But the real kicker, of course, is that you can actually download and run the thing! I've been developing Palm software for a few years now, so it really only took a few evenings this past week to throw miniMac together. But where do the lies end and reality begin exactly? About half of the content on the miniMac website is false... but the other half is basically true.
I've left the rest of the web site "as is" for you to enjoy if you got here late. "Happy April Fools Day" has been added to each page.
THE LIES:
The miniMac software is NOT a port of the original MacOS. I did not look at a single line of code, assembled or otherwise, to make the miniMac application... it is just a regular Palm OS application made with all the normal Palm development tools from scratch. I just happened to use a custom 'menu bar' instead of the default Palm menus, and some other pen and graphic routines to make the icons work. However... many of the techniques I used were probably identical to those used in the original MacOS (for example, the way each 'object' has an 'icon' image and a 'mask' to clear out the background pattern when drawing the icon to the screen).
No 'features' were disabled before the release of miniMac, this was just an excuse for all of the things I didn't build into it. The complete version history is a fantasy, an illusion, never happened.
I have not been working on miniMac for a couple months, just the past week in some of my spare time. There is no one else working on it (no team) except I do have a friend that suggested a way to build a plastic chassis out of modeller's plastic. I do not (right now) have any intention of implementing a mouse for miniMac nor taking apart a Clie NR70 to make a final miniMac.
THE TRUTH:
One of my first practice programs for the Palm was a fake little Mac desktop and all it would do is open a window when you double tapped the disk icon. That's all it did, but I did draw up many of the graphics then that were used here in miniMac. Also, I do have an old Palm IIIc with a cracked case that I might very well take apart one Saturday afternoon and put in a box that looks like a little Mac. Maybe even connect a keyboard (full sized most likely).
And, it is true that the miniMac application is an homage to the original Mac. My father bought a Mac 128k in 1984 and it really made me see computers in a new way and was the first computer I ever did anything useful on (wrote papers, made cards and labels, music and MIDI, etc.) as opposed to our previous TI99/4A which was basically just a game machine in our house. Ah, the disk swapping memories I have of the 128k Mac! I'm surprised I haven't added the "Please insert the disk:" dialog box into miniMac yet!
Why put so much time into an April Fools joke? Well, I'm working on some new products for miniMusic that will be using a new filing system and it occurred to me that this would be a good (and fun) way to work out some of the details. The generic Palm database isn't so good at custom sorted file lists, nested folders/catagories or more than sixteen folders/categories (do I have that right? 16? I think that's right). Look for the new file system in MixPad, DumpPad, and future versions of NotePad and BeatPad. Yes, that is a real San Diego Mac Users Group Mug.
NEXT:
Now that the framework is all here, I might fiddle around some more with miniMac... let you create new objects (duplicate folders, for example) and re-name things. Several people have asked to use miniMac as a Palm launcher... which is a possibility (Palm Icons are 22x22 instead of miniMac's 20x20; I obviously wasn't thinking clearly!) but I don't see how I could ever get away with charging for this, so don't expect me to put a lot of time into it right away. The desktop metaphor really isn't that good for handhelds either... but it does look cool.
Thanks for dropping by! I haven't played a good April Fools prank in years!
-Chad