CleanShot 2025-04-17 at 19

It's hard to believe that Apple was once a scrappy little company, just fighting to stay alive and true to its roots, instead of the largest company in the history of capitalism. The fondness that many people have Apple products is tied into the myth and memory of the old Apple. People who long ago chose Macs, usually did so out of a genuine fondness for the company and the products they made. The alternative was Microsoft Windows at its most ruthless and domineering.

I's been a long time, probably more than 20 years since I last used Mac's classic operating system, meaning OS 9.2.2 and below. I spent many, many hours of my life on those machines, installing KidPix and Apple Works for public school kids and their teachers. I could image one of the original bondi blue iMacs in about 90 seconds using a FireWire 400 drive. I also imaged many older Macs by booting from a CD and imaging from a SCSI drive. Good times.

If you ever get sentimental for those days, or, if you aren't an old like me, and you just want to investigate what the experience was like, just hear on over to InfiniteMac where you can run one of many virtual Macs right in your web browser.

The site describes itself like this:

Infinite Mac is a collection of classic Macintosh and NeXT system releases and software, all easily accessible from the comfort of a web browser.

Pick any version of System Software, Mac OS, Mac OS X or NeXTStep from the 1980s, 1990s or early 2000s and run it within a virtual machine. An “Infinite HD” disk with representative software from that era is also available. You can also run a custom version with your choice of machine and disks. On some operating systems files and disk images can be imported and exported using drag and drop and virtual CD-ROMs can be mounted – refer to the welcome screen in each machine for more details.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