it working on a Mac emulator but I wasn't | successful, and I have fond memories of that game. | kencausey wrote: | https://archive.org/details/EnchantedSceptersMacintosh | kornork wrote: | What!?!? No way - thank you so much! | anthk wrote: | You can try downloading mounting the IMG file from that | page, getting Scummvm https://scummvm.org and select the | path for the mounted image to play the game under the Wage | Engine. | shadowgovt wrote: | Damn, that's cool. | | Avara and Bolo in one place really takes me back. | noer wrote: | F/A 18 Hornet in the games folder! I really loved that game in | 3rd and 4th grade | nsxwolf wrote: | Another World runs at full speed too | jbverschoor wrote: | You know what's nice? The 13" (rescaled) 4:3 screen is easier to | read than my current setup. Also, the menu's are nice and short. | Very focus. I totally understand how I, and many people in the | past, were able to pump out huge amounts of code in a week | projektfu wrote: | Menus were short because they had to fit on the screen of a | classic Mac (342 pixels) and the pull-down operation used to | require holding the mouse button. I think by Mac OS 8 you could | click to open a menu and yhey could probably expect at least | 480 pixels if not 600. | pantulis wrote: | Other forgotten niceties are the spatial Finder and how double | clicking on a window title basically folds the window into just | the title bar. | OnlyMortal wrote: | Menus are supposed to have 7 +/- 2 items. Inside Macintosh | Volume 1, if memory serves. | shadowgovt wrote: | Yes. This matches to what was thought (at the time? I'm not | sure if research has changed the thinking on this) to be the | size of human working memory. | | 7 +- 2 was believed to be about how much a human could | understand with zero layers of abstraction, i.e. "in | parallel" (you can imagine your brain has 7 +- 2 registers, | though that's a highly inaccurate model). Any larger, and | your brain has to build abstractions to reference the item | (i.e. item 10 becomes "the last item in the second half of | that honkin' huge menu"). | jasomill wrote: | As opposed to "nested two levels deep under one item or | another on the File...or was it View...or maybe | Window...menu? No? Okay, then try holding down Option..." | | I still think that searchable menus was one of the killer | features of OS X vs. anything else at the time, and it's | frankly amazing that the majority of Windows apps _still_ | don 't have menu search. | dgreensp wrote: | As a Mac user since about 1988, this brings back memories! | | It's sad but the UI feels almost futuristic. | kaladin-jasnah wrote: | Am I the only person that thinks that Classic Mac OS looks better | than _any_ modern GUI operating system today? | schwartzworld wrote: | On HN? I think you are not | thewebcount wrote: | This looks great! But is there any way to turn off the blinking | LED light on the faux monitor? It's so spastic it keeps drawing | my eye away from the actual software. I never had a monitor that | did that in real life! | paco3346 wrote: | What browser/OS are you on? The LED doesn't blink for me on | macOS with Chrome. | | Edit: it seems like it's the HDD activity light? It blinks | during boot. | thewebcount wrote: | I'm using Orion (Webkit-based) on macOS. It was blinking non- | stop while just reading the Stickies. I couldn't get past | that to do anything else because it was so distracting. It | definitely wasn't HDD-related for me. It was constant. | dmje wrote: | PostIt note on your screen? :-) | dev_tty01 wrote: | Virtual PostIt on the virtual screen. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | MARCHintosh project | | related site: system7.app | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30893212 | | And plenty of previous discussion over here from earlier this | month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30875259 | OnlyMortal wrote: | Heh. I've still got a G4 PowerBook and can run Clsssic. Not that | I've tried in many a year. | | The OSX on it seems still pretty spritely today though I've | obviously had to get the FireFox back port branch to be able to | use a browser. | windowsrookie wrote: | Check out Sorbet Leopard. It's an enthusiast enhanced version | of Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. It's been updated to support modern web | browsing and had the "bloat" stripped out of it so it runs | extraordinarily well on G4 systems. I have it installed on a | 1.67GHZ PowerBook G4 and it makes the computer totally usable | today. It's amazing how well a 17 year old computer can run. | Youtube is the only thing that doesn't work well, but it'll | play back 360P video if you give it plenty of time to load. | Amazingly, if you download "CorePlayer" this old G4 machine can | play back local 720P h.264 files. | | https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sorbet-leopard-your-pow... | | May 