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Curated by: THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR (262 videos)
In 1994, Apple released the Macintosh Application Environment (MAE) — its first “open systems” product. MAE brought System 7 to UNIX workstations from Sun and HP, running inside an X11 window with full Macintosh apps. In this video I explore MAE from version 1.0 through 3.0, installing it on a Sun Fire server and working through plenty of quirks: expired licenses, obscure ROM errors, AppleSingle file handling, and SCSI device headaches. Along the way we’ll look at how MAE compared to Apple’s other UNIX ventures like A/UX and, later, the Blue Box/Classic environment in OS X. If you used MAE back in the day — or if this is the first time you’re hearing of it — let me know your experiences in the comments. In this episode: 00:00 Intro 00:41 MAE Historic Retrospective 04:52 Installing MAE 1.0 06:42 Applications On MAE (and File Format Issues) 10:17 (Not) Using Removable Media for Software Setup 13:02 Exploring MAE 2.0 14:13 Exploring MAE 3.0 15:30 Conclusion 🔔 Subscribe for more retro hardware adventures! Want to join THE PHINTAGE SUPPORTERS or THE PHINTAGE ENTHUSIASTS community and get a mention in an upcoming video? Learn more here: https://www.youtube.com/@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR/join This video was made possible with support by: THE PHINTAGE ENTHUSIASTS: Alisha Manuela Stutz Christian Zerrahn David Schell Waseem al sammane ZyeByteVT THE PHINTAGE SUPPORTERS: Balint Szy Brian Repinski Cecil Clank Elinars Feldi GrayT! heyday478 HMK Jack Beckman Jack Rosenthal John DiLiberto Luke Granger-Brown Matthew Veety Mlok Karel MS-DOS Manfred Steven Glogger Tim Hull Wobinu Films xcalibur839 Z098 Zen the Fox Visit also THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR website at https://www.thephintagecollector.ch for insights into my retro computer collection. This presentation, Copyright @ 2025 THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR, Gianpaolo Del Matto. All rights reserved. Individual Copyrights apply for referenced material (see sources). Music composed by 🎶 Abdallah El-Ghannam https://www.youtube.com/@AcrossTheU.S.A | https://www.fiverr.com/abdallahghannam 🎶 rootkitty | https://soundcloud.com/rootkitty ℹ️ References & Further Reading: General Info Wikipedia: Macintosh Application Environment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Application_Environment Wiki (Preterhuman): Macintosh Application Environment: https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Macintosh_Application_Environment Apple’s archived MAE site (1998): https://web.archive.org/web/19980613012508/http://www.mae.apple.com/ Apple MAE 3.0 White Paper (Archive): https://web.archive.org/web/19980613012821/http://www.mae.apple.com/technical/2.0/White_Paper2.html Manuals & Docs Apple MAE 3.0 User Manual (PDF): https://machut.net/files/manuals/mae/U96504047AMAEV30CD.PDF Solaris archive copy – MAE3 User’s Manual: https://archive.cs.rutgers.edu/archive/a/solaris/solaris/opt/apple/Apple%20Extras/docs/MAE3%20User%27s%20Manual.pdf MAE 3.0 Demo Info (Archive): https://web.archive.org/web/19980613012622/http://www.mae.apple.com/info/mae3demo.html Info Alley newsletters (patch info): https://archive.org/details/info-alley-19940808-v-01-i-08/Info_Alley_19950904_V02I10/ File Formats (AppleSingle, MacBinary) AppleSingle Tech Note: https://web.archive.org/web/19980613012840/http://www.mae.apple.com/technical/2.0/TECH_NOTE_1.html RFC 1740 – AppleSingle/AppleDouble: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1740.txt MacBinary (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBinary AppleSingle/AppleDouble (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleSingle_and_AppleDouble_formats File header detail (Archiveteam): http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/AppleSingle FAQ on formats: http://macintoshsisters.freeservers.com/faqs/faq8.html Comparison (68kmla thread): https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/applesingle-vs-macbinary.41956/ Technical PDF: https://web.archive.org/web/20180311140826/http://kaiser-edv.de/documents/AppleSingle_AppleDouble.pdf Conversion tool – hqx2bin: https://linux.die.net/man/1/hqx2bin K-AShare / karc (IRIX) https://help.graphica.com.au/irix-6.5.30/man/1/karc SGI Techpubs (p.64): https://irix7.com/techpubs/007-3897-016.pdf Xinet site (Archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20040329110545/xinet.com Software, Downloads & Archives https://archive.org/details/apple-mae-2.0-solaris.tar https://archive.org/details/mae-20-sparc https://archive.org/details/mae-3.0.4 https://virtuallyfun.com/2019/08/25/macintosh-application-environment-failure-pt-1/ https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/macintosh-application-environment-for-unix.15372/ https://www.aux-penelope.com/mae/index.htm https://www.macintoshrepository.org/32453-macintosh-application-environment-3-0-4 Community & Extras Apple built a Mac OS for UNIX: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/remember-when-apple-built-a-mac-os Journal du Lapin demos: https://www.journaldulapin.com/ Related Topics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PA-RISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_PowerPC_processors