Original Macintosh emulator now available on the Internet Archive

It seems to be a day for nostalgia. As Woz & the original Apple I team got together, the Internet Archive has put online a web-based emulator of the original Macintosh from 1984.

The emulator allows you to run a wide range of early Macintosh software, from the MacWrite and MacPaint apps supplied with the machine through games like Lemmings and Frogger to early Microsoft apps like Multiplan and Chart. It even runs Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.02!

Whether you’re old enough to enjoy a wander down memory lane, or want to see what life was like for the Mac pioneers, the emulator is a really fun experience in all its 9-inch black-and-white glory!

For me, it was fascinating to re-use the machine I first used to write for the early computer magazines back in 1984. The original version of MacWrite could store up to eight pages, so longer pieces had to be written in sections. If you had only the single built-in floppy drive, you would have to constantly swap system disk, MacWrite and data disk. But WYSIWYG editing was miraculous in the days when other machines used codes for things like ^bbold^b and ^iitalics^i.

You can run the emulator by clicking on any of the software found here. Be patient, though, as it has to download the necessary files before loading, then everything runs at real-life speeds. Switching between normal size and full-screen is also a little flakey, so best to do that before you start using an app.