1st Sorbet Leopard is going to be updated with an App Store | full of old PPC Apps. PPC Lives! | MarketingJason wrote: | Wow - I didn't realize the stickies feature is basically | unchanged since then | etchalon wrote: | Since System 7! | scarface74 wrote: | As is AppleScript... unfortunately. | jdsampayo wrote: | If you select Thousands of Colors it changes the resolution and | everything looks like negatives, I thought it only supported 256 | Colors, but unexpectedly choosing Millions of Colors is also | supported. ex: https://imgur.com/a/nqo8v0e | asvitkine wrote: | Looks like the project uses GitHub for issue tracking, so you | can submit bug reports there: | https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/new | mihaip wrote: | This particular issue has been reported as | https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/20 | dylan604 wrote: | 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. | [deleted] | soapdog wrote: | There is also its cousin https://system7.app/ | ulisesrmzroche wrote: | So what was Key Caps for? Some kind of virtual keyboard pops out | but I wonder what for. | yoyopa wrote: | it helped learn the various symbols... if you hold down option | (alt) | ivanhoe wrote: | ohh, the maelstrom, this brings memories... | dom96 wrote: | Pretty cool. Tried to launch Warcraft though and it had a lot of | graphical glitches (this is on Firefox/Windows) | PortiaBerries wrote: | Sigh, this makes me realize how much I loved computers when I was | a kid (1990s) and how much I hate them now. | grishka wrote: | 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) | commandlinefan wrote: | 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. | gfody wrote: | 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. | robbyking wrote: | When I was in my late teens I lived with an older friend who | worked as a web developer at the beginning of the dot com | boom. He would come home stressed from work and I'd think | _how can be stressed? He gets to work on a computer all day!_ | perardi wrote: | 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 could really dig in and | see all the files, and then probably accidentally ruin | something, but still, you could do it. And you simply cannot do | that on an iOS device outside of jailbreaking, and increasingly | you cannot do that with SIP and other security measures on | macOS. | | Which is probably for the best, for obvious security reasons. | But I feel like I miss that joy of exploration... | PortiaBerries wrote: | The first app I opened up was ResEdit; the jack-in-the-box | gave me a big wave of nostalgia... But yeah, it's hard to | separate fond memories of youth from the changes in | computing. Plus when I was a kid learning HyperTalk and then | C on System 7 it was all for fun; no one was asking anything | of me. Now my coding supports my family; I haven't done any | coding for fun since a few years ago when I took a sabbatical | from my SDE job and worked half-time as a farm hand. | layer8 wrote: | 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, ...). | lekevicius wrote: | Fantastic! It even has Adobe Photoshop 3. So much fun. | bluedino wrote: | Photoshop is one of those things that easily illustrates how | far computers have come. | | Anyone who used graphic design software, even well into the | PowerPC days, remembers having a tiny preview window to show | filters/effects, and then waiting seconds or even minutes for | the filter to be applied to the entire image. Yes people, even | a blur took a long time in the old days. | | The real-time manipulation we have on our phones these days is | insane by comparison. | david422 wrote: | There is a funny video - | | 8 current Photoshop experts using Photoshop 1.0 and recording | their reactions. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtA46JT2q_0 | | The funniest I think is when they all find out they only have | 1 undo. | reaperducer wrote: | _Fantastic! It even has Adobe Photoshop 3. So much fun._ | | Makes me wonder if in the year 2040, we'll be able to do | anything similar at all. | | "Oooh! Photoshop CC on Microsoft Windows 13 running inside a | browser running on macOS 43! Oh, wait. 'Cannot connect to DRM | server.' 'Cannot connect to advertising server.' 'Cannot | connect to marketing server.' 'Cannot connect to telemetry | server.' 