Macsurf, "modern" web browser for macOS 9

bensyverson•about 4 hours ago

This is fantastic. To me, this is one of the greatest side-effects of agentic coding; adding new functionality to vintage, abandoned or obsolete hardware. It gives me hope for a solarpunk future where e-waste gets a more functional second life.

manytimesaway•about 4 hours ago

So, making obsolete hardware relevant by using the technology that's accelerating their "irrelevanceness" ?

chongli•37 minutes ago

There's no acceleration here. Vintage Macs are 100% obsolete. They can't get any more obsolete than that. They can, however, become MORE relevant for hobbyists through the development of new software for them.

What could be better than that?

pndy•about 1 hour ago

You are aware that there's a huge retrocomputing community around the world that with hearts and passion preserves old machines and software?

yjftsjthsd-h•about 2 hours ago

How is AI making old hardware obsolete faster?

bensyverson•about 3 hours ago

Life isn't black & white

hyperhello•about 4 hours ago

To me it proves that a technology can be understood and implemented by one person.

prokopton•about 4 hours ago

Can hardware became more obsolete?

addaon•35 minutes ago

Yes. Discrete 74 series TTL logic ICs were quite obsolete; CMOS versions replaced them. But now with new generations that are not level-compatible with the TTL versions, the TTL versions are even more obsolete.

Cyan488•about 6 hours ago

When I owned a iMac G3, the Classilla browser was surprisingly good. Looks like development ended in 2021.

Also, the branding was "Mac OS 9".

felixding•about 5 hours ago

Exactly. I don't know why some people'd change the branding.

ndiddy•about 4 hours ago

Apple keeps changing the name of their desktop operating system, so Hacker News has some sort of filter to automatically change "Mac OS" to whatever the newest name is in order to fit Apple's brand guidelines. This has the consequence of making some submission titles read as anachronistic when the sumission is about an old OS version.

Springtime•about 5 hours ago

The project didn't, only the HN submission title.

gattilorenz•about 1 hour ago

Not the submission title, just the automatically revised submission title. Pretty sure I submitted it with the proper casing/spacing

manoDev•about 4 hours ago

That's impressive, too bad modern web requires more than 2000x the transistor density to run JS at decent speed. We really f*** up.

pndy•about 1 hour ago

Anyone had luck running it under infinitemac? I can't boot anything beyond 9.0 and it throws some error upon launch - seems it needs at least 9.1.

mplsllc•42 minutes ago

It needs carbonlib - is that installed on the OS? I was able to get it to work on 9.1 with the last released CarbonLib.

pndy•14 minutes ago

Yes, some older version but I've grabbed carbonlib 1.6.1 from macintoshrepository and that helped with launching MacSurf under that premade 9.0 machine

simgt•about 6 hours ago

Cool! I've been wondering for some time if a good low-distraction but pleasant environment could be an old Mac OS on a (good looking) Hackintosh. The UI was baked with UX research at least.

Wowfunhappy•about 3 hours ago

It's a significantly newer Mac OS than Mac OS 9, but this is basically my life. Mavericksforever.com.

LoganDark•about 2 hours ago

That would be "Mac OS 9"

Torwald•about 1 hour ago

This is what the Amiga is missing!

mplsllc•18 minutes ago

Have you tried the Netsurf port for it?

gcp123•about 6 hours ago

Freaking love it! Gonna put this on my 1998 Bondi Blue iMac G3 today.

SoftTalker•41 minutes ago

Let us know how many minutes it runs before you get a system crash and a sad-face Mac icon.

hyperhello•about 6 hours ago

Absolutely love it.

iwontberude•about 5 hours ago

Time to fire up the ol PowerMac G4 MDD (last native support for Mac OS 9)

mplsllc•40 minutes ago

Hey everyone! This is my project, I've been working really hard (yes using AI to help) for about two months straight now. I am not just letting it be, I am going to keep tooling with it every day to make it better and better.

The latest version uses real, third-party verified, TLS 1.3 so I am pushing all the limits that I can. Thanks for sharing!

Macsurf, "modern" web browser for macOS 9

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (28 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews