Classic Mac OS and dozens of apps can now be run in a browser window

The Internet Archive is a great resource if you’re looking to play with older PC apps and operating systems—thanks to a JavaScript port of DOSBox, you can run stuff like Mario Teaches Typing and Windows For Workgroups 3.11 right in your browser, giving you a quick and easy way to get some idea of what it was like to use a computer 20 or 25 years ago.

Now, the Internet Archive has some retro computing offerings from the other side of the great Mac/PC divide. Using a version of the PCE PC Emulator that has been ported to JavaScript, people interested in the Mac’s early years can run System 6, System 7, and dozens of old apps, including MacWrite and Microsoft Basic using their browsers.

The hardware that this old black-and-white software would have run on is wholly different from modern Macs—it hearkens back to the pre-PowerPC days when Macs still used the same Motorola 68000-series processors as the original 1984 Macintosh. Even so, the user interface is recognizable even if you’ve only used Macs in our current post-Mac OS X, post-Intel era. Showing mounted volumes on the desktop, the idea of a “trash” can that could hold deleted files until you were sure you wanted to delete them, and the persistent menu bar complete with Apple logo are all still hallmarks of modern Macs. Names like “Finder” have also persisted, even though the modern-day Finder has little in common with the one in System 6 or 7.

The Internet Archive’s sampling of Mac software can be found here. Take a look, even if only to appreciate anew how much more capable today’s computers are compared to what we had three decades ago.