'Cannot authenticate login. Aborting.'" | | (I'm not harshing on MS. Just moaning that software is so tied | to ephemeral services these days.) | vmoore wrote: | If you like this, check these: | https://github.com/zriyansh/awesome-os | tomxor wrote: | The preloaded apps and games really lock in the nostalgia... | Infini-d, Bryce, ResEdit, Stuffit, Afterdark | fitzroy wrote: | The Warcraft startup options are reminiscent of the 'about to | edit video" ritual of the time. Just need to disable all | extensions and plug in a "certified" (i.e. heavily marked up) | SCSI drive. | | [] Quit other applications [] Quit Finder also [] Switch to | 640x480 [] Hide desktop [] Turn off File Sharing [] Disable | screen saver [] Hide Control Strip | orangepurple wrote: | What is the best way to take an offline mirror of this site | before it is taken offline? | ksherlock wrote: | git clone https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac.git | | Or just use Basilisk. | chrisstanchak wrote: | Quack not working | dmje wrote: | Anyone remember any names of DAWs back then? - I had it on my Mac | Classic round about 92-95. I thought it was called EasyStudio but | man, apparently it was a while ago and I seem to be getting | forgetful... | wazoox wrote: | I used Digidesign Sound Tools and Sound Tools II on a Mac IIx | at the studio from 91 to 93, also Opcode Studio Vision (using | the Digidesign card); then we upgraded with another piece of | Digidesign kit that was some sort of "ProTools lite", with a | large rack-mounted audio I/O box. | | Most people still used Cubase on Atari 1040ST back then for | their musical musings ;) | dmje wrote: | Aw man, I loved the Atari for sound. I never had one but some | mates did, we used to write some epic stuff. This has also | reminded me of much later when I started using Tracktion, | which it turns out is still a thing... | yaomtc wrote: | I remember Launcher having buttons at the top of the window for | categories. This version of Launcher doesn't have that, though? | It's just a window with Script Editor and SimpleText (which | doesn't launch) | tomc1985 wrote: | It runs? I guess. | | Neither Sim City 2000 nor Warcraft II could start. | | Is this just another enscripten rush port or something? | scarface74 wrote: | SimCity 2K ran fine for me once I "registered" it - with all of | the horrible music. | sbierwagen wrote: | "The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear | dances at all." | tomc1985 wrote: | With the amount of in-browser emulators how there it doesn't | seem particularly difficult to recompile something existing | to WASM. Archive.org has been doing something like that for | years at this point | | This project is a nice resume badge. Just wish it was called | that | natly wrote: | The idea that we could one day run todays operating systems in | emulation (in the browser) seems so insane and infeasible but | maybe one day it'll be possible. Advances in computation is one | rare thing that cheers my spirit up in a world where a lot of | scary trends are pointing down. | em3rgent0rdr wrote: | JSLinux, which was started in 2011, has been able to run Linux | in a web-browser for some time now. [1][2] | | [1] https://ostechnix.com/run-linux-operating-systems-browser/ | [2] https://bellard.org/jslinux/ | CydeWeys wrote: | Isn't it already possible today with Wasm? Sure the browser | adds overhead, but merely running an OS isn't super intensive. | killingmehardly wrote: | rileyphone wrote: | Yes, with https://leaningtech.com/webvm-server- | less-x86-virtual-machin.... Wild stuff. | nsxwolf wrote: | I was hoping I could use Netscape Navigator to go to Hacker News | and post a comment from it, but it has no network connection. And | I guess it probably wouldn't be able to HTTPS. | killingmehardly wrote: | mihaip wrote: | https://oldweb.today/ gives you that experience, using some of | the same building blocks. | chefandy wrote: | Oldweb.today kicks ass. Great project. If you're scrolling by | wondering whether it's worth putting in your list of sites to | visit, definitely do it. | lostgame wrote: | I'm sorry this is so vague, I'm in transit right now; so I'm a | little lazy to try to Google this from my phone - but there is | some sort of proxy-type thing for these old Macs that allows | you to use the 'modern web', to an...extent? | | I think it kinda works the way Opera Mini does or something, if | that makes sense? | | It does totally solve the HTTPS issue. You could _easily_ | access HN using this method through even Netscape. | | There is also - I want to say - again pardon me if I'm wrong | here, but I believe it's called 'Classzilla'? | | This is for - AFAIK - at least MacOS 9 (you might be screwed | for 8, though) and does old.Reddit.com pretty okay for me as | long as I have enough RAM in the unit, so it should also handle | HN totally fine. | | I actually think it - along with, unfortunately; an absolutely | incredible modern Firefox port for PPC Macs running 10.4/10.5 | called 'TenFourFox', are now abandoned - but very much still | available. | | It was a pretty big hit to the (admittedly small) PPC Mac | community when it happened. | | I personally still use TenFourFox almost every day as I use my | PPC Mac collection often for various tasks, especially my quad | G5 that has 16GB(!) RAM. | | (Yeah, a