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Last time, we watched a modern PC emulating a  NeXT… which was then in turn emulating a PC. So today, we’re flipping the stack once  more: a NeXT machine emulating a Macintosh. It's obsolete technology no one uses  today, but I bring it back to life! I'm THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR  and these are my stories. NeXT systems had amazing development tools,  but lacked the massive software library of the Macintosh. A compatibility layer could,  in theory, close the gap. Enter Executor. Executor was created by ARDI (Abacus Research  and Development, Inc.), which originally focused on clean-room reimplementations of  Apple’s Macintosh APIs. In the early 1990s, ARDI produced versions of Executor for  NeXTSTEP on both Motorola and Intel platforms, and later also for MS-DOS and Windows. After  several years of development stagnation through the early 2000s, Executor was finally  released as open-source software in 2008. As opposed to competing products,  Executor didn’t depend on Macintosh ROMs, but was closer in implementation concepts to  WINE, or the contemporary WABI for Solaris. Very much like WABI and WINE translating Windows  function calls to UNIX system calls, Executor used a similar approach by translating Macintosh  Toolbox API calls into NeXTSTEP (and later POSIX) calls, while presenting an environment  that was compatible with System 6 and System 7. Depending on the software category, compatibility  reached around 60 % of existing applications, and in some cases more when applications stayed  within documented Toolbox API guidelines. Not everything could be emulated though.  Applications using undocumented traps, depending on quirky System-level behaviors, or  accessing hardware directly—such as low-level graphics routines, custom serial drivers, or  AppleTalk—would typically fail. Extensions and Control Panels were also unsupported, because  Executor did not replicate the full Macintosh system software. And hardware-specific  functionality were also outside its scope. One nuance often overlooked is performance:  on NeXT's Motorola hardware, Executor ran 68k Mac code natively, without CPU  emulation. Still it incurred some overhead from translating the UI and  QuickDraw calls to Display PostScript. To see Executor in action,  I had to first acquire it. I didn’t find any original disk images, but  only this copy of Executor 2.0 on archive.org. Although it names itself Executor for UNIX, with  the filename referring to Executor for Linux, this one actually includes  the NeXTSTEP version of it. And more than not it looks like  an old warez copy of some sorts, but as the software was open  sourced anyway, who really cares? Except that extracting it posed some issues.  The included shell script seemed to fail, as obviously expecting a file named  executor-commercial.tar, which as absent. Manually extracting it helped to get the app, and since I had to also repackage the version  of SoftPC 2.0 for NeXTSTEP, I did the same here, creating a proper package installer to  faciliate the installation procedure. And with that, the installer runs through  correctly, both on the actual NeXTstation but also inside the Previous emulator. Note how  Executor also offers an Intel platform build, to run on NeXTSTEP x86. No surprise here,  as Executor was also offered for DOS and even Linux at some point. I shall definitely  have a look at this as well in a follow-up. Executor launches directly into the Browser,  resembling the classic System software desktop. But as mentioned before, there’s no  actual Mac System Software included, even though there is a system folder  containing some custom programs. Executor comes with some prebundled  freeware and shareware programs, and I’m totally excited to see they included  a Lemmings demo. Although it feels really, really sluggish inside the Previous emulator. We should definitely give that one  a show on the NeXTstation itself … Alright, so running Lemmings  is definitely a bit quicker, but not exactly stunning. The graphics  really puts it on stress, although the actually game play seems ok. I’d assume a  Turbo NeXTstation would fair a bit better. And how about side loading new applications? Well, unless you use floppy disks, you  can access the UNIX file system from within Executor. So if you have your software  laying around somewhere on the local disk, or even on a NFS server, you can  access it directly to install software. Or you use Mac-formatted floppy disks. They mount directly into Executor, so  you can drive the install from there. As seen here at the example of StuffIt Expander,  loading it up from floppy however seems to take significantly more time than on a real  Macintosh … and lead to a sudden crash. And with that, I couldn’t convince the  NeXTstation to load up the floppy disk again, at least until I forcefully  ejected it via the command line. Let’s try again by copying the install file over, and running it from the  Executor’s virtual disk instead. Alright, seems like it’s not related to floppy  disk access, but rather StuffIt Expander 5.5 not being compatible to the System software  emulated by Executor, baselining on System 6. Of course I knew that, but I was expecting an  error message, rather than an unconditional crash. But let’s try StuffIt Expander 3.5. That one  should work, as that’s also the version coming bundled with Executor. And yes, it does,  even running directly off the floppy disk. But not everything runs. DiskCopy is not a  well-behaved citizen. As mentioned earlier, the portfolio of compatible applications  covered around 60 %. Propably good enough, but there were better ways to do it. And this is where Daydream comes  in. Daydream is not an emulator, but a fully licensed port of Apple’s  Macintosh ROMs to NeXT hardware, running System 7 and native  Mac applications at full speed. But that’s a story for next time. Before we wrap up, I’d really love  to hear from you: did you ever use Executor back in the day? On a NeXT,  a PC, or maybe even both? And if you did — what worked, what broke? Share  your stories in the comments below! I’m THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR, and  this was my story for today. Thanks for watching and see you again next Sunday.