[HN Gopher] Frame of preference A history of Mac settings, 1984-...
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Frame of preference A history of Mac settings, 1984-2004
Author : K7PJP
Score : 189 points
Date : 2025-07-09 00:14 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aresluna.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (aresluna.org)
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Love the embedded screen recordings, the effects throughout the
| article were a good mix of nostalgia + illustration.
|
| Edit:
|
| ...and I completely missed that they're running live emulation!
| kome wrote:
| I have a fast internet connection and a modern browser, but this
| website is simply a tragedy. nothing loads on time...
| wgrover wrote:
| In the site's defense, it _is_ emulating like ten different
| operating systems as you scroll.
| msephton wrote:
| They are paused as required. Here's the making of:
| https://blog.persistent.info/2025/07/infinite-mac-
| embedding....
|
| The site loads just fine on my iPhone XS from 2018.
| dmitshur wrote:
| It's a very nicely crafted article. It was quite jarring to see a
| box containing the following text:
|
| > If you open this on a computer instead, you will have a chance
| to play with some emulators!
|
| Instead of what? I was under the impression that the device I was
| on is a computer.
|
| Edit: I was curious to understand what caused the site to show
| that box. From looking at the source and some interacting in the
| console, it seems to have been due to the 'isiOS' variable having
| the value 'true'. It was true despite the device not running iOS
| because '(navigator.maxTouchPoints && navigator.maxTouchPoints >
| 2)' was truthy, and window.MSStream wasn't. This device, a
| Surface Pro X, or more precisely the Chrome 139 browser running
| on it, reports 10 max touch points and doesn't have MSStream
| defined, and that appears to have been enough for it to be
| mistaken as a not-a-computer.
|
| By now, after refreshing, I see an extra sentence 'Hey, site, you
| got it wrong. This is a real computer!' Perhaps the author saw
| this comment and added it quite quicky? If so, thank you!
| thristian wrote:
| It took me a while to figure out that the nice product shots of
| Mac computers were actually live, interactive copies of the
| relevant operating system, running under emulation. Even the
| laptops with the screen at a weird angle from the camera.
|
| And the emulator tracks whether you've done the things mentioned
| in the article, like open a particular control panel or tried a
| particular menu option.
|
| This is _amazing_.
| davekeck wrote:
| It took me a minute to realize they're not just videos too.
| Really outstanding work.
| jandrese wrote:
| There are even Easter Eggs and additional tasks. If you click
| on the system description button for each emulator it will give
| you a list.
|
| I couldn't get the later emulators to work correctly though. My
| mouse kept flying off to the right of the screen for some
| reason. Also unfortunate is the scaling and tilting effect
| makes the screens look real bad on my machine. Just ugly
| aliasing artifacts everywhere.
| thristian wrote:
| The old 68k Macs are emulated with Basilisk II, which shims
| the mouse driver so it can just take mouse events from the
| host OS and move the cursor to the corresponding pixel on
| screen. The PowerPC Macs and NeXT boxes are emulated with a
| lower-level emulator that wants to get raw deltas from the
| mouse, not an absolute pixel position. If you just wave the
| mouse over the emulator, you'll get something approximating
| the expected movement (but much slower); once you click on
| the emulator it captures the mouse and you can use it as
| intended.
|
| I agree it would be nice to have an "untransformed" view of
| the screen; I suspect the site might have been designed with
| the expectation of a high-DPI screen.
| jandrese wrote:
| Unfortunately on the later Macs the mouse was way too slow
| to be useful (it kept falling well behind of where I was
| pointing and then my mouse would exit the area). Clicking
| on the emulator is when the mouse suddenly acted like I was
| always moving it right.
| kaidon wrote:
| An embedded Mac where I can play cosmic osmo in the browser with
| something that looks like a real screen... I knew it was
| possible, but wow. Super cool.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Absolutely incredible the amount of work and love that has gone
| into this. What an insane love letter to the power of the web -
| as well as to the Mac!
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| It would incredible if this worked on my iPad Air too, but alas.
| What a beautiful website and article though, thoroughly enjoyed
| it.
|
| The author has also written the keyboard book - Shift Happens[1].
| Also an incredible love letter, this one for keyboards. I
| kickstarted it and cannot be happier!
|
| 1: https://shifthappens.site/
| tobr wrote:
| The writer, Marcin Wichary, was also behind
| https://guidebookgallery.org/ on the same general topic... Can it
| really be almost 20 years ago?
| nofunsir wrote:
| I still go to File looking for File > Preferences and File >
| Quit.
| lysace wrote:
| Icons + labels is usually better than just icons or just labels.
| This also applies here (1986 vs 1984).
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Very nice write-up, worth the read.
|
| While on the Apple side preference and settings might not always
| have been consistent and smooth sailing, the utter shambles we
| have had to endure on the Microsoft side in this area post
| Windows 7 is beyond any comparison.
| thefz wrote:
| > As a designer, I'm meant to dislike settings
|
| This is one of the worst designed websites I have ever opened
| kamel3d wrote:
| The changes Apple made to Mac settings in Ventura are the worst,
| the layout used to be spread out and easy to find with large
| icons, now with the new settings layout I am always lost and
| spend way more time trying to find what I am looking for, not to
| mention the icons that make no sense
| egypturnash wrote:
| I have just completely quit trying to click on anything in the
| new system settings and just type shit in the search bar.
|
| You can make the list less squinty by playing with the "sidebar
| icon size" setting but this will also affect the sidebars in
| Finder, and maybe some other stuff around the system and
| programs that actually use the native widgets instead of
| cramming a web browser into a window, who knows, I just keep it
| at a size I like for the Finder.
| vintagedave wrote:
| The conclusion is true.
|
| > 2020s are the Lisa years. Outside of Accessibility, everything
| feels anodyne and disposable. There might not be a single control
| panel in modern macOS that feels like someone cares.
|
| > Teddy Bears, managing memory, and Gizmo I don't miss. But the
| care I do.
|
| Using and seeing some of the earlier control panels, including in
| OS X, really drives this home.
| nkotov wrote:
| What a great article. I didn't realize you can run early version
| of OS X in the browser.
| rezmason wrote:
| What an incredible application of the infinite-mac project. I'm
| eager to learn how the in-emulator events were dispatched to the
| page script.
|
| Edit: good lord, what's it doing with these hotspots? Is all the
| checkbox progression _outside_ of the emulators, in "screen
| space"? By analyzing specific pixels in the current emu
| framebuffer?!
|
| https://aresluna.org/site/scripts-frame-of-preference.js?v60
| jfvinueza wrote:
| Great article, great website, well done. Don't remember the last
| time I looked at that PowerBook G4. It is indeed _gorgeous_.
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(page generated 2025-07-09 23:01 UTC)