PPC Mac with I believe 2 processors/4 G5 cores at | 2.5(?)ghz, 2 512 GB SSD's and 16GB of RAM. There is literally | no better way to experience the heights of the PPC Mac days. So | cool.) | drewzero1 wrote: | Not specific to the HTTPS issue, but useful for older | browsers on lower-powered machines: | | Youtube creator and classic mac community contributor | Sean/Action Retro has been running a proxy called | FrogFind[0]. The project uses the Firefox "reader view" | algorithm to serve stripped-down web pages for older | machines. It's great for G3 and older machines that expect | the web to be a bit more 90s. It really reminds me of using | Google in/around 1998-99. | | [0] http://frogfind.com | simulate-me wrote: | I believe some people have written WASM networking using a | WebRTC data channel as the transport. | ivank wrote: | https://github.com/tenox7/wrp WRP - Web Rendering Proxy | macintux wrote: | Related discussion from a few weeks ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30875259 | mohamez wrote: | Is this WebAssembly? Because if it is then we've come a long way | in the web! | Narishma wrote: | Font rendering seems off. It looks too pixelated and the pixels | aren't even the same size. That said, I haven't used a real Mac | so I don't know if that's how it's supposed to look. | scroot wrote: | This system was designed to be used primarily with CRT based | displays, so back in the day it wouldn't have "looked" as | pixellated even though these things were definitely defined | that way. | snerbles wrote: | It looks like a fractional scaling issue. | moth-fuzz wrote: | What does one have to do to get as clear and pretty of a UI as | that on the modern desktop OSes? Everyone switched from bitmaps | to vectors over a decade ago and now everything is fuzzy, | antialiased, scalable, flat, hard to make out. | | Of course you can always run dwm on linux with a hodgepodge of | makeshift utility apps, write your own keybinds to set your | brightness and volume and other such inanities, but in order to | get a 'complete' desktop experience you kinda have to opt-in to | GNOME/KDE which are trying to do the same things as Apple or | Microsoft, aesthetically speaking. And tough luck if you actually | use Apple or Microsoft to begin with. I tried running bug.n and | it seems to not work in win10, let alone win11. | ynniv wrote: | Most of the time when I notice poor font antialiasing it's due | to the OS resolution or subpixel antialiasing not precisely | matching the panel. An old OS will not have subpixel | antialiasing, so if it looks correct you could try disabling | subpixel/ClearType, or testing a bitmap font. If the old OS | still looks wrong, your panel may be pretending to be 4k and | actually stretching things a little. Also, any OS level scaling | is likely to mess with things, so check that it's either 100% | or 200%. | unicornporn wrote: | _> but in order to get a 'complete' desktop experience you | kinda have to opt-in to GNOME/KDE which are trying to do the | same things as Apple or Microsoft, aesthetically speaking._ | | This is so true and that's why I deep inside mourn the end of | this UI era. | [deleted] | btrettel wrote: | With respect to the anti-aliasing on Linux, I run Xfce, which | easily allows one to control the font anti-aliasing in the | Appearance settings under the Fonts tab. I assume that GNOME | and KDE have similar configuration settings. You can also get | the same sort of controls in fonts.conf [0] for applications | that don't respect Xfce's settings, like Firefox, as I recall. | I could make everything as sharp as I'd like with the right | settings. | | In my experience, basically every window manager has some | 90s-esque style as well. | | [0] There's more information buried in here: | https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Font_configuration | michaelmrose wrote: | You might be overestimating the complexity of creating such a | hodgepodge. | | i3wm = tiling window manager lxappearance = set gtk theme and | settings qt5ct = set qt5 theme and settings kvantum more | settings for qt ponymix cli for pulseaudio that sucks less than | pactl pavucontrol gui mixer nm-applet tray applet that lets you | select a different network i3status-rust nicer and more | powerful status line for i3bar rofi a launcher that looks like | nice and is more powerful | | To this add all the other apps you already use. | | The thing about this hodgepodge is that there really isn't much | to be said about integration as the different components don't | require or benefit from such. The connection between such are | so bare direct and obvious that there isn't much of a question | how to put it together. You change a line in your i3 config to | start a different app at startup or trigger a different one | with a keybinding. | | If you had done so 5 