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While old Apple hardware is mostly gone, there are ways to run some of your old software on your current Mac. Here’s how to get started emulating old Apple computers on your new machine.
At the dawn of the personal computer era in the late 1970s and 1980s, there were dozens of companies making small PCs for home use.
Today, as a new interest in these classic machines grows, more and more emulators have emerged that allow you to run older operating systems on your Mac or PC. Hundreds of classic emulators now exist, far too many to cover here.
We will highlight the most important and the most interesting.
The 1970s: Apple begins
The Apple IIReleased in 1978, Apple’s first great product was created by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, and it elevated the company from a garage startup to a billion-dollar company. There were several models of the Apple II: the original Apple II, the Apple II+, IIe, IIc and IIgs. There were also several other minor variants of each.
Most Apple II computers had only 4K-64K RAM, although a wide variety of third-party RAM expansion cards appeared, including one of Microsoft. The Z-80 Soft Card also from Microsoft, the Apple II turned into a Z80-based computer capable of running the CP/M operating system.
At the time, hard drives were only a thing for large mainframes and minicomputers, and were commercially rare for personal computers, although they did exist. Computers from the 1970s and 1980s were used instead floppy disks – usually 5.25-inches and later 3.5-inches. Very early business minicomputers used 8-inch variants.
The Apple II was no exception and Apple sold the Disk II Shugart based drivetrain along with the Apple II. Several other 5.25-inch variants appeared later, and when the Mac was released in 1984, Apple also released 3.5-inch drives for later Apple II models, such as the IIgs.
The first killer app for the Apple II was VisiCalc — the world’s first spreadsheet, sold on floppy disk, written by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. VisiCalc gave accountants, business people and mathematicians the ability to enter and automatically recalculate large data sets at the touch of a button.
Suddenly, previously manual input work, such as bookkeeping and scientific simulations, became automatic. Businesses flocked to the Apple II and the PC revolution was born.
The Apple II sold nearly five million units—unheard of for any PC—and made Apple billions in profits. An entire industry sprang up around the Apple II with suppliers making expansion cards, printers, sound boxes, modems, and a wide variety of other peripherals.
Apple was born from the then nascent homebrewing CA computer scene in the late 1970s. Originally, most personal computers were sold as kits by mail order or in small computer stores. Hobbyists would order PC kits and assemble them. The Apple II’s predecessor, the Apple I, was one such kit.
The Apple II was the first true home computer to be sold right out of the box as a fully assembled PC. People loved it.
A large number of video games also appeared for the Apple II series and with it Atari, led to the home video game market. Video games used to be the stuff of coin-operated arcades with large slot machines with quarter slots in front for payment.
After Apple released the Macintosh in 1984, it also released a new GUI-driven version of the Apple IIgs operating system, giving that computer a Mac-like feel.
Today, there are a number of Apple II emulators available, including some online. The most important of these are Virtual ][, and for the IIgs, GSPlus, KEGS, GSport, and XGS.
If you have Java installed, the Apple ][ Disk Browser allows you to inspect and peek into the contents of Apple ][dskfiles[dskfiles[dsk-bestanden[dskfiles
Go to for a really nice online Apple II emulator AppleIce.
The unbelievable virtualapple.org is a site that lets you play almost any Apple II or IIgs game ever made.
All Apple II emulators, except the online ones, require an Apple II first Rom file for each specific machine. Please note that all Apple II ROM code is still copyrighted by Apple, so in order to legally use an Apple II emulator app, you must first have an Apple II ROM chip or an Apple II computer with an Apple II own ROM.
Apple III
Later Apple released the Apple III – an all-in-one evolution of the Apple II, which was a commercial failure.
There is one definitive Apple III emulator, Sarahbut unfortunately it is only for older ones PowerPC-based Macs and hasn’t been updated in nearly fifteen years.
Also check out the apple3.org website with a lot of information about Apple III computers.
museum.net has an interesting Apple III page, but it is only in German.
Kelvin Sherlock has one front end for MAME with many Apple machines, including Apple III, but it is still under development.
He also has a newer partial port of the IIgs toolbox called golden gate.
Hidden in one of Apple’s little-remembered archive servers, ftp.asimov.net is an older Apple III archive now called open-source Apple 3 DVDincluding a copy of Sara and a wide variety of documents and utilities:
Apple Lisa
Named after Steve Job’s first daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs, the Lisa was too big, too expensive and a commercial failure. But his development and technology gave rise to the original Macintosh in 1984. Last week, Apple released all original Lisa source code and softwareincluding its apps – the Lisa Office System. In fact, most of the Macintosh development was originally at Apple done on a Lisa.
On macOS, there is one definitive Lisa emulator app: Lisa Em, by Ray Arachelian. Configuration is quite simple and once you have the original Lisa software you can load it into LisaEm as a disk drive. The cursor movement is a bit slow, but this has more to do with Lisa’s original software than LisaEm itself.
There is one additional Lisa emulator for macOS: INACTIVEbut it doesn’t seem to work on macOS Ventura.
The next
After Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, he founded a new company, NeXT, which made new computers and NeXTStep operating system. In 1997, Apple bought NeXT for $700 million and NeXTStep became the basis for it macOS and iOS.
Classic Mac OS
Before macOS and iOS, there was Mac OS 9, and before that Mac OS 8, and before that System 7.x. All of these ran on 68K or PowerPC-based Macs. MacOS 9.2.x was the last version of Mac OS 9 before that Mac OS X was released in 2000.
There are several classic Mac emulators, including:
Even before System 7 there was black and white System 6.0.8. Mini vMac is a System 6 emulator, but you need to find a classic Mac ROM image file to make it work.
Also check out the plethora of classic System 6 software at archive.org.
General emulators
We’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s available in classic emulators for the Mac, but there are two other common emulators: virtual box from Oracleand QEMU (pronounced “Q-ee-mu)” Both are free though QEMU is a bit more difficult to set up.
virtual box is a breeze to use, but the quality has declined in recent years, and current versions are a bit buggy with missing controls, crashes, and other unexplained behavior. Still, it’s worth using as it allows you to use a variety of other operating systems on your Mac.
Using virtual boxyou can use almost any version of Windows, Linuxsome versions of Android, such as the Android x86 projectold versions of NeXTStep, decades old versions of BeOS and its modern equivalent, haikusome Raspberry Pi operating systems, and Suns Solaris operating system, which is now also part of Oracle.
To use VirtualBox, open it after installation and click “New” at the top of the window. Here you will be prompted to set a location for the VirtualBox file for this machine and to create a Virtual Hard Disk (.vdi) file. You will also be prompted to choose which type of operating system to install.
Once everything is set up, you can set a downloaded .iso image as that machine’s CD/DVD-ROM drive, set it as the startup disk in “Settings->System”then start the virtual machine by clicking the “Get started” knob. The .iso or CD image you selected will boot and you can install from there.
Once the installation is complete, power off the virtual machine and then change the disk boot order by clicking “Settings->System” the button again, then set the new “Hard Disk” (.vdi file) as the top boot volume by dragging it to the top of the list. The next time you click Get startedthe machine will boot from the .vdi hard drive you just installed on.
A few technical notes
Most retro floppy formats can now be read and written on most modern Macs and PCs, and there are a number of utilities for using them or looking into their content.
If you have a genuine Apple II computer that you want to transfer files to, and a Mac, you can use it ADTProwhich is software on both ends and allows you to copy old Apple II files from your Mac to an Apple II via a serial cable.