[HN Gopher] Show HN: A new native app for 20 year old OS X
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Show HN: A new native app for 20 year old OS X
A few of us here are probably familiar with the original Xbox
modding scene and the iconic xbins FTP server. Recently, I came
across an amazing tool called Pandora by Team Resurgent [0], which
got me thinking about how incredible something like this would have
been 20 years ago. Just to clarify, I had no involvement in
creating Pandora--I'm just inspired by their work. For those who
aren't familiar, getting access to xbins involves a rather dated
process. You need to connect to a channel on an EFnet IRC server,
message a bot for temporary credentials, then plug those
credentials into your FTP client to access xbins. Pandora (and my
app) simplifies this entire workflow into a single click. Inspired
by Pandora, I decided to build my own take on what this dream tool
might have looked like back in the day. I wrote a native Mac app on
original hardware--an Intel iMac (20-inch, 2007)--running a
20-year-old operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. This was my
first foray into native Mac app development, though I've done some
iOS development in the past. The result is Uppercut [1], and the
source is available on GitHub [2]. For the development process, I
used Claude to help with a lot of the coding, especially since I
was constrained to Xcode 2.5 and the pre-"Objective-C 2.0" features
available at the time. I had to be very specific in prompting
Claude to avoid newer features that didn't exist back then. Since
the majority of Objective-C code out there comes from the era of
iOS development (which relied heavily on Objective-C 2.0 until the
arrival of Swift), this was a unique and challenging exercise in
retro development. [0] - https://github.com/Team-Resurgent/Pandora
[1] - https://uppercut.chadbibler.com [2] -
https://github.com/chadkeck/Uppercut
Author : chadkeck
Score : 63 points
Date : 2025-01-24 00:46 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (uppercut.chadbibler.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (uppercut.chadbibler.com)
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Meh. I'm holding out for Leopard. Sure hope it's good!
| TheSmoke wrote:
| I so miss this look and feel.
| NikkiA wrote:
| I actually liked the stronger pin stripes on Jaguar
| p_ing wrote:
| Same! And I really liked the pill on the upper right of each
| window. Brings back that Mac OS feel.
| landr0id wrote:
| Cool project! I remember back in the day having to poke my
| friends with xbins upload access to drop things for me. It wasn't
| super clear who anyone involved with the service was in that
| capacity. I'm surprised xbins is still kicking and with the same
| model it used to have, but it's kinda cool at the same time.
| randall wrote:
| i love you this is amazing
| Lammy wrote:
| Very cool. Is Tiger the minimum bound for the app itself, or just
| for the Intel Mac? I have 10.1 on a Wallstreet and can give it a
| shot if not.
|
| > thinking about how incredible something like this would have
| been 20 years ago
|
| There are a couple of iterations of this idea that are slightly
| older than Pandora. Key word "Easy-Xbins" or "AutoXbins":
| https://www.se7ensins.com/forums/threads/how-to-use-auto-xbi...
| (2007)
|
| The one I liked most for Windows was called Auto Xbins 2009 and
| had embedded mIRC which would trigger every anti-malware system
| under the sun due to looking exactly like malware C&C lol
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(page generated 2025-01-26 23:00 UTC)