years ago you could be using much the same | configuration now and much the same configuration 5 years | hence. I guarantee you that whether you use KDE or Gnome or | Windows you are liable to spend a day here or there tweaking | your environment even if Bob in accounting doesn't. | qbasic_forever wrote: | XFCE is pretty complete and can be tweaked into just about any | retro desktop experience you want--i.e. you can make a panel | feel like a start menu and task bar, or sit in the middle like | a dock, have both a dock and top bar panel, etc. | | If you really want you can also tweak some settings to totally | disable antialiasing and switch to bitmap font rendering. On | modern semi-high DPI displays (like a 14" 1920x1080 panel) it | isn't that great though as most bitmap fonts are far too small | to be readable (~8-12 pixels tall). For the most crisp and | clear text, even crisper than old bitmap stuff, you really want | a high DPI display in the 4k+ range. Try using a modern mac and | you will be blown away at how clear and sharp the text renders. | usefulcat wrote: | I switched to a Mac recently, prior to that I'd been using | Elementary OS. I'm still using the same monitor though (a large | 4k display), so any visual differences are quite obvious to me. | | The Mac is definitely fuzzier than Elementary; that clarity is | the main thing I miss. It seems pretty obvious that modern | MacOS is designed for high DPI displays. | dkonofalski wrote: | >Everyone switched from bitmaps to vectors over a decade ago | and now everything is fuzzy, antialiased, scalable, flat, hard | to make out. | | That makes no sense. Bitmaps have a fixed pixel density while | vectors are infinitely scalable. | dkarl wrote: | 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 Pro right now, and the | difference in how well the text renders on the two displays | is plain. | | I guess as soon as Apple started making laptops with 300dpi | screens, it became okay to render fuzzy text on any screen | that wasn't 300dpi. | necovek wrote: | I've recently gotten a MacBook Pro 14 for work, and tried | out Ubuntu 22.04 RC on a laptop, and I was confounded with | how fuzzy both of them look today (Ubuntu with fractional | scaling, but Mac even with 2x scaling on 4k screen). | | Whatever setup was there on Ubuntu 20.04 which made text | render clearly needs to come back (I used to use slight | hinting setting, but it seems subpixel rendering is going | away on Linux too). Please! | jassmith87 wrote: | The problem is you have it plugged into a macbook. Apple | doesn't support subpixel anti-aliasing in any of its latest | releases. Your monitor looks so fuzzy because Apple has | removed the capability to make it not look so fuzzy. | js2 wrote: | Context: | | https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/07/13/macos-10-14-mojave- | remove... | jefftk wrote: | _> I 'm using a popular, >$1300, very favorably reviewed | monitor, and the text is ever-so-slightly fuzzy._ | | Some programs let you use pixel-perfect fonts, even today. | For example, in iterm2 I do "Profiles > Text > Monaco | Regular 10pt non-antialiased" | murermader wrote: | This has nothing to do with the display, this is a MacOS | scaling issue. Plug in a Windows device, put it at 100% | scaling and it will be as sharp as it can get. | | macOS is really limited when in comes to displays, because | the display must have a PPI of around 110, or a multiple of | that. It sucks how bad macOS is at scaling, especially with | the terrible font rendering. | rsanek wrote: | I think the secret is to go with much larger monitors and | blow up the text size. Right now I'm typing this on a M1 | MBP plugged into a curved 48" 4K TV that I use as a | monitor. I can have the text scaled about 3-4x as large | (physically) as on my Macbook and it looks great. Slight | bonus, avoiding reading small text is healthier for your | long-term vision. | necovek wrote: | 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 was really sufficient | (185dpi) but you could then see text regain jagged edges. | Thus I reasoned that, with my glasses correcting my myopia | to better than 20/20, I needed to wait a while until I can | fully enjoy nice, laser-printout-like text. | | As a reminder, even laser printers printing at 600dpi use | techniques similar to subpixel rendering to render that | smooth text. | | I am hoping for some 8K screens at 32" for productivity | work (though that's still probably too low at 275 dpi), and | I never get it why people keep talking about there not | being any 8K content. My desktop is my 8K content, though I | also lack the GPU to drive it at more than 30Hz :) | dmonitor wrote: | You can turn off ClearType to get rid of the aliasing in | fonts on Windows | tomc1985 wrote: | Text fuzziness has had nothing to do with your monitor ever | since we've gone digital with HDMI and DVI | | Linux & Windows generally use implementations of | antialiasing that aren't so "fuzzy," so you could always | ditch that Mac for something that won't forcibly abstract | away the details for you | necovek wrote: | It can still happen when different display panel pixel | colour arrangements don't match subpixel rendering | settings in software, though that'll usually happen with | non-monitor displays like TVs. | tomc1985 wrote: | True, though in practice I haven't noticed it to be | nearly as obnoxious as Apple stuff trying to upscale at | non-integer intervals | necovek wrote: | Yeah, I was completely surprised when I moved from Ubuntu | 20.04 to MacBook Pro 14 on the very same Dell U3219Q: | MacOS made text editing completely unpleasant. | | Then I upgraded my son's laptop to Ubuntu 22.04 RC, and I | was greeted with the same fuzziness. I hope that's only | due to Wayland, I haven't tried out the X desktop when | docked. | xvolter wrote: | Sounds like he used to be younger and needs to see an | optometrist. | NikolaNovak wrote: | Not necessarily; I fired up some old devices last month, | and the way their bitmap icons and apps and screens | appeared, can only be defined as "Crips" and "Sharp". I'm | not saying prettily or beneficially so! But they were | definitely very stark and constrasty (let alone colourful | and "stand-out-ish"!) holding them next to my modern phone | or PC. | | I don't think "Vector vs bitmap" is necessarily the cause - | more of design sensibility. When I look at the lineup of | google apps on my phone which all look EXACTLY the same (3 | primary colours in random rotation; I can only effectively | use / distinguish them if I memorize location of icon), and | then the same as slack and my son's daycare app which also | use swirls of same 3 primary colours; and when I compare my | Windows desktop and icons and browsers to old apps - | there's a definite brutal sharpness to old stuff. | throwanem wrote: | Because the pixels are larger on old display devices, I | suspect. | shadowgovt wrote: | Back in the day, the fixed pixel density of the bitmaps was | 1-to-1 aligned with the pixel density of the monitors. Every | line was crisp and clean because there was no antialiasing | across partial pixels. | | The world in which we now live allows for a lot more | crispness when it matters (because the pixel density | approaches indistinguishable-by-the-human-eye-at-viewing- | distance), but with the tradeoff that UIs designed to work at | whatever scale on whatever monitor with whatever DPI do a lot | of aliasing, and things tend to look, sometimes, just a tad | muddier. Especially when vectorized icons get drawn in a | rendering pipe that passes through the graphics accelerator. | cobbaut wrote: | > but in order to get a 'complete' desktop experience you kinda | have to opt-in to GNOME/KDE | | try XFCE, it works. | kevingadd wrote: | I don't get it. Windows 10 is all crisp 1-2 pixel lines and | rectangles for me with sparse use of gradients, and the windows | theming engine (used in XP, 7, etc) was all based on bitmaps. | opan wrote: | I use Terminus 9pt whenever/wherever I can easily get it going | for this reason. It's funny seeing all the replies from people | who don't get it. Other fonts really do all look blurry next to | bitmaps. I've switched terminal emulators at least once due to | Pango dropping bitmap support. Still works in foot and | alacritty. Probably others as well, but I also need Wayland | support. | m_eiman wrote: | > now everything is fuzzy, antialiased, scalable, flat, hard to | make out. | | Use a high-DPI screen, for starters. | giobox wrote: | For fuzz, anti and anti-aliasing issues, you can sometimes | make them _worse_ with a HiDPI display. | | All of these issues really boil down to render resolution not | integer scaling to the display resolution. | | If the render resolution is an integer multiple of the | display resolution or vice versa, you will generally always | get beautiful crisp rendering - this is exactly the approach | Apple adopted, and is why they had to use some slightly less | common resolutions like 5k on some devices - 2560x1440/"QHD" | has integer scaling factor of exactly 2 for a 5k display etc. | | The problem though is that outside of Apple devices, almost | no hiDPI display will neatly integer sale. The vast majority | of Hi-DPI monitors on sale today are 4k, and only 1080p | really has a useable integer scaling factor there. 1080p of | "useable" screen real estate on a 4k monitor is going to make | all UI elements too big usually though... So you are forced | to non-integer scaling and images that will not cleanly map | to the grid of pixels in the monitor, which is where the fuzz | and anti-aliasing etc starts... 