'To get this proof-of-concept running, it took me about 4 hours,' he told El Reg 'Most of that time was spent getting Mini vMac to compile on the watch’s architecture.'įrom there, Mini vMac could be equipped with a boot image and the Watch was able to load up the emulator and boot MacOS 7.5.5, a build of the old MacOS introduced in 1996 for the PowerMac/Performa lines that you may remember disabling the enemy mothership in Independence Day. Lee, who when not sending Watches back in time works as a software architect for Tendigi, said the install process mostly consisted on porting the open source Mini vMac emulator to the Apple WatchOS platform. It occurred to me that I could make a HyperCard stack to do the same thing for Mini vMac. I noted that the Basilisk emulator has a Preferences screen to alter the configuration of the emulation. Why run watchOS 2 when you can run Mac OS 7.5.5? That way I could try out a Mac SE with the original 512 x 342 pixel screen, or a 1024 x 800 pixel Mac SE FDHD, or a colour Mac II.
New Yorker Nick Lee said he used an emulator to get his Apple watch running a disk image of the MacOS 7.5.5 operating system.
An Apple Watch tinkerer has managed to get his wristslab running an operating system that hasn't been updated in nearly two decades.
