Over the many years Apple Computer have been in operation, they have made a success of nearly-seamlessly transitioning multiple times between both operating systems and their underlying architecture. There have been many overlapping versions, but there’s always a point at which a certain OS won’t run on newer hardware. Now [Jubadub] has pushed one of those a little further than Apple intended, by persuading classic Mac System 7 to run on a G4.
System 7 was the OS your Mac would have run some time in the mid ’90s, whether it was a later 68000 machine or a first-gen PowerMac. In its day it gave Windows 3.x and even 95 a run for their money, but it relied on an older Mac ROM architecture than the one found on a G4. The hack here lies in leaked ROMS, hidden backwards compatibility, and an unreleased but preserved System 7 version originally designed for the ’90s Mac clone programme axed by Steve Jobs. It’s not perfect, but they achieved the impossible.
As to why, it seems there’s a significant amount of software that needs 7 to run, something mirrored in the non-Mac retrocomputing world. Even this hack isn’t the most surprising System 7 one we’ve seen recently, as an example someone even made a version for x86 machines.
Thumbnail Image Art: Apple PowerMac G4 by baku13, CC BY-SA 3.0
i have a huge amount of classic mac applications i obtained from workstations in computer labs able to reach across university campases via appletalk networks. i would drive to some random college town, find the computer lab, break out my portable scsi drive, and download anything i could. then i would spend the next week cracking the programs i got to eliminate copy protection (the ones involving dongles were particularly easy to bypass — the jmp instructions were always so obvious). i haven’t yet found a suitable showcase for this software but a g4 running system 7 seems perfect.
“Nearly-seamlessly”?!?!?!? As someone who worked on a 68k Quadra until iBook came out at the turn of the century, I know that, only as long as you upgraded to the latest hardware, was the transition was smooth. Apple suddenly cut off support and abandoned those with older Macs, just like they did with the excellent Cyberdog, Hypercard, and come to think of it, the entire Apple II lineup! And behind the scenes, projects like the infamous “Star Trek” failed big. Sure, they have transitioned multiple times(personally, I haven’t touched any Apple Silicon hardware), but “nearly seemlessly,” -NOT. Please, let’s not invite “Apple Fangirl” accusations, shall we?