1440p of "usable" space does | not cleanly map to a 4k monitor, but many people run them | this way. | | 5k is frankly a brilliant resolution for high quality ~200ppi | style HiDPI rendering on 27 inch displays with 2x integer | scaling for macOS and Windows especially, its tragic the | resolution hasn't become more mainstream. | m_eiman wrote: | Yes, it's a shame that there are only two 5K 27" displays | to choose from, and both are expensive. The industry has | dropped the ball on this for years, all those 32" 4K | screens may be cheap but they're no use to me... | michaelmrose wrote: | On Linux | | Step one plug in 4K 27" monitor. | | Step two set scaling factor for gtk/java apps to 2. | KDE/QT apps can figure out the correct DPI without | hassle. | | Step three set fonts smaller or larger if desired. | | On Windows plug in 4K 27" monitor. Text doesn't look in | my opinion quite as nice as Linux but it isn't fuzzy, | small, or giant. Possibly font rendering could look nicer | if I bothered to tweak it but since its basically boot to | steam I see little reason to bother. | | I keep hearing this argument that 4K somehow doesn't work | or looks shitty and only 5K Mac displays provide an | acceptable high dpi experience and I feel like I'm | getting transmissions from an alternate universe where | nobody had to scale UIs from screens that varied in DPI | by a factor of 3 for almost 20 years. Long before 4K | screens. | michaelmrose wrote: | This is an interesting analytical failure. To explicate. | You go through your day wearing only boots. You see people | wearing sneakers and so one day you buy a pair the wrong | size and put it on with a tag inside and walk around like | that for a day. You think to yourself how do all these | people do this every day did nobody ever show them a good | pair of boots! Sir Boots4Life's analysis is faulty they | aren't all walking around uncomfortable because they don't | wear the wrong size nor wear a small object between | footwear and foot for extra penance and everyone isn't | walking around with a fuzzy screen. | | There as it turns out are other ways to scale a UI other | than integer scaling factors. Even if you don't use svg you | can use different image sizes and scale fonts by smaller | increments yet. | | You describe their being 1080p of usable real estate which | is a complete failure to use a meaningful unit of measure. | Your 5K display, future 8k displays etc use more pixels to | draw a button 3cm x 1 cm. They aren't wasting increasing | number of pixels they are drawing the element with | increasing fidelity. If we measured screen real estate in | pixels one would conclude that a 5" screen and a 32" screen | both drawn in 1080p have equal screen real estate. This is | a clearly incorrect conclusion. Clearly screen real estate | is measured in area with fidelity not real estate measured | in DPI. | | Increasing fidelity might bear on the smallest element one | can possibly usefully use but its not going to bear as much | on what size element people desire to use which has much | more to do with how far the object is from a users face. | | You are saying that 4K monitors require one to choose | between giant elements that somehow waste all the pixels or | exceptionally tiny ones. This is silly. First off 108Op | displays that range from 12" - 32" already had to adjust | elements to be usable even before 4K became a thing and | there were already more knobs than scaling factor to | achieve the same end result. 4K changed the existing | equation that has existed for 20 years by an exact factor | of 2. 8k changes it by an exact factor of 4. | | TLDR: Set an integer scaling factor then tweaking your | fonts a little bigger or a little smaller until it looks | nice according to your taste. Nobody on earth expected a | 24" 4K monitor to display twice as much content as a 1080p | 24" monitor because they want things to be the same size on | the screen only prettier. | dkarl wrote: | It's pretty poor to regress on the vast majority of currently | available displays just because there are a handful of multi- | thousand-dollar monitors available. Apple can't even sell a | 27" monitor for less than $1500 because the experience | wouldn't be on-brand. If you look at the big-ticket items | that Apple sells, they have cheaper versions of everything | except displays. They only put their brand on the most | expensive displays because they know what their software | looks like on anything less. | [deleted] | jasomill wrote: | Ha! I remember feeling the same way when Apple started | replacing the classic Mac system fonts (Chicago, etc.) with | newer, anti-aliased alternatives ca. Mac OS 8. A couple dozen | years later, I guess I'm used to it. | Joeri wrote: | _What does one have to do to get as clear and pretty of a UI as | that on the modern desktop OSes?