Step Back Into The 1990s With These Mac Web Emulators

Both of these emulators take you back to 1990s Mac systems without even leaving your web browser.

In the 1990s, you needed a powerful machine to be able to run an advanced operating system like Mac OS 8. Today, such an OS can run in a tab in your browser. It is finally easy to forget the technological advances of our computers in a short time. If you want to brush up on your knowledge a bit, you can (re-)discover these versions of macOS in your browser.

These two emulators take you back to 1990s Mac systems.

Quip engineer Mihai Parparita created emulators for System 7 and Mac OS 8, two iconic Mac operating systems of the 1990s. System 7 was released in 1991 and introduced features such as QuickTime, personal file sharing, and virtual memory. Then Apple introduced Mac OS 8 in 1997 with nested folders, Finder popups, custom system fonts, themes, and the control strip, the forerunner of the dock we all know today.

This isn’t the first time someone has made this experience possible, namely opening Mac OS 8 on a modern machine. Such an emulator has been around for some time – thanks in part to Felix Riseberg – and allows you, for example, to play The Oregon Trail the way you want or almost the way you want.

That said, what makes the two emulators we’re interested in today so special is that they run right in the browser, without having to download and install anything. And whether you have a Mac, PC, M1 chip, or Intel, you can (re)discover System 7 or Mac OS 8 in a tab in your web browser.

without even leaving the web browser

And if it’s really nice to click everywhere – especially for those who remember using these systems – Mihai Parparita has integrated some very old apps and they’re pretty functional. So you can try programs like Word, Photoshop, and Adobe Reader as they were at the time. What’s more, you can even use them for their intended purpose, since you can import and export files.

In order to transfer a file from the emulator to your computer, you must move it to the “Outside World”folder, after which it will go directly to the “Downloads”folder. To send something to the emulator, just drag it into the emulator window and it will go into the “Outside World”folder.

You can do more than office stuff, you can play on a Mac OS 8 emulator. Try games like Lemmings, KidPix, Prince of Persia, SimCity and of course The Oregon Trail. If there was only one reason to test these emulators, it would definitely be the Oregon bison hunt.

As they say, not everything is perfect. Some programs don’t work properly, but basic problems can be fixed with a few system tweaks. Some of them show error messages every time you run them for some unknown reason. But you have at least a full-fledged 1990s OS in your browser! Bugs aside, it’s really nice.

Note that however successful this experiment may be, it is only ephemeral. Once the tab is closed, everything you’ve done is gone. The next time you open the emulator, you will see an empty System 7 and Mac OS 8.