_ | | Buy a retina mac ;) | | I kid but only partly. Running at integer (2x) scaling on a 200 | dpi screen makes everything perfectly crisp. Anti-aliased text | no longer appears blurry and lines are rendered at exact pixel | boundaries. | | Those old bitmap art displays didn't do any scaling. Every | pixel appeared exactly as someone drew it, with crisp | boundaries. It's the scalable part of vector graphics that | fuzzes things up. | bad_good_guy wrote: | > What does one have to do to get as ... pretty of a UI | | Are you being intentionally disingenuous? It is objectively not | a pretty UI, it's a functional but quite ugly one. | toephu2 wrote: | I think it's quite subjective actually. I like the UI. | | "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" | masswerk wrote: | I think, this is a rather relative statement. Modern UIs | would have been perceived as toy-like and not fit for | business back then. It all comes down to what we are used to. | (That said, personally, I always favoured the System 7 UI | over OS 8.) | tomc1985 wrote: | MATE Desktop is still pretty simple and great | sandgiant wrote: | Oh man. Hotline. Fond memories. Thanks for sharing! | JoeDaDude wrote: | Awesome! I'm going to dig up the source for my custom After Dark | module and see if it works! | lloydatkinson wrote: | Does anyone know of a way of running Windows 98 in a browser, but | with a custom hard drive image that you can point it to? There's | several sites for running 98 in browser but none let you use a | custom virtual hard drive image. I'd like to do it for some fun | retro stuff. I guess self hosting, but how do you do the whole | QEMU <-> Browser part? | | (custom floppy/CD image would also be an option as I could load | the retro app that way) | lioeters wrote: | > Windows 98 in a browser | | This might be a good start: | | https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98 | | The emulation has load/save state (.bin file), and apparently | includes a floppy disk controller. | | https://github.com/copy/v86 | spaetzleesser wrote: | When I look at this I think how these old UIs like MacOS, windows | 95 or 2000 were designed for clarity and usability. And how | things have gone downhill since then. I really miss easily | distinguishable UI elements. | JKCalhoun wrote: | I'm of two minds. | | The Mac famously had User Interface Guidelines that tried to | keep everything consistent. I loved it and, like you, miss it. | | But then designers came along and we got drawers (and then we | lost the drawers), editable toolbars, brushed metal (and then | not), etc... | | The point at which I called bullshit was when Safari combined | the URL text field with the loading progress bar. I disagreed | with the design and said so -- it looked to me like the URL was | being text-selected as the page loaded. (Ah well, it appears to | be gone now anyway.) | | But I digress. I had begun to consider that users are now more | comfortable with inconsistent UI with the ubiquity of the Web. | That has perhaps freed designers to try random stuff on a per- | app basis and not adhere so religiously to User Interface | Guidelines. | | But, yeah, it made life easier for developers too. | toast0 wrote: | > The Mac famously had User Interface Guidelines that tried | to keep everything consistent. I loved it and, like you, miss | it. | | > But then designers came along | | I mean, the Guidelines were written by designers. I don't | have a problem with designers; I don't care for the Mac | design, but at least it was consistent. But I don't think | there's an OS with guidelines anymore; at least not any OS | where 95%+ of what ships with the OS follows the guidelines | (never mind what else the OS developer ships or 3rd party | software). </rant> | dannyobrien wrote: | Interestingly, that the progress bar/URL field combo was co- | invented by Steve Jobs: See | https://donmelton.com/2014/04/10/memories-of-steve/ | abruzzi wrote: | before the OS vendors started ignoring their human interface | guidelines, we had Kai's Power Tools, which some people loved | --but I hated. I dont know if that was the beginning of | custom UIs for every applications, or if it was just an | outlier. | em3rgent0rdr wrote: | Civilization and Battle Chess is in the games folder! | stuart78 wrote: | Marathon Infinity is what I was excited to see in there. Runs | well too! I can't say how many hours I spent between the base | game and Anvil. | shadowgovt wrote: | "See you starside." | arprocter wrote: | And Hellcats - this takes me back | dkonofalski wrote: | I couldn't get Battle Chess to work. It kept giving me a memory | error. I even read the readme file that says how to fix it but | the option it mentions isn't available in the Controls pane for | Memory. :( | Davertron wrote: | And Out of This World (or Another World...), which is one of my | favorite games of all time! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-26 23:00